This Pride Month, Brooklyn College and CUNY shined a spotlight on the power of queer storytelling through CUNY Queer Portraits on Frame by Frame, a vibrant showcase of films created by queer filmmakers from across CUNY’s campuses.
At the center of this year’s conversation is Alexandra Juhasz, an acclaimed filmmaker, scholar, video activist, and Distinguished Professor of Film at Brooklyn College. A pioneering voice in queer media studies and independent filmmaking, Juhasz has spent decades exploring how film can document, preserve, and amplify marginalized voices. Known for her influential work on The Watermelon Woman, widely recognized as the first feature film written and directed by a Black lesbian and a landmark of Black queer cinema, Juhasz brings both scholarly insight and personal experience to a discussion on the importance of queer narratives in film.
As part of the showcase, Juhasz shares I Want to Leave a Legacy, a deeply personal documentary created with her late friend Juanita Mohammed Szczepanski. The film is a moving reflection on friendship, AIDS-era activism, and the enduring importance of community memory. Through intimate storytelling, it demonstrates how film can preserve histories that might otherwise be lost and ensure that future generations remain connected to the struggles, resilience, and achievements of queer communities.
Joining Juhasz in the conversation are two accomplished CUNY filmmakers whose work highlights the diversity and creativity of queer experiences.
Samantha Alvarez, an award-winning filmmaker and painter and a two-time graduate of City College of New York (CUNY), returns to Frame by Frame as a featured filmmaker for the second time. A fellow of the Bronx Documentary Center Films Fellowship, NBCU Academy Fellowship, and Third World Newsreel Workshop, Alvarez earned widespread recognition for her experimental documentary In the Body, which received six awards, including the 2022 Outstanding Female Content Creator Award from New York Women in Film & Television. Her work explores family healing and intergenerational trauma while pushing the boundaries of documentary filmmaking.
Also featured is Eden Martinez, a Nuyorican queer filmmaker whose work centers women, LGBTQ+ communities, and people of color through a joyful and visually rich lens. Martinez’s film In & Out examines themes of identity, vulnerability, and intersectionality, celebrating the complexity and beauty of underrepresented experiences.
You can watch the full showcase on CUNY TV and on YouTube from June 5 to July 2. Featured films include In & Out, Cutting Room Floor #1, Make a Declaration, Voces Transcendentes, Candy’s Sun, Las Olas, NY Counterpoint, In the Body, I Want to Leave a Legacy, and The Animal in You.
More information, including the schedule, is available here.
