Signed digital poster for PONY, 2021. In my MFA thesis film, PONY, our protagonist, Zoe, a late-'90s genderqueer pre-teen, defies a grieving mother to embody their true gender and sexual identities in the wake of a family tragedy. Zoe uncovers her gender at a time where all trans representation in the media was either harmful and peripheral, or absent. PONY is currently in post-production.
PONY production fundraising video, 2020. Visit the successful campaign here.
PONY is fiscally sponsored by The Film Collaborative, a 501(c)3 organization. All donations are tax deductible, and can be made on an ongoing basic. Funds currently collected will go toward festival fees for the 2022 festival season.
PONY production fundraising video, 2020. Visit the successful campaign here.
PONY is fiscally sponsored by The Film Collaborative, a 501(c)3 organization. All donations are tax deductible, and can be made on an ongoing basic. Funds currently collected will go toward festival fees for the 2022 festival season.
MISSION STATEMENT
PONY is created by an-all LGBTQ+ team with the common goal of achieving gender, sexual, and racial diversity on film and on set. At our helm is Halo Rossetti, a nonbinary writer/director who has been making queer video, art, and film for over a decade. "PONY" especially highlights at-risk trans youth.
SUPPORT BLACK TRANS LIVES
As we raise funds to bring this trans film project to life, we ask that all funders consider making a matching donation to The Okra Project, a collective that seeks to address the global crisis faced by Black Trans people by bringing home-cooked, healthy, and culturally-specific meals and resources to Black Trans People wherever they can reach them.
WHY THIS FILM?
PONY is a genderqueer take on the traditional coming-of-age narrative. Set in the late-90s, our protagonist, Zoe, a masculine-of-center preteen who is AFAB (assigned female at birth), defies the gender expectations of their mother and best friend as they grieve the death of their twin sibling. This story is based on my (director Halo Rossetti's) own experience as a gender-confused millennial child growing up in the '90s and '00s, in a thoroughly haunted house.
PONY also unfolds against the backdrop of the epidemic of queer and trans youth suicides that affect my community every day. The rate of LGBTQ suicides is disturbingly high amongst children and youth. LGBTQ youth are four times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers (Massachusetts Department of Education, 2009).
More than half of transgender male teens who participated in a survey recently published by the American Academy of Pediatrics reported attempting suicide in their lifetime, while 29.9 percent of transgender female teens said they attempted suicide. Among non-binary youth, 41.8 percent of respondents stated that they had attempted suicide at some point in their lives.
Through the creation of PONY, I wish to bring visibility to at-risk LGBTQ teens. Identifying as non-binary and using they/them pronouns, I understand the struggle of questioning one’s identity in a binary-heteronormative world and how isolating that experience becomes.
Prevention and elimination of these deaths are only possible through building acceptance, awareness, and characters with whom these children can identify.
WHY ME?
My name is Halo Rossetti (they/them), and I am a queer and nonbinary artist and filmmaker. In my work I center the queer and trans experience, from my own perspective, and from the identities that intersect with my own. As previously mentioned, this film weaves together my personal experience growing up as a gender-confused millennial child in the '90s and ’00s, against the backdrop of LGBTQ queer youth suicide, which affects my community every day.
With my years of queer community building and visual storytelling experience (MFA in Film and Media Arts, Temple University, 2021) I believe that I am the right person to tell this timely story. I hope that you will join me on this journey.
WHY NOW?
Not only is there an epidemic of LGBTQ suicides in this country, but our community is now faced with a pandemic of a different sort. The social fallout from COVID-19 has been just as all-encompassing as the financial one, and LGBTQ people have been particularly affected.
We are the more likely to be immunocompromised (HIV/AIDS) and smokers, and our community is more reluctant to seek out care due to discrimination (National LGBT Cancer Network, 2019). Not only this, but our community is still traumatized by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, a virus that decimated our numbers and left my generation without many queer elders to look up to.
We need accurate, enlivening LGBTQ stories, media representation, and solidarity in the film industry. Now more than ever, we are stronger together.
WHY YOU?
Whether you are apart of the LGBTQ+ community or in solidarity with us, we hope that you will consider joining us on this journey.
Out of every one-hundred dollars ($100 USD) awarded by foundations in the United States, only three cents are focused on transgender communities (LGBT Funders, 2020).
Through fundraising for our film, we hope to not only fundraise for our project, but raise awareness for our cause, and bring together a community of LGBTQ+ folks and allies. By supporting us, you can help us to make the world a more inclusive and possible place.
Official PONY zine, "The Making of PONY, a miracle baby born in flames and reared in pestilence," by Halo Rossetti, May 2021.
Suite of 10 digital stills from PONY, signed by Halo Rossetti, 2021.