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Six people pose together in front of a sky backdrop with a rainbow. They all wear light blue button-up shirts, khaki pants, oversized glasses, and curly black wigs, striking playful and exaggerated poses. One person kneels in front while the others stand, giving the scene a humorous, staged feel.

We Are Pat

  Rowan Haber

  U.S.     94 minutes

Synopsis

In the early 1990s, Saturday Night Live’s Julia Sweeney created one of the show’s most popular characters of the time in the recurring sketch “It’s Pat!” Awkward, androgynous, and often wearing a light-blue pearl-snap Western-style shirt with tan slacks, Pat was an enigma—and their gender, and questions around it, was the punchline of many a joke. Now, 35 years later, the gags feel out of date and even insulting, but queer filmmaker Rowan Haber presents a whimsical and complex interrogation of “Pat,” a figure to which Haber had always found themselves inextricably drawn.

Collaborating with queer and trans comedians as well as a game Julia Sweeney ready to revisit her creation, We Are Pat looks at the way Pat embodied trans and nonbinary identities at a moment when popular culture had yet to understand them. Through their own hilarious observations and funny recreations of the Pat sketches, Haber and their crew are able to find in Pat an unlikely hero, one that might be worth reclaiming as a symbol of empowerment.

 English with subtitles

Screenings & Events

There are currently no upcoming screenings of this film.

Media

Film Credits

  •   Caryn Capotosto
  •   Rowan Haber, Hannah Buck
  •   Hannah Buck, Alex Bohs
  •   Christine Ng, Mego Lin
  •   Julia Sweeney, Kevin Nealon, Abby McEnany, Molly Kearney, Murray Hill, Nori Reed, Sabrina Wu, Robin Tran, Roz Hernandez, James Tom, Jenaya Future Khan, River Gallo, Grace Freud, April Clark, Riv Butcher, Ally Beardsley, Hayden Johnson, Brontez Purnell
  •   Erick Del Aguila
  •   Alan Cumming, Adrian Salpeter, Bill and Ruth Ann Harnisch – The Harnisch Foundation, Meadow Fund, Jenny Raskin, Geralyn White Dreyfous, Pierre Hauser, Shauna Schmunk, Marci Wiseman, Daniel J. Chalfen, Dawn Bonder, Chandra Jessee, Rebecca Lichtenfeld, J Winkelried, Beth Levison, Eric Kuhn, Lauren Greenfield and Frank Evers, Stuart Ford, Lourdes Diaz, Caroline Libresco and Lilly Wachowski. Co-Executive Producers: Kelsey Koenig, Eric Szmanda, Kirsten Vangsness, JanaLee Cherneski, Ashlin Hatch. In Association with Impact Partners and In Association with The Harnisch Foundation, The deNovo Initiative, and InMaat Foundation.
  •   Museum & Crane

Sponsors

Program Partner

Logo: WTTW (2019)

Program Patron

Cynthia Stone Raskin

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