JOHN FLECK IS WHO YOU WANT HIM TO BE is a documentary film by Kevin Duffy examining the legendary performance artist who was at the center of the culture wars during the AIDS crisis. The film includes contemporary cinema vérité footage of Fleck’s performances in New York and LA, a sit-down interview and archival footage reaching back over 30 years, including never before seen footage of the performance that sparked the NEA 4 crisis and the subsequent US Supreme Court decision.
Director Kevin Duffy will engage in a Q&A following the screening.
 
 
A Q&A will follow the screening with the filmmaker hosted by Moderator Lucy Sexton of DANCENOISE, the subject of the recent retrospective “Don’t Look Back” at the Whitney Museum.
 
 
Reception 7:30 PM
Screening 8 PM
 
 
JOHN FLECK (Subject) is a performance artist and actor based in Los Angeles, California. In 1990 he and 3 other performance artists became known as the NEA-4 denied funding by the National Endowment for the Arts because of religious and political pressure. Fleck’s latest venture BLACKTOP HIGHWAY premiered @ REDCAT in Los Angeles and recently made its NYC debut @ Dixon Place receiving rave reviews and a critic’s choice in the NY Times. His last show MAD WOMEN won the 2012 LA Weekly Award for ‘Outstanding Solo Performance’ and was nominated for a Bessie Award.

KEVIN DUFFY (Filmmaker) directed, produced, shot and edited the documentary feature, JOHN FLECK IS WHO YOU WANT HIM TO BE. The film has screened at the American Cinematheque, Los Angeles, the Los Feliz 3 Cinema, the New York Indie Theater Film Festival and CalArts. Duffy’s first independent feature, BECOMING BLOND (2010) starring Mink Stole is distributed by Ariztical Entertainment and has screened on Here TV. Duffy’s short film, cheap flight, (1996) screened on the Sundance Channel, at the Hamptons International Film Festival, the American Cinematheque and other venues. A graduate of New York University, Duffy won a Fellowship in Playwriting from the New York Foundation for the Arts. He received an M.F.A. in screenwriting from the American Film Institute.

Lucy Sexton is a Brooklyn-born choreographer, director, and producer who works in the fields of dance, theater, and film. With Anne Iobst, she created the dance performance duo DANCENOISE. She directed the off-Broadway plays Spalding Gray; Stories Left to Tell and Tom Murrin’s The Magical Ridiculous Journey of Alien Comic; and produced the Charles Atlas films The Legend of Leigh Bowery and TURNING with Antony and the Johnsons. Since 2009, she has served as the Executive Director of the NY Dance and Performance Awards, The Bessies.