Hello, and welcome to Queer as Fiction, where we discuss queer historical media.

I'm Jasmine. I'm Alice. And I'm Eli. And today we'll be discussing Anesia Usaman and Saul

Williams' 2021 science fiction musical, Neptune Frost.

Before we get started, I'd like to acknowledge the Bannurong-Bunwarang people of the Kulin Nation as the traditional owners of the land on which we record this podcast and play respect to their elders' past and present.

We recognize them as the custodians of an oral history tradition far older than this podcast.

I'd also like to thank our patrons who chose this episode topic.

Finally, the content warnings for this episode are as follows.

Discussions of genocide, slavery, the sexual assault of trans and intersex people,

swearing in quotes, religious trauma, and the mass murder of civilians.

If any of that sounds like something you don't want to listen to, please feel free to

check out our other content.

So, what is Neptune Frost? A really good question. I would love to know. It was a good movie.

It was an esoteric movie. Spoilers, Alice got. Alice couldn't spoil this movie if she tried.

So, named for an African-American soldier and slave who fought in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War,

the film follows an intersex hacker and a group of coltan miners who form a hidden collective in Burundi,

utilizing their connection to the technology of the world through the minerals mined on their lands,

to inform the global community of their oppression and attempt to encourage the toppling of the

neo-colonialist regime that they live under. We'll get back to that plot summary later, because

there is a lot going on in this movie, but I want to start this episode by going a lot more

in-depth on the production of the film that I would normally, because it's, as we've kind

of flagged already, a bit esoteric. And I think the production story provides a lot

of context that will hopefully ground the discussion that we then have about it. I'm just going to

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