Self-described “Jewitch mama and queer filmmaker” Rivkah Beth Medow made waves for queer and disabled cinema when her project Holding Moses was shortlisted for Best Documentary Short Film at the 95th Academy Awards. Though this may be her most recent lauded film, this isn’t her first time working to tell these underrepresented communities’ stories.
Holding Moses follows dancer and former Broadway performer Randi Rader as she recounts her experience raising her middle child and only son, Moses. Moses was born with Phelan-McDermid Syndrome, an extremely rare condition stemming from chromosomal issues that causes various physical and developmental complications.
Rader brutally explains her emotional experience with becoming Moses’ mother and caretaker, accompanied by stories of her own past with movement and intimate video of the family interacting. Rader’s visibly masculine appearance and queerness add another dimension to this story of a single mother facing a situation she never anticipated and all of the raw, often shocking feelings that it can entail.
“There’s a tone of hope and belief that Randi will come through this,” Medow told KQED of the film. “We wanted to make this film as beautiful as possible, as we believe in beauty as a way to crack open people to receive information that they might not necessarily accept or be interested in if it weren’t so visually appealing. It’s a strategy.”
Medow also acknowledges the importance of continuing to reach out to the underrepresented communities being spoken to with her work.
“We understand there’s a complicated legacy around valuing disabled bodies and this film is interested in joining conversations about how we resource parents better so that maybe it doesn’t feel so difficult when a child is born with impairments, with disabilities. So we do community screenings and work with disability groups, rare disease groups and queer family groups so we can have those conversations.”
Medow directed the short alongside her production partner Jen Rainin, a queer filmmaker and wife of famous disabled lesbian publisher Franco Stevens. Back in 2020, Medow and Rainin directed Ahead of the Curve, a feature-length documentary about Stevens’ time founding and publishing the popular lesbian magazine Curve.
Ahead of the Curve was a full-blown community effort, with interviews and appearances by figures like Melissa Etheridge, Lea DeLaria, and Jewelle Gomez helping document the publication’s story. Holding Moses, on the other hand, is an intimate snapshot of a family made even more singular by its being shot and produced in the isolating height of the pandemic.
In addition to Rader’s own identity, the story of a parent coming to accept their child’s lived reality as opposed to the idea they had for them is one with an inherent application to queer narratives. From subject matter to underlying themes to the filmmakers themselves, queerness is ever-present in Medow’s works.
Watch the raw short film Holding Moses here:
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