A Keynote on the Topic of "Making It No Matter What"

I swear, somebody asked me to publish this!

On April 14, 2025, the Frameline Film Festival, a queer film festival renowned for its exceptional programming, invited me to give the keynote address at Frameline49’s Industry Day.

Photo Credit: Barak Shrama

As a fan of the organization, I was gobsmacked and stoked. They also wrote me a letter that was one hell of a request, asking me to participate, which included the following excerpt:

Over the past couple of years, it has been a joy watching you build infrastructure and support for the queer filmmaker. Your advocacy for and championing the development of trans artists embodies Frameline’s values—amplifying underrepresented voices, cultivating community and tangible opportunities for artists. Your work not only uplifts individual creators but strengthens the entire ecosystem, ensuring a more inclusive and vibrant cinematic future.

On behalf of Frameline, the world’s longest-running LGBTQ+ film festival, I am excited to extend an invitation for you to serve as the keynote speaker at this year’s Industry Day during Frameline49.

Our 2025 Industry Day will center around the theme: “Making It No Matter What” by examining the importance of queer film across time from archival work to conversations with emerging queer guerilla filmmakers. This theme speaks to the resilience, innovation, and collective spirit that have long sustained queer cinema—especially in the face of systemic obstacles, budgetary limitations, and cultural erasure. Through this lens, we aim to spotlight filmmakers and organizations who have built work from the ground up, often with the support of grassroots networks, and radical determination.

Your groundbreaking work as a filmmaker and founder of the Transgender Film Center exemplifies this ethos. From your debut feature Chasing Chasing Amy—which so poignantly interrogates identity, history, and media representation—to your advocacy for trans creatives navigating the industry, your career embodies the values of perseverance, authenticity, and community impact. We believe your voice would be a powerful and inspiring centerpiece for this important conversation.

Oh my stars. They sure do know how to make a guy feel special. I would have done it for the promise of a compliment!

A full house to hear me make a Full House joke! Photo Credit: Barak Shrama

So, on June 23rd, I delivered the keynote after agonizing over what the vibe would be, much to the chagrin of anybody who could overhear me talking to myself on the 22nd while I rehearsed.

To my surprise, multiple people approached me afterwards asking me to publish the speech.

To date, I believe I am the only man in existence who has been asked to write on Substack.

Here’s the keynote as I wrote it. I hope it does something for you!

Thank you to Frameline, namely Allegra Madsen and Aidan Dick, for inviting me here today to speak with all of you on this beautiful Monday morning.

From the bottom of my heart, I want to express my gratitude for Frameline's continued support of my work: from supporting Chasing Chasing Amy with a Completion Fund grant, to playing the film in the historic Castro Theatre in 2023, to inviting me here today, to the work we're exploring together through a partnership with the Transgender Film Center. The support of this incredible organization is never lost on me. Thank you.

Now, Frameline invited me here today to give a keynote about "Making It No Matter What." And I understand why. I'm a guy from Kansas who learned early on that nobody was going to just give me money to make a film. I learned how to be scrappy, how to do a lot with very little, and how to work in teams to reach a collective goal.

I didn't grow up around filmmakers. I didn't grow up with a queer community. But I was a kid who loved movies — not just watching them, but the world around them. I wanted to be part of the action, to live in the magic of stories that felt bigger than me, especially when I felt very small. That longing turned into a drive - a drive that is either endearingly charming or incredibly grating, depending on who you ask.

And so, I chased it. I worked hard alongside other brilliant artisans committed to their craft. Sometimes I scraped by. I often said yes to things I wasn't sure I could handle–and then I figured out how to handle them with the support of the teammates I worked with on these films.

But I have a confession to make: I'm burnt out. I mean it: I'm really burnt out.

After 11 years of tirelessly working to stand on a stage like this to be in your incredible company, I'm exhausted. For the last two years, I toured Chasing Chasing Amy around the world with a team of brilliant collaborators. I started a job at Seed&Spark to pay my bills and to work closely with other filmmakers. And I ran the Transgender Film Center with three other volunteer board members and one part-time employee in my copious volunteer time.

My wife is also chronically ill. I've seldom had a real break over the last two years. And, like so many of us, I'm a workaholic–not because it's noble, but because sometimes it feels like it's the only option I have to keep going.

Please don't misconstrue this as me complaining. So many of my dreams have come true thanks to this journey, including fulfilling a lifelong dream of visiting the Full House house a few days ago. But multiple things can be true at once. And I've never thought more about quitting than I have in the last year.

And yet, since kicking off the festival journey with Chasing Chasing Amy, I've had some emerging filmmakers come up to me and ask me what it's like to have "made it." It's a genuinely confusing question. I still have a day job. Nobody's banging down my door to give me money for the next film. And while everybody may feel like they're on the outside, I am keenly aware that I haven't reached my own definition of success–and honestly, I'm not sure there's even a pathway to achieve those goals in this current ecosystem. And yet I have had incredible experiences that are typically associated with “success.”

So, this all begs the question: what does it mean to "make it?" What does it mean to make it in a world where the American monoculture no longer exists — where the paths that used to feel tangible are now broken up into a thousand little side roads, none clearly marked?

Many of us in this room were raised on the indie film dream. You know the one: it starts at Sundance in the late '80s, hits a fever pitch in the '90s, and many upstart filmmakers are still being sold on it today. It's the myth that if you pour your heart into something authentic, maybe–just maybe– it'll get discovered by somebody in power, and you'll never have to worry about finding work again.

But here's the thing: we give away our power when our hopes and dreams hinge entirely on institutional validation.

And yet–and this is important–none of us can do it alone.

So, where does that leave us?

We have to reframe what success looks like. And to do so, we have to look inward.

I'm not telling you to stop applying for those prestigious labs or fellowships. That would be highly hypocritical because I'll apply to those programs just the same as many of you.

But we do have to rally around one another–it's essential now more than ever to be the ones defining what success looks like for ourselves and bolstering one another to reach new heights.

You may have heard of Bowling Alone, the book by Robert Putnam that popularized the term "social capital" 25 years ago. It describes how American society has seen a massive decline in social capital — in people knowing their neighbors, joining clubs, and participating in civic life.

The TL;DR of that book is that we used to bowl in leagues; now, we bowl alone. And we're worse off because of it: we're lonelier, more isolated, and it has left the world devoid of empathy.

I bring this up because in many ways, we as queer filmmakers, curators, distributors, and changemakers are resisting that trend. Every time we form a collective, start a mentorship group, rally behind someone's crowdfunding campaign, or show up for a friend's rough cut screening–we are actively building social capital for each other in a time of a collapsing social fabric.

And it's not just a nice thing to do. It is essential.

This is the work we have to recommit ourselves to day in and day out.

This is the balm for our collective soul: showing up for one another and filling each other's cups.

This room does not need to be reminded that we are living through a hellish day-to-day: from trans children being a political football to billionaires and the government inserting themselves into our private healthcare decisions or who we choose to fuck, or marry. Mass deportations, wars and genocides that our government funds with our tax dollars, and increasing hate crimes across all marginalized communities in this country…

And yet, we keep telling stories. That's not just resilience; it's resistance.

Our stories can bear witness to the atrocities happening everywhere, from Los Angeles to Gaza. Our stories can provide comfort. They can challenge entire systems. They can be just for laughs. They can be whatever the hell we want them to be.

But resistance is exhausting. Burnout isn't just personal–it's systemic. And no individual spirit can survive long without fuel, no matter how fiery or determined. That fuel has to be our community.

We are the ones who show up for each other when the rest of the business doesn't. We are the ones who say, "I've got you," when one of us crashes out. We are the ones who can greenlight each other's dreams: through fundraising, organizing, curation, and even just vouching for one another when we're not in the room.

So maybe making it means choosing to keep going with each other — not despite each other, not in competition with each other, but in active, loving collaboration.

Because here's the truth: none of us can afford to bowl alone.

I don't have all the answers. I'm still figuring this out myself. I'm losing what's left of my hair, fundraising for my next film. But I do know this much: success without community is a myth. And survival without connection is a slow, painful death long before our hearts give out.

Making it can't just be limited to how Hollywood defines success. We must define success on our own terms, and not what an incredibly fickle, anti-imaginative business model determines to be successful for their shareholders.

I know, I know. That's all heavy shit.

So, where is the hope?

It's here — in this room.

Hope is the weird little pockets of creative collaboration that haven't been bought out or beaten down. In the group chats where we celebrate each other's wins. It's the 2 AM DMs that say, "I just watched your short, and it wrecked me in the best way." It's in the community screenings where someone finally sees a version of themselves on screen for the first time.

Hope lives in the moments when we choose to make something–anything–even when we're scared it won't matter. It lives in the joy we carve out despite it all–our chosen families, the mutual aid, the dance parties, the messy first drafts, the jokes only we get.

I know it feels like the world is on fire–because it is. But fire isn't just destructive. It clears space for new growth. And I really do believe that what we're growing together is something more honest, more creative, more caring than the system that continues to fail us.

Queer filmmakers have always been ahead of the curve — artistically, technologically, politically. So don't let anyone tell you you're behind. You're exactly where you're supposed to be.

We're not just surviving. We're imagining the future in real time. And that? That's a way to take our power back.

We may not "make it" in the way this industry sells it. But we can build something better together.

So, let's rally. Let's actually care for one another. Let's keep building this imperfect, beautiful ecosystem of support. And when one of us breaks through, let's ask, "Who can I bring up with me?"

My challenge to everybody in this room today is to connect with somebody you don't know. Get to know them as a person, not just what their job title is. Ask that person how you can support them, and mean it. Follow through. This whole thing falls apart without genuine reciprocity.

Whatever making it looks like now and in our collective future, I want to do it in lockstep with all of you.

Thank you.

You can watch Chasing Chasing Amy everywhere movies are bought or sold in the United States and Canada. Right now, that includes Kanopy, Amazon Prime, and Revry.

I’m making a new movie, a fucksticks world-of-always nighttime friendship comedy called Pancake Skank, which will launch a crowdfunding campaign soon. I hope you’ll join me on that journey, too.

With love,

Sav

A hug shared with Frameline Executive Director Allegra Madsen. Photo Credit: Barak Shrama