The beauty of Connection | Isolation comes from not only the stunning videography, but the way in which the film continuously honors and uplifts the intersectionality of identity for every speaker. The film gives space to BIPOC, transmasculine, transfeminine, gender-nonconforming, post-gender, disabled, neurodivergent, and other marginalized and minoritized communities, allowing them to share how their intersectional identities have affected their movement through the world and through the pandemic.
The film acknowledges the anti-Asian American rhetoric that arose from the pandemic, the violence against Black Americans at the hands of the police, and the continued dismissal of disabled people and Long-COVID sufferers both at the height of the pandemic and now. No corner is left unturned, and all voices are given equal space, respect, and care. The film’s focus on diversity and individual experience paves the way for the audience to find pieces of themselves in each story, to connect with the feelings of not only distress and anxiety, but also with the feelings of self-discovery and euphoria.
The film asks us to remember the early days of isolation in the COVID-19 pandemic, to recall times when we felt particularly isolated from our communities. One particularly poignant section of the film asks us to consider, in those early days, what it felt like to try and hold someone from afar, to try to build connection when physically coming together and sharing space was impossible.
Each of the speakers discusses how they found community and fostered it, sharing snippets of Zoom meetings, videos, masked gatherings, Discord chats, and even Dungeons and Dragons meet-ups. Throughout the film there is an attempt to express that, in a sense, connection was possible because of the shared isolation, because of the struggle that the whole of the trans and nonbinary community faced in those times. While each speaker came from a different part of the world and carried with them their own intersectional identity, there were also places where each of them met, whether in their desire to create change, their coming into their own identity, or simply through their continued survival.
Another overarching topic of the film is the acknowledgement that not all members of the LGBTQ+ community were treated equally in the early days of the pandemic. A powerful theme that emerged between the speakers was the desire and need for mutual aid. Especially during quarantine and the first large spike of COVID-19 cases and deaths, it became apparent that a lot of the funding and governmental aid that different members and parts of the community had been asking for were always possible—but it wasn’t until everyone else also needed help that the government provided for these communities.
There was also the acknowledgement that many of the problems faced in the pandemic echoed the struggles of the AIDS epidemic in the ‘80s, and that the lack of help from the government and the need for mutual aid mirrored what occurred during the AIDS crisis. According to one speaker, it felt that there existed a need to create a new world for the trans and nonbinary community after the suffering of the pandemic, because it became clear that the world was not made for trans and nonbinary people. One thought-provoking piece of the film reminds us that by uplifting those of us most effected, we uplift all of us.
