Zackary Drucker
Zackary Drucker’s Unison (2013 - 2017) is a short-format experimental film that visualizes the cross-generational evolution of transgender identity. Unison is set in and around an idyllic summer cottage in the Pocono Mountains, PA. The cottage is where Drucker has spent every summer of her life, and where the she will most probably have her ashes spread when she dies—and was therefore an ideal setting to image the different stages and trajectories for her own life. Shot as a dreamlike, ethereal pastiche of a life lived in a trans body, the film engenders filmic memory and cross-generational representations of aging and time passing.
The film’s cast includes the late Mother Flawless Sabrina, a then 75-year old drag queen who organized and MCed drag balls in the 1950s and '60s despite frequent arrests and incarcerations. Sabrina was the ultimate gender rebel and frequent muse, oracle, and collaborator to Drucker. Flawless plays the grand dame in elaborate high tea garb; Drucker and her then partner Rhys Ernst—a filmmaker and transgender man who collaborated with her on the short film, SHE GONE ROGUE (2012)—play a couple in a love-forsaken relationship. Additional performers include Ernst’s eight year old nephew—beautiful in his own youthful androgyny, Drucker's real-life mother, and Van Barnes, a transgender woman with whom Drucker has collaborated with on several projects.