Supernova

Supernova is a film about queer death drive in a city with an ambivalent relationship towards it, leading to alienation, resentment, and excess. By discarding any clear distinction between its fiction and non-fiction elements, the film aims to highlight both performativity and its failure.

I first met Astro at the end of a drunken night sitting in Tompkins Square Park. Many New Yorkers can say the same. Astro has been a longtime fixture of the downtown nightlife and punk music scenes. Her style and charisma are unforgettable to all who've met her, but beneath them is an emotionally complex and contradictory individual often at odds with her public persona. I hope this film can offer a glimpse of the internal turmoil behind Astro's remarkable presence and highlight the ways she reacts to a world that accepts and rejects her at its own convenience.

This film would not have been possible without the support of the 5 Ninth Avenue Project, who generously granted us access to the archives of legendary documentarian Nelson Sullivan. We hope to honor Nelson's legacy with a portrait of the remnants of an era he captured so intimately.