"It's no longer up to the artist to dictate how people interact with their work." Roof's instrumentalization of the film also challenges Moreno's own beliefs: "It's like, how far can you go with saying, 'Well, it's all up to you'?" "I think once a piece of work is out there, it doesn't belong to the artist," she said. The film is the ultimate case study in the danger of releasing work into the world. Himizu, Sion Sono's 2011 dystopian coming-of-age tale, is better known for being the terrorist and white supremacist Dylann Roof's favorite movie. "You're watching little girls twirl around and run around naked in certain scenes," she explained."The point is sort of, why would you look, right? And questioning you and questioning your gaze."Įarlier this month, Moreno presented two films that carry significant baggage. In January, she showed Innocence, Lucile Hadžihalilović's disturbing fairy tale revolving around a school where young girls are trained for a mysterious fate.
The films she selects – whether they're about a Nazi pedophile doctor, trash humpers, or Serge Gainsbourg's infamous Je T'Aime Moi Non Plus – probe dark aspects of the human psyche and can cause discomfort while doing so.
If there's a goal underlying Moreno's programming, it's to shift viewers away from the belief that seeing a movie is about pure entertainment. So why am I going to water that down for someone? Why am I going to try to only expose them to things that'll make them comfortable?" "And if you're trying to be as inoffensive as possible, there's always something … The art itself is aiming to challenge. "You're never going to appeal to everyone," she urges from across the screen. But she doesn't program films with everyone in mind. "I want people to just feel like they can walk in, and that they don't need four years of study plus an additional six," she said. After that experiment, Moreno moved her niche film proselytizing to Alamo Drafthouse before landing at the Austin Film Society.Īccessibility is important to Moreno. Moreno accepted the challenge, seeing the Drag institution as the perfect training ground to decipher what gets people's attention (tits and ass, folks). She was at Vulcan when Mike Nicolai, production manager for iconic bar the Hole in the Wall, stopped by asking if anyone would want to curate and host film screenings at the dive bar. You're watching six seasons of Friends, that's what you're watching." "Everyone wants to tell you they're watching Truffaut," she recalls. While working at Austin's dearly departed film rental haven was nothing like Empire Records ("It's just old guys yelling at you to get some World War II doc or something a lot of the time"), she got to know people's real taste in video content. After graduating from Evergreen State College, she moved down to Austin and got the first job she applied for, at Vulcan Video. Moreno's film-curating career began in a more intimate setting than the AFS stage. “I was hired to be me and to do what I do.” – Jazmyne Moreno I was hired to be me and to do what I do." "I clean it up a bit, but overall I'm going to be me. This nonchalance may be a bit of a shock to the audience of a Fellini retrospective, but Moreno isn't about to change for them.
"I'd rather you think I were an idiot than to feel like an idiot while you're sitting there trying to watch this little Czech movie from the Seventies or whatever the hell it is," she said. The springboard is Moreno's prologues, which provide both context and comedic relief. Lates, dedicated to what AFS calls "the new cult film canon," draws in younger cinephiles curious to delve into cinema's more obscure meanderings. "It's 7pm, and they are having no jokes," she said of the more mature crowds to whom she now presents films, while continuing to book the Lates programming, which she took over in 2018 after programming the short-lived Deep End. Since beginning her position as a full-time film programmer at the Austin Film Society last September, the 30-year-old has had to worry about administrative duties, how many people show up to a screening, and addressing new audiences. "I'm in Slackland," she sighed as she paused to respond to an email. It's evident by the number of notifications that ping throughout our Zoom call.