I am so pleased to announce the premiere of my latest experimental documentary, Please Hold (70 mins, 2025), my first personal video in nearly fifteen years: online and in person. Edited by Matthew Hittle and Paul Hill, this intimate and evocative work will debut at the iconic Parkside Lounge in New York’s Lower East Side on March 2, 2025, at 5 PM (tickets here). As part of a dynamic, multisensory, community-based experience, before the screening (3–5 PM) attendees are invited to bring and share personal objects that hold memories of HIV/AIDS, the Lower East Side, or the Parkside Lounge. Co-sponsored by the MIX NYC Queer Experimental Film Festival and Visual AIDS, the event, emceed by “High-Profile NYC Drag Queen!” Linda Simpson, will conclude with a live performance by CHRISTEENE, whose music is featured in the video. It will be a memorable mix of joy, community, and remembrance, as is the video itself.
At its core, Please Hold explores the intersections of activism, memory, and media through a profoundly personal yet communal lens. Drawing from decades of DIY activist video, two deeply intimate death-bed/legacy recordings, and conversations with living AIDS workers, the documentary creates a layered meditation on the ways we hold — and shed — loss, memory, and collaborators, interrogating the questions:
How do neighborhoods, sweaters and scarves, videotapes and queer bars hold ghosts?
How do we let them go?
Shot on a mix of consumer-grade recording devices — iPhone, Zoom, VHS camcorder, and Super-8 film — the documentary is an homage to grassroots AIDS mediamaking, across decades, and its ability to capture intimate, honest communication about hope and loss. It is anchored by legacy videos, shot on their request, of two of my closest collaborators and friends: James Robert Lamb (1963-1993), taped in 1992, and Juanita Mohammed Szczepanski (1957-2022), shot in 2022. Their voices are joined by contemporary “AIDS workers” Jih-Fei Cheng, Marty Fink, Pato Hebert, and Ted Kerr, culminating in a poignant sequence filmed at the Parkside Lounge, a site layered with queer history and ghosts, memories, and present day stories of AIDS.
Following the in-person premiere, I will host a global online screening and conversation with writers for my co-edited collection AIDS and the Distribution of Crises, including the book’s co-editors, Jih-Fei Cheng, and Nishant Shahani, documentary filmmaker Cecilia Aldarondo, AIDS scholar Pablo Alvarez, artist and Long COVID organizer, Pato Hebert, queer media scholar Cait McKinney, and artist Quito Ziegler on March 8, at 3–5PM ET (tickets here). In addition, on March 22, Please Hold will close the Picture Lock film series at the Wexner Center for the Arts, where I edited the documentary in residence at their storied Film/Video Studio.
Please Hold will be available on the official project website at no cost, reflecting my commitment to accessibility and collective engagement. Viewers are encouraged to watch the video with others by organizing screenings and other gatherings that can honor the legacy of those lost to AIDS and other illnesses, as well as those living with them. Aligned with the project’s ethos, audience members are invited to contribute reflections, images, and other responses after their screening to an online collection and to consider donating to support Holding Patterns, a community-based installation of the project that debuted at the Mimesis Documentary Festival in Boulder, Colorado, in August 2024.
Showcasing paper transcripts of interviews, AIDS books, and queer magazines, death-bed/legacy videos, online archives, photos, and the four complete hour-long Zoom interviews with “AIDS workers” that were used in making the documentary, Holding Patterns interrogates the ways we learn, mourn, and remember differently across mediums and archives. By juxtaposing analog and digital technologies — from VHS tapes to Zoom grids, sweaters to porn magazines — Holding Patterns navigates the flattening and deepening of attention, connection, and care in the wake of technological shifts. The installation is designed to be responsive to community-based placement in spaces imbued with memory and activism: such as queer bars, libraries, archives, bookstores, or feminist and trans community centers. New iterations are planned for The Center’s Pat Parker/Vito Russo Center Library in New York City in Spring/Summer and the ONE Archives at the USC Libraries in Los Angeles in the Fall.
More information about Please Hold, including archival materials, interviews, and details on organizing your own screening or installation can be found on www.pleaseholdvideo.com.
Tickets for the in-person premier at the Parkside Lounge on March 2, 2025, at 5 PM are available HERE.
For the online premier on March 8, at 3–5PM ET, registrations can be made HERE.
Any questions? Please reach out. I am eager to share the video and/or installation to those ready to hold its and my commitments to interaction, communal engagement, and careful attention to loss, love, memory, and community.