Angela and Zayd’s best friendship is at stake when they both become radicalized during a labor strike at their transgender healthcare nonprofit.
RAINBOW COLLAR is the story of Angela and Zayd, best friends and coworkers at The Center, a New Jersey LGBTQ nonprofit. While providing social services and life saving healthcare to its queer and trans clients, The Center doesn’t extend its “safe and welcoming” environment to its staff, who are underpaid and overworked. Meanwhile, staff and clients are harassed by anti-trans protestors who routinely protest outside The Center, accusing the nonprofit of grooming young children. Angela and Zayd decide to strategize with their union in search of better working conditions. The national union sends in Devin, a compelling but polarizing transfemme union organizer. In the process of politicizing Angela and Zayd, Devin pits the best friends against each other, driving a wedge into their loving camaraderie. Angela and Zayd’s personal lives are also rife with chaos. Angela’s roommate–her mentally ill mother Mindy–depends on a health insurance scam in which Angela is complicit. Zayd, an aspiring fashion designer, also works as a part-time assistant to Sandra, an older clouty designer with her own label. As Zayd tries to get his foot in the door via Sandra’s platform, Sandra initiates an inappropriate relationship with him. Devin, also pursuing her erotic feelings toward Zayd, appoints him as the union’s lead bargainer. Zayd is pressured by Devin and union management to concede to radical demands; in turn, Angela feels betrayed and takes matters into her own hands. As Zayd tries to persuade Angela to stay the course with their collective labor action, Angela strikes up an unexpected romance with Brett, a second amendment rights activist. Brett’s influence further exacerbates Angela’s volatile emotions, which spur her to militant action that jeopardizes both her job at the Center and the legality of the strike. Zayd, stuck between his loyalty to Angela and his leadership role on the local’s bargaining team, is caught in an impossible situation. At the heart of the film is an ambivalence about t4t friendships, in which inherited heteropatriarchal trauma intermixes with the sweetness of shared experience. Zayd and Angela must decide whether their friendship, with its banter-filled humor and resentful contortions, is worth saving at the cost of their newfound political commitments.
Hazel Katz is a Los Angeles-based video artist and filmmaker focusing on the politics of visibility through reenactment and pop culture archives. Her 2017 short film “Bubby & Them” won top international film at WNDX festival. Hazel’s work has been supported by MOMA PS1, Tate Modern, and festivals internationally, and her 2019 feature documentary “Florida Water” is now distributed by Collective Eye Films. Hazel recently completed a yearlong collaborative residency at UnionDocs and is currently pursuing an MFA in Visual Arts at UC San Diego.
Producer - Jordan Flaherty
