Queer|Art is excited to announce the winner of the 2020 Barbara Hammer Lesbian Experimental Filmmaking Grant, Rraine Hanson. The Los Angeles-based filmmaker will receive a $7,000 cash grant, as well as studio visits with members of the judges panel in support of their creative and professional development.

Rraine Hanson (she/they/he) is a queer, gender-nonconforming, Jamaican filmmaker, most interested in utilizing design and mixed media to tell stories centering the experiences and imaginations of queer and trans people of colour. They hold a BA in Media Production from Emerson College, where they debuted their thesis film, The Divine Femmunity. Since then, the film has been screened at the 2019 Queer Woman of Colour Film Festival, art exhibitions in South Florida, drive-in programming in Los Angeles, as well as online through the work of organizations like The Woven Colours and the Fronteiras Collective. When they’re not obsessing over new ways to experiment with their own storytelling, they work in the television world helping art departments
build all kinds of different worlds. The hands on crafting experience informs the methodology behind all their personal creative endeavors, both written and visual.

This year’s judging panel remarks, “Rraine’s work is very unique. Their tactile analog approach and use of space and the in-between moments are especially exciting. Their exploratory strategies of representation are reminiscent of Barbara and we’re really excited to see Mid Autumn come into fruition. Rraine is a filmmaker with a voice that is super fresh and it’s clear that they are trying to carve out their own place.”

Hanson was one of 148 applicants hailing from 24 different states who applied for the Hammer Grant in its fourth year, winning for a project currently entitled Mid Autumn. Hanson’s project is a reflective meditation on gender identity and the confinement within cisheteronormative binaries, visualized through the gaze of a queer teenager upon their school teacher and her life. As the childhood memory unfolds, the story explores the blurred lines between influence, desire and obsession.

For more information about the grant and this year’s finalists, visit: https://www.queer-art.org/hammer-grant