I’ve never come close to making a movie, but I’m in awe of the idea.

My own imaginary film of the Queer Oakland interview with Kortney Ryan Ziegler opens with a blank screen. We hear Ziegler’s laugh (short, deep tones punctuated by warm, rich moans). Flickering footage from the video below, Ziegler’s short film/installation … "It Takes Courage to Cry" … splashes across the screen. Ziegler’s tears are magnified; inside each is a reflection of Ziegler behind the camera.

Then we see a montage: Ziegler in the edit room, Ziegler filming various weeping subjects. With the detached eye of his technology, Ziegler the observer zooms in on tears, color corrects clips of grief. The montage culminates in a close up of Ziegler himself, sobbing. A medium shot displays him on Lakeshore Boulevard. He’s talking to me about himself; he’s proud and shy and subdued and animated all at the same time. This is what we hear:

“I started making films when I was in college. I made a couple of shorts and they got to premier in festivals. I was like, I can do this! Obviously, people like my work somewhere in the world. My experimental documentary, “Still Black: a portrait of black trans men,” has allowed me to travel; recently it showed in Switzerland, so they flew me out there. It’s been an amazing journey. I’m lucky and blessed to have completed it.

“If you can figure out how to be a business person and an artist, you can make it. I believe that I can sustain myself as a filmmaker. I’m horrible with numbers; I count on my fingers. But 'Still Black' had a producer, Awilda
Rodriguez Lora. She's my business partner; she does all that. We collaborate and we think of ways to keep the business going. A two person team has been very successful.”

“Successful” is an understatement. “Still Black” is Ziegler’s first feature length film. Since its completion in 2008, it’s won several awards and has been shown at film festivals in more than 20 U.S. cities. It's also been shown in Barcelona, Spain; Tel Aviv, Israel; Amsterdam, Holland; London; Toronto; and Glasgow, Scotland, to name a few.

"Still Black" opened doors for some of his earlier short work. "Skeleton," a short film, was made when he was 21. "Hokum," a name borrowed from the sexually charged lyrics of hokum jazz, utilizes tableau to explore the "lesbian
body".

Ziegler was raised in Compton, California, by his grandmother, a retired postal worker.

“When I was growing up in the 90s, Compton was a staple of L.A. media; a lot of Hollywood films were about where I grew up. That definitely influenced my decision to make films.

“My grandmother supported my creativity, my weirdness, my nerdiness and my withdrawn self and all of those things about me that make me the artist that I am. I’m very grateful. I’m obsessed with my grandmother. I have her initials tattooed on me.”

Ziegler studied film at University of California, Santa Cruz.

“It was a culture shock," he said. "Santa Cruz is a different place than Los Angeles in terms of class and race and a lot of other things. I was a little homesick, but I blossomed, I flourished. I was at Porter College, which is
the art/filmmaking college. So I was with all the freaky kids. That allowed me to be who I was.”

He earned an MA in Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University and is currently completing his Ph.D. in African American Studies at Northwestern University. Although he’s been a rigorous academic all his life, his creative juice pulses as powerful as his blood.

“I call myself a visual artist. I consider ‘It Takes Courage to Cry’ more visual art than film, even though I’m using a camera. It’s going to be a crying room. Each of the four walls will have huge projections of people crying, so you’ll be enveloped.

“I wanted to do a piece about crying because I don’t cry enough. I’m having a lot of issues releasing certain emotions. I want to discuss and interrogate the process. I had an ex-partner that cried a lot. I would get mad. When we had arguments, I would say, ‘Why are you crying?’ I was taking it personally. I felt that she was trying to manipulate me. I needed to realize that it wasn’t about me.

“It’s the hardest project I’ve ever done. It’s emotional for me, filming people while they’re crying. I don’t want to disturb them, but I don’t want to lose my shot. I’m developing the technique with each person. I don’t rush. I want everyone to feel comfortable and know that they are coming into the project to heal something, to let go of something.

“For guys, it’s never okay to cry … only if someone dies. Children can cry, up until a certain age. Women can cry, but of course they’re hysterical. There are all of these stereotypes.

”There are three kinds of tears … they come out of the same duct, but the chemicals are different. There’s the kind that happen when we’re exhausted, and we yawn … the eye waters, to protect it. Then there’s the kind that happens when something gets in the eye, and the eye wants to flush it out. But why do we cry when we see a flower that we think is beautiful? That doesn’t make sense. Science can’t explain it. You can’t put a value on emotions. I want to explore the ritual of crying.

“I get intimidated by crying. It stifles me, it chokes me, it makes my stomach upset … but it’s important to do it. It really is. It releases toxins from the body. People will say, ‘I’m an ugly crier; please don’t get me with snot hanging out.’ But that’s what it’s about, right? That’s what I’m investigating, all of these issues around this one act. I think it’s crazy! I think it’s fascinating.”

For me, the writer, the concept of Ziegler’s crying room has been a catalyst.

In my imaginary movie, the camera follows me through the span of weeks, tearing up or crying at inappropriate moments, like subsequent Queer Oakland interviews. In a close up, I’m smiling as I transcribe the tape of Ziegler telling me “I hate the term homosexuality: it’s too clinical, too exclusive and it’s dated. I like queer.”

On the left side of a split screen I’m chewing; on the right side is a graph of sound waves … I want to eat Ziegler’s delicious laugh.