Today we’d like to introduce you to Izzi Rojas & Aidan Dick. Them and their team share their story with us below:
Aidan had a cathartic relationship with visual arts that started at a young age and similarly Izzi with acting. Upon meeting through the CSULB film program, where Aidan was an undergrad and Izzi was cast in a student film the two quickly became creative partners.
As queer people, we are made to create a world outside of our immediate one. Creating spaces where we are accepted and safe to explore our expansive selves is understandably paramount. When Men Were Men was exactly that for us. We created a world where we could explore expressions of masculinity; hyper-masculinity, toxic masculinity, our own masculinity in a safe environment. That is what we sought out to do and we feel our main character as an extension of ourselves for that reason. Our misconceptions and assumptions about masculinity were built into the first worlds we created so we tore down and repeated that cycle until we learned, often intertwined with re-writes of our film.
We are both still formulating our worlds and ourselves. It is a life-long process and through art, we are shining light on new and narrow pathways for us and others.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
We wanted to have complete creative control over the film so we took everything into our own hands. For that reason, we strayed away from production companies, we crowd-funded and left for Ireland. That allowed us to control everything, the narrative and workflow through post. This control came with more responsibilities though. From being our own line producers to cooking our actor’s meals on shoot days. Despite the challenges, we would not have had it any other way and feel our hands-on-approach is palpable.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
When Men Were Men takes place in present day Ireland and is about Kieran, a teenage transmasculine boy hiding his gender identity from his strict Catholic family. Kieran is living a double life, one at home and the other where he is seen as a boy; his acting group in Dublin. He falls reluctantly in love with the new neighbor boy, Egan, who shows him sides of masculinity and queerness he never knew. Kieran is not honest with this new love; he hides who he truly is and we watch as he may or may not lose all that he has found.
Ultimately, When Men Were Men is a film about trans people by trans people- for everyone. As aforementioned, we made this film as a way to navigate our own transness and wrestle with ideas of masculinity within our own gender journeys. The formative mission of When Men Were Men was to be the representation that we ourselves were seeking in film. We believe authentic trans narratives, such as ours, start in the writer’s room and should continue all the way through post. The nuances of representation on every level of production should permeate through the film filling it with varying perspectives and outlooks to truly and more authentically encapsulates a trans experience. While we set out to make a ‘trans’ film, during filming, the echoes of our film’s message rang so true in the hyper-masculine halls of Ireland that we realized our experiences as two trans folx reaches so much farther than anticipated. This is a trans story by trans people – for everyone. A film anyone can find themselves in.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: whenmenweremen.info
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whenmen_weremen/
Image Credits:
Black & White, Color portraits: Olivia Zappone Red poster: Imogen Thomas Collage poster: Aidan Dick
