Frédéric Moffet: You’re Too Lovely To Last

Frédéric Moffet, Goddess of Speed, 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Video Data Bank.

Join artist and filmmaker Frédéric Moffet for a screening that pairs three of his recent films with works by kindred artists Jamie Ross, Zuqiang Peng, and Amina Ross.

For over three decades, artist and filmmaker Frédéric Moffet has cultivated a practice rooted in queer relationality—drawing inspiration from early gay liberation and thinkers like Michel Foucault, who imagined queerness as a way of being that fosters new forms of intimacy, community, and care. Moffet’s films grow out of his own networks of relation—pedagogical, intellectual, erotic—and are attuned to ephemerality and loss, recovering fugitive traces from cruising grounds, private archives, and history’s margins. In this program, titled after a lyric by Billie Holiday, he presents three recent films—The Magic Hedge (2016), Goddess of Speed (2023), and The Job (2024)—alongside works by kindred artists Jamie Ross, Zuqiang Peng, and Amina Ross, conjuring themes of beauty, impermanence, desire, and memory.

Followed by a conversation between Frédéric Moffet and the artist, curator, and scholar John Neff.

Presented in partnership with SAIC Galleries’ Faculty Sabbatical Triennial, on view August 25– December 6. Moffet and Amina Ross’s works are also included in the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago’s exhibition, The Garden in a City: Queer Art and Activism in Chicago, on view through May 31, 2026.

2016–25, Canada, China, USA
Format: Digital
In English, French, and Mandarin with English subtitles
62 minutes followed by discussion

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Frédéric Moffet is a French-Canadian filmmaker, artist, and educator whose award-winning work blends formal experimentation with cultural inquiry to explore queer desire, identity, and history. His films have been exhibited internationally at festivals and institutions including the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Whitechapel Gallery (London), Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), and the Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement / Biennial of Moving Images (Geneva). He has received support from the Canada Council for the Arts and earned awards from the Ann Arbor Film Festival, Chicago Underground Film Festival, Santiago International Short Film Festival, and FLEX—the Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival (Gainesville), among others. Moffet is currently professor and chair of the Department of Film, Video, New Media, and Animation at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

PROGRAM

The Magic Hedge
Frédéric Moffet, 2016, 6 minutes
Set in a bird sanctuary on Chicago’s North Side—once a Cold War missile site—The Magic Hedge reveals the park’s hidden life as a site of queer cruising. Wandering through trees and shrubberies, the viewer encounters a space shaped by danger, respite, surveillance, and desire.

La Jungle
Jamie Ross, 2025, 11 minutes
In English and French with English subtitles
A glimpse into the cruising subculture of Montreal’s Mount Royal Park, where moments of connection unfold under the shadow of persistent police violence.

Sight Leak
Zuqiang Peng, 2022, 12 minutes
In Mandarin with English subtitles
Loosely inspired by a text by Roland Barthes, Sight Leak takes the perspective of a flâneur trailing a man through bars, streets, the cinema, and a mall. Their relationship remains undefined—stalker, friend, or something in between—casting desire and surveillance in an ambiguous light.

The Job
Frédéric Moffet, 2024, 15 minutes
This intimate portrait explores the erotic archive of Canadian photographer John Phillips, who worked in the 1990s for gay male magazines in the US. Tracing the impact of the AIDS crisis and the rise of the digital era, the film reflects on an artist—and an industry—at the threshold of cultural and technological transformation.

Man’s Country
Amina Ross, 2021, 8 minutes
Using publicly sourced images, Ross digitally reconstructs the now-demolished interior of Chicago’s longest-running gay bathhouse, inserting themself into a space they could previously not enter. The result is a meditation on memory, desire, and the longing for sites of queer intimacy, connection, and transformation.

Goddess of Speed
Frédéric Moffet, 2023, 9 minutes
A speculative reimagining of Warhol’s lost Dance Movie, Goddess of Speed casts artist Stevie Cisnero Hanley as queer dancer Fred Herko in the final days of his life. The film draws on fragmented descriptions and the memoir of Herko’s close friend, poet Diane Di Prima.

ACCESSIBILITY

Conversations at the Edge events have live captions (CART). The Gene Siskel Film Center is fully ADA accessible and its theaters are equipped with hearing loops. For other accessibility requests, please visit saic.edu/access or write cate@saic.edu

TICKETS

$13 General public
$8 Students & seniors
$6.50 Film Center members
$5 SAIC staff & faculty & AIC staff
FREE for SAIC students with a valid ID

All CATE programs are free for SAIC students. Unless otherwise noted, SAIC student tickets are released five days prior to showtime. Tickets must be picked up in person from the Gene Siskel Film Center box office. A student ID is required.

RESOURCE GUIDES

Conversations at the Edge’s resource guides contain articles, interviews, and other material related to upcoming artists and events. Available here.