Thursday September 18th, 2025
6pm-10:30pm
3600 Lyons Road, Austin, Texas 78702

About FILTH!

Placing together queer history and queer presence in Cinema, we ask you to enter and expand the annals of Queer Film. With this series we showcase queer erotica past and present, centralizing queer desire to remind us of our histories. From vintage arthouse pornos, 80s-90s backroom home movies, 00s web boom, and into the tech fueled world of the 2010s to present we contextualize queer desire through multiple lenses. As we fight for physical queer spaces today and find ourselves equipped with cameras/computers in our pockets and generations of underseen queer history at our disposal, where do we go?

*This* is our proposal to you, but let us warn you… it’s FILTHY!

CONTENT WARNING: This event is 18+ and includes themes of: sexual liberation, intimacy, the Universe, fucking, and the nature within us all. This sometimes, but does not always, include visual or audio material that could be labeled "pornographic".

No one turned away from lack of funds! If you need financial assistance with a ticket, please email seenmke@gmail.com (limited supply!)

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FILTH! First premiered in Chicago in 2023 as a 4 part series. Reel 1 came to Austin in May 2025, marking SEEN’s Texas debut. This fall we bring you reels 2-4 with one screening each month! Join us Sep 18, Oct 18, Nov 20, as we enter and expand the annals of queer film with our friends at MoHA!

REEL TWO

Full of nature laden fantasies this block of shorts features current films from near (Austin!) and far (Europe/South America) alongside clips pulled right from the collections of our friends at BIJOU(world.com) and from deep within The Vault.

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Sliding Scale *PLEASE READ*

All artists have generously agreed to share their work with you despite our inability to guarantee payment. While SEEN believes strongly in community supported and funded work we have yet to find grant or ongoing funding from other sources. Everything you give goes directly to paying artists and our operational costs to meet in a physical space that prioritizes intentional and underground events like this.

Plenty of our screening artists have been deplatformed for promoting this type of work, fight actively to keep legislation from shutting down their operations, or have stepped back from this kind of work because of financial difficulties. We also believe that art and culture should be accessible to all regardless of current material conditions. We ask that you be honest with yourself about what you can afford to give and consider yourself in the broader scope of those impacted by the ongoing colonization, mass neglect, and increased censorship in the US. We want to thrive together and revel in filthy films with you for many years to come, but that is only possible through community contributions.

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Schedule

Screening 1
Doors 6pm
Screening 7pm

Screening 2
Doors 8:30pm
Screening 9pm

Reel 2 Current Films:

Forest Affair - Gracie K Wallner (they/them) |Madison, WI|

A human and a tree see each other across the forest floor. Magnetized, they share an intimate connection.

EstrellarSe - Amadalia Liberté (they/them) |Chile|

This piece born with the sighting of more than 50 starfish stranded on the last rock that separates the sea from the sand.

In addition to the obvious similarity between the textures and shapes, this phenomenon inspires a research process on the behavior of starfish in relation to the life forms that we dissidences adopt to live within the heteronorm system.

I take the analogy of stranding as a queer collective survival method against a system that violates and censors our existence. Resulting in an audiovisual piece, which mixes corporalities with sounds of aquatic and human nature.

At His Whim - Jamal Phoenix (he/him) & Daddy Anansi (he/him)

with DOP Cat Gold

Ttwo gear freaks unleash their desire for each other and transform this casual Sunday stroll into a kinky playground and space of worship.

HIS KINGDOM ENDURES - Cody Sooy (he/him) |Philadelphia, PA|

A trans man searches for his heart’s desire and is forever changed in this experimental short about patriarchy, power, and trauma within T4T (trans for trans) relationships.

Salacious Celestial Body - Lulu Lantana (they/them) |Austin, TX|

During the pandemic, Lulu, a chronic self fondler, set out to overcome their guilt of isolated, mundane masturbation. A limitation was set: only engage in sensuality when filming a ‘new’ idea. Bathed in moonlight, Salacious Celestial Body is one of several filmed explorations reclaiming pleasure that comes easily.

Clips from The Vault:

Spliced between these contemporary films, we showcase segments of works of decades past that create a throughline of queerness, self expression, and media over decades. The clips are curated to match thematically to the current works. Reel 2’s clips were provided by Chicago’s BIJOU(World.com)

Clips in Reel 2 come from:

Gettin’ Down - Tom DeSimone
L.A. Tool & Die - Joe Gage
Made in the Shade - Frank Ross
Total Impact - Robert Prion

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Venue Details

This event will be indoors in an open air warehouse without climate control, please dress according to the weather. The temperature outside is the temperature inside.

The Museum of Human Achievement (MoHA) has aging floors and a gravel parking lot. We recommend closed toe flat shoes, and an outfit that won't snag or get tripped on. We want you to have the best time while remaining safe and gorgeous.

Code of Conduct - https://moha.wiki/Code_of_Conduct

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Accessibility and Health

MoHA is wheelchair accessible. Please reach out to info@themuseumofhumanachievement.com if you have any other accessibility needs and we will do our best to accommodate.

This event is HEPA purified. Courtesy of Clear the Air ATX.

To help keep our community safe and healthy, please do not attend if you feel ill or were recently exposed to illness, such as COVID and the flu. Hand sanitizer and masks will be available. Masks are welcome!

Additional FAQs - https://moha.wiki/FAQ_%E2%86%92

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Travel & Parking Information

MoHA is located behind the Canopy Art Complex in a gravel parking lot. Guests can park for free in our lot and find free/paid street parking.

Riding bikes? We are accessible for bikes via several trails that connect to Springdale Road.

Riding the bus? The two closest bus stops to MoHA are at the 7th/Springdale stop and the Springdale/Govalle stop. We recommend using Google maps or Cap Metro Trip planner to confirm your route.

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The Museum of Human Achievement (MoHA) is a community-driven non-profit organization in Austin, TX grounded in affordability, inclusivity and access for artists. MoHA’s vision is for an empowered, resilient creative community where each member has the resources to foster well being, prosperity, and a self-determined future.

MoHA runs a variety of programs in Community Abundance, Digital Arts, Exhibition, and Professional Development for artists, organizers, and audiences. Learn more at their website https://moha.wiki.

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SEEN is a queer coalition of moving image makers, researchers, and curators who aim to disrupt the system of pay to show festivals and censored queer spaces. Through collaboration with other community driven and alternative art spaces, SEEN highlights self defined and nonconformist works to build a foundation for the rise of the Cinematic Gaze/Gayz. Started in Milwaukee, WI (2019) at downtown gallery with a decolonial focus We are, and have always been, a donation centered operation that focuses on self-defined, non-conformist queer work in the underground and without bars to enter. Originally with an additional Scene (as in a sequence in a film) we rebranded in 2021 as the SEEN you know today and released the following manifesto.

what does it mean to be SEEN?

??

??????

we REJECT

the standardized SYSTEM of IMAGES

the pacification of the marginalized through the notion of REPRESENTATION as path to LIBERATION

the EXPLOITATION of makers through PAYWALLS, REGULATIONS, and CONFORMITY

and the CENSORSHIP of QUEERNESS and SEXuality

we WELCOME the rise of the cinematic GAZE GAYZ through SELF DEFINED spaces

we are not MONOLITHS

we are not COMPARTMENTALIZED

we are not clear cut NARRATIVES

we do not have to EXPLAIN ourselves to fit within the LENS of cishet white supremacist patriarchal STRUCTURES nor do we need VALIDATION from them for the ways we choose to DEFINE ourselves

we CHALLENGE the passivity of SPECTATORSHIP

we have been taught how to VIEW but we ask you to SEE

we RECOGNIZE moving image as a new VERNACULAR

full of SYMBOLS and CODE, intonations through many LENSES

we PROJECT the light of QUEER DISCOVERY so that we may ABSORB the refractions of knowledge from those before us and ILLUMINATE the path for those to come

we are not just an EVENT

nor are we FETISHES, TOKENS, or SPECTACLES

we are a COALITION to build the foundation for

THE RISE OF THE CINEMATIC GAZE GAYZ

there is so much STRUGGLE and POWER at play in the arena of MEANING