The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson
Marsha P. Johnson has been called “the Rosa Parks of the LGBTQ movement,” because of the pivotal role she played in the Stonewall riots of 1969 alongside the likes of Sylvia Rivera and others. She was also a pioneer of the gay liberation movement, co-founder of S.T.A.R. (Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries), a self-proclaimed drag queen, community leader and, according to her friend and roommate, Randy Wicker, an “Andy Warhol model, prostitute, starving actress and saint.” Her life and tragic death is captured in the Netflix doc from David France, who says, “If you were in New York in gay New York, in queer New York during her lifetime, you knew Marsha.”
Olivia Colman and Anthony Hopkins in Florian Zeller’s The Father.
This year, several films both narrative and documentary features from The Father to Dick Johnson Is Dead, as well as movies like ‘Relic’ tackled the specific and complicated grief associated with neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer s.
In the Australian horror film
Relic (IFC Films), a befuddled elderly woman starts attacking her family while her body crumbles before our eyes. Her bones snap and gouge her skin. Her flesh rots and grays, peeling off in oozing flaps. When she can no longer walk, she scuttles on her hands and knees in pursuit. She hunts her daughter (Emily Mortimer) and granddaughter (Bella Heathcote) through their pitch-dark house, unable to recognize them as she chokes and maims them. It s not her anymore, the daughter whispers. Edna (Robyn Nevin) has become a monster.