CREATIVE CAPITAL 2025 AWARDS
J. Rinehart Gallery is thrilled to announce that Clyde Petersen has been awarded the 2025 Creative Capital Award for his stop motion animated feature film, Our Forbidden Country.
The Creative Capital Award champions artistic freedom by uplifting risk-taking, underinvested artists with a transformative award that provides up to $50,000 in unrestricted project funding, plus access to multiyear wraparound professional development services and community-building opportunities.
Read more about the film by following this link!
“Story
Our Forbidden Country is the second stop-motion animated feature film from Clyde Petersen, writer, Director and animator of the critically claimed acclaimed Torrey Pines. This new queer film is influenced by the writings of some of my favorite historic and contemporary GLBTQI authors like David Wojnarowicz, Joan Nestle and Tom Spanbauer. With a focus on stories surrounding queer community, Our Forbidden Country touches on topics of secret and forbidden love, sex with strangers, the lives of hustlers, the impact of AIDS on homosexuals, historic events and rebellion all interwoven with several personal narratives.
With the spirit of Todd Haynes Superstar, the dreamlike quality of the infamous art film Boys in the Sand and the stories from Close to the Knives by David Wojnarowicz, Petersen turns to written materials and firsthand accounts to source the ephemeral remnants of a gay culture that was always underground and is all but extinct in our “beyond the closet” society.
A picture starts to emerge when you begin to examine the impacts of a loss of an entire generation of vibrant queer artists. A picture begins to emerge when you start to celebrate infinite intimate moments within the queer community. A picture takes shape as you look into the gap in the generations between today’s queers and their elders. A picture starts to show itself, emerging from between the lines of society, rising up from the margins, a picture unwavering in intensity, an anthem, a memorial. A motion picture called Our Forbidden Country.”