ADAM
Director
Adam, an awkward teen, spends a summer with his older sister, who is part of New York City’s lesbian and trans activist scene. He meets the girl of his dreams but can’t figure out how to tell her he’s not the trans man she thinks he is.
Directed by Rhys Ernst, ADAM was produced by Howard Gertler and James Schamus and debuted at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.
• World Premiere Sundance 2019
• Best Feature Award - Mezipatra Film Festival
• Best Feature Award - Lovers International Film Festival
• Best Feature Honorable Mention - Outfest
• Best Feature Honorable Mention - Oslo Fusion
• 2020 GLAAD Award Nominee - Outstanding Film Limited Release
TRANSPARENT
Producer, Director & Title Sequence Creator
Rhys was a Producer on TRANSPARENT from the pilot through season 4, and he directed the season finale of season 4.
Rhys also created the MAIN TITLE SEQUENCE for each season. Each season’s title sequence include both original footage and archival footage from home movies, drag balls, Weimar Berlin, 1950's Boyle Heights, and other moments from queer and trans history.
Season 2
Season 4
Season 3
Musical Finale
WE’VE BEEN AROUND
Creator, Director, & Executive Producer
Created by Rhys Ernst and produced by Christine Beebe,
We’ve Been Around is trans history documentary series, chronicling the lives of transgender pioneers Lucy Hicks Anderson, S.T.A.R., Albert, Little Axe, Lou Sullivan and CAMP TRANS.
This series was made with a breadth of talent from the trans community; the team includes Transparent actress Alexandra Billings; writer and filmmaker Susan Stryker; activist Riki Wilchins; and trans historian Monica Roberts.
• Outfest Audience Award - Best Documentary Short
• GLAAD Award Special Recognition
Director & Supervising Producer
Nominated for an Emmy Award
GLAAD Award Special Recognition
Inspired by Amazon’s Transparent, each episode of This Is Me explores some of the difficult, real-life issues experienced by transgender and gender non-conforming people, including coming out, bathrooms, misgendering, transfeminine sisterhood in the face of violence, and the struggles of trans people of different generations.
STREAM ON Amazon.
THIS IS ME
The Thing
Director & Co-writer
Sundance 2012 - Official Selection
A woman, a transgender man, and their cat travel towards a mysterious roadside attraction known as "The Thing".
15 minutes, super 16mm, 2012
She Gone Rogue
Director, Co-writer, Co-producer
22 mins, digital video, 2012
Darling (Zackary Drucker) attempts to visit her Auntie Holly but instead falls down a rabbit hole, encountering transfeminine archetypes (legendary performers Holly Woodlawn, Vaginal Davis, and Flawless Sabrina) who are in turn confounding, nebulous, complicated and contradictory. Engaging a world of dream-like magical realism, She Gone Rogue references Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon, utilizing a space where singular selves multiply and expand, offering windows into parallel dimensions, with time and space collapsing into a whirlpool of divergent possibilities.
Dear Lou Sullivan
Commissioned by Visual AIDS for ALTERNATE ENDINGS for Day With(out) Art, this work invokes the story of Lou Sullivan, trans man and AIDS activist largely responsible for establishing the distinction between gender identity and sexual orientation. Cut with images of Ernst’ own examination of this figure and trans history, the video is structured by the search for and desire to identify transmasculine elders and an intergenerational exploration of gay transmasculine identity. Utilizing interview footage, excerpts of Sullivan’s book “Information for the Female-to-Male Crossdresser and Transsexual,” VHS gay porn, and Grindr chats, Dear Lou Sullivan is a meditation on the life of the late trans man and AIDS activist that explores the bodily intersection of transmasculine gay and HIV+ identity.
Rhys Ernst in discussion with Visual Aids on “Dear Lou Sullivan.”
Read Lucas Hilderbrand on “Dear Lou Sullivan”.
Secret Men’s Club – Moment #133
In Secret Men’s Club Moment #133, a simple office exchange becomes a highly dramatized metaphor for exclusionary male culture, offering a sardonic critique for this ubiquitous but often invisible brotherhood.
1 minute, 16mm, 2009