ABOUT THE PROJECT

LOGLINE
LES (working title) asks how revolutionary lives are remembered—or forgotten—and what it means to reclaim a history that was never meant to survive.

SYNOPSIS
LES explores the life and legacy of Leslie Feinberg, a working-class, butch, transgender writer and activist whose work exposes the intertwined systems of gender oppression, labor exploitation, state violence, racism, US imperialism at home and abroad from Palestine to Cuba. Best known for Stone Butch Blues, Feinberg articulated a feminist and internationalist analysis of gender that emerged not from academia, but from lived experience in factories, bars, picket lines, and hospitals.

LES uses mostly just beautiful and rich archival materials, Leslie’s own voice and image. If necessary there will be sparse audio interviews with those close to her. The film also examines the gaps and silences that mark marginalized lives, a central inquiry into whose histories are preserved and whose are erased.

LES shows how Leslie built solidarity across coalitions of multiple identities, struggles, and movements. Just as well the film explores the life and the conditions behind Leslie’s work that lead to Feinberg’s untimely death. Leslie’s life resists simplification: it includes confusion, anger, solidarity, joy, illness, enduring physical violence, and resilience. LES will reflect how Feinberg cannot be reduced to one identity or one cause—Feinberg was able to hold this tension and use it to build solidarity across movements.

LES shows how struggles for dignity at work, bodily autonomy, and freedom from authoritarianism are interconnected. LES gives a lens on a suppressed history, a challenge to dominant narratives about gender, class, labor, solidarity, and a powerful act of cultural memory. Through depicting Feinberg’s life, LES will tell the story of communities that have often been erased from mainstream history - bringing to light the realities of police violence, bar raids, labor struggles, and survival strategies that shaped queer and trans lives in the 20th century.??LES will situate Feinberg within broader histories of working-class resistance, queer and trans survival, and international solidarity, asking how stories like ours are preserved, distorted, or lost, and why they matter now.

We need more examples of solidarity and coalition building across multiple identities to protect us from the growing of global—authoritarianism. LES tells the story of Feinberg’s central role in shaping labor organizing, trans and queer thought and activism. This film has the power to spark curiosity, and open conversations across generations about where today’s movements come from— what has been lost, gained, and still needs fighting for. More so, trans people’s rights are being aggressively taken away in the name of “eradicating trans people from public life.” It’s essential to document the achievements of trans people now, before we are erased from history entirely. Feinberg’s life-story shows how this work was done in past moments of crisis, teaching us how to push against the divide and conquer tactics we are witnessing today.

PROJECT TYPE Documentary Feature / Film Essay

DIRECTOR Sam Feder
PRODUCER Sam Feder

ID: 804