I’m Richard Shpuntoff, a documentary filmmaker and photographer, and I have created this campaign seeking your support for my latest film, Julio Revisited, a documentary essay in which – after over 30 years of narrating and documenting LGBTQIA+ histories and experiences – I am shifting the lens 180 degrees to make a film that interrogates the ideas of masculinity and the heterosexual identity.

A bit about me. Born and raised in Queens, New York, I was the official photographer of the Queens Pride Parade during its first 20 years, 1993 – 2012. In 2016, I made a film entitled Julio of Jackson Heights, about the 1990 gay bashing murder of Julio Rivera and how it sparked the founding of an LGBTQIA+ movement for justice and equal rights that is still going strong. Its first screening took place in Public School 69, just a hundred feet from the site where Julio was murdered.

Since then, I have continued my work with the community: creating short web pieces to build awareness of the parade and the community’s work, guiding students at LaGuardia Community College on oral history projects, as well as providing material to the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives, serving as filmmaker in residence Queensborough Community College where I shared my experiences with students and faculty, creating videos for historical museum exhibitions and, during the pandemic, creating material for the Virtual Queens Pride Parade and for Global Pride in 2020.

Masculinities, heterosexuality and my new film.

What is particular about myself as a filmmaker working in the field of queer documentary is that I identify as a cis-gender, heterosexual male. On a personal level, I have never doubted my place as an activist-documentarian for the community, and yet I have always known that one day I would need to speak to the fact that my work is shaped from the perspective of a white, middle-class, cisgender, heterosexual male. For many years it was a struggle for me to find the language and form to be able to look at this question deeply and honestly, to inquire into the limits of my own work and privilege, to understand what there is of significance to say about it.

Through this new film, I look to critically portray and reflect upon the privileged thinking and viewpoint that underlie my work in order to contribute to our thinking on these matters: what does it mean to speak of another person, to speak on behalf of another who does not share in the benefits, rights and privileges that I have been granted by birth? How have I limited my own work by the construction of identities that I use to define myself as heterosexual, as male? My goal is to create a documentary essay film that reflects upon these questions, and allows others a space to do the same, to possibly reimagine the construction of their own identities and perspectives.

The short video on this platform (above) is a rough sketch, an introduction to give anyone interested in my films a sense of what they are like, in case you have never seen any of my more recent work. I am providing a link to a short fragment of my last film, Everything that is Forgotten in an Instant, which premiered at the FIDMarseille film festival in 2020 and had its New York premiere at MoMA’s DocFortnite festival.

Link to a fragment of the film: Everything that is Forgotten in an Instant.

Also, a link to a scene from: Julio of Jackson Heights.

Support, funding and timeframe.

To date, I have raised $13,200 through the generous support of friends, as well as through a grant from the Joaquim Jordà Residency program at the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, where I just spent the last four and a half months researching and writing for this film. In order to start assembling the film and get to the post-production stage by September of 2025, I need to raise $13,800. The goal is to complete the film by March, 2026. (Though if I am able to raise $20,000 - not the stated goal - I can finish the film by December, 2025. My producer, Nadia Jacky, and I are currently applying to various film funds to that end!)

Having made two independent feature length documentaries, and a dozen short films, and run a few fundraising campaigns over the past 20 years, I can write with no hesitation: EVERY CONTRIBUTION REGARDLESS OF AMOUNT COUNTS! The money is of course necessary, but a contribution is also a gesture of support that heartens me to keep doing what I am doing.

I sincerely thank you for taking the time to read this and consider contributing your support, and if you cannot support with funding, please, feel free to send me a message of support and even share this campaign with others. If you have any questions about the film and my work, do not hesitate to write!

Warm regards,

Richard