At Least You Know You Exist (Excerpt) (2011)
Zackary Drucker and Flawless Sabrina investigate the erasure of transgender history in At Least You Know You Exist (Excerpt) (2011). In this excerpt from the film, Drucker engages in a trans-generational dialogue with Flawless Sabrina inside of her New York City apartment—a salon for queers and artists since 1968. The acts that the artists perform can be viewed as embodied repertoires that transmit memory, identity, and culture. They also reflect how transgender history has largely been excluded from mainstream archives and how transgender people have passed down their history through the oral tradition. Furthermore, Drucker and Sabrina use film as a medium to record their artistic relationship through a trans lens as both creators and subjects of the work. They create what Drucker calls “a new vision for transgender performativity” and construct a historical narrative on their own terms. This is most evident when Drucker proclaims to Sabrina at the end of the excerpt: “Because of you, I know that I exist.” Essentially, the film becomes a document of transgender history for future generations to access.
ZACKARY DRUCKER is a visual artist and cultural producer based in Los Angeles. Drucker’s work examines perceptions of gender and sexuality through a transgender lens. Her artwork has been performed and exhibited at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Hammer Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Venice Biennale–Swiss Off-Site Pavilion, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, among other venues. Drucker is an Emmy-nominated producer for the docuseries This Is Me (2015), as well as a co-producer on the Golden Globe and Emmy-winning television series Transparent (2014–). She is a cast member on the E! docuseries I Am Cait (2015). Drucker is represented by Luis De Jesus Los Angeles. www.zackarydrucker.com
FLAWLESS SABRINA (JACK DOROSHOW) (1939–2017) was a legendary drag queen and an icon of queer underground culture. Sabrina directed the drag beauty pageant The Nationals in the United States from 1958–1968. She starred in The Queen (1968)—a documentary about the 1967 Miss All-America Camp Beauty Pageant held at Town Hall in New York City. Sabrina also worked as a consultant on the films Midnight Cowboy (1969), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), and Myra Breckenridge (1970). In later years, she became involved in politics advocating for gay marriage and working with Hillary Clinton on transgender issues. Sabrina was an active member of the queer community and was a resource for transgender people in the arts. She, along with Zackary Drucker and Diana Tourjée, founded the Flawless Sabrina Archive in 2014 to preserve and make accessible the rich legacy of her lifework. www.flawless-sabrina.com