ISO Queer Joy
Will you search with me?
ABOUT
Using video editing manipulation and reflexive voiceover, Hansford invites the audience to join him as he examines what queer joy means to him and how to hold on to it. More than a personal video art piece, this project explores human resilience and asks the audience to reflect with Hansford on the question: how do you find your joy?
YEAR 2025
RUN TIME 5:22 Min
EMAIL nicohansford@gmail.com Website: http://www.nicopeterhansford.com/
CAST & CREW CREDITS
WRITER-DIRECTOR Nico Peter Hansford
PRODUCER Nico Peter Hansford
CINEMATOGRAPHER Nico Peter Hansford
EDITOR Nico Peter Hansford
PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS Nico Peter Hansford
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
When I was in middle school, a mental health professional asked me, “When was the last time you felt happy?” This question stuck with me. It was a loaded question. And I was in his office largely because I couldn’t answer that question easily. I told him, “When I played with my friend in the rain.” He asked me if that was a couple days ago, maybe weeks? I shook my head no. “That was two years ago.”
For nearly two decades since, I have spent the majority of my life in the search for happiness. Searching for something that will make me click out of the depression that has stayed with me throughout my life. But I hit dead ends and wrong turns and lost my way so many times that when I did finally find happiness. . . it felt strange. And then it left. And I was once again afraid it would never find me again.
It has taken me time to get to the place where I am now. It’s taken me a bout with cancer, cutting ties with abusers and emotional vampires, a social and medical gender transition, moving across the country, falling in and out of and in love again, failure, loss, grief, making mistakes, reflection, a lot of therapy, and–most importantly–hope.
My film is not about happiness clicking in and staying with me. My film is about the constant search for joy. Because, in all my searching I have found myself. And I hope to encourage others to look, too.
DIRECTOR BIO
Nico Peter Hansford is an award winning filmmaker who received an MFA in Filmmaking with a Certificate of College Teaching at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in 2025, after taking time off upon completion of his BFA in Film and Video at MICA in 2020. Hansford hopes to use all he learned from MICA Filmmaking and distill it into future work that continues to weave together the personal with the universal.
In August 2024, Hansford’s 16mm silent film, “Weaving Through it All,” premiered at Artscape, the largest free outdoor art festival in the United States. Hansford’s work, Queer on My Own (2019) and Queer on My Own, Revisited (2023) has been featured in “We Are Everywhere,” an art gallery that travels across the US.
A visual artist as well as a filmmaker, Hansford explores different mediums to manifest visual imagery and convey his expression of self. These include weavings, gouache paintings, an unknown amount of doodle pages, and beyond. When not making art, Nico enjoys spending time with his four cats (Reginald Breakfast, Apollo, Kneidl, and Blintz).
As a queer trans man, Nico aims to provide a voice of hope for his community as queer and trans existence continues to be redacted from history, present social landscape, and basic human rights access. He hopes to contribute to the evidence that we are here, we have always been here, and we will always be here, despite it all.
INTERVIEWS
FILM AND PRODUCTION STILLS
AWARDS
FULL FILM
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
Nico Peter Hansford is an award winning filmmaker who received an MFA in Filmmaking with a Certificate of College Teaching at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in 2025, after taking time off upon completion of his BFA in Film and Video at MICA in 2020. Hansford hopes to use all he learned from MICA Filmmaking and distill it into future work that continues to weave together the personal with the universal.
In August 2024, Hansford’s 16mm silent film, “Weaving Through it All,” premiered at Artscape, the largest free outdoor art festival in the United States. Hansford’s work, Queer on My Own (2019) and Queer on My Own, Revisited (2023) has been featured in “We Are Everywhere,” an art gallery that travels across the US.
A visual artist as well as a filmmaker, Hansford explores different mediums to manifest visual imagery and convey his expression of self. These include weavings, gouache paintings, an unknown amount of doodle pages, and beyond. When not making art, Nico enjoys spending time with his four cats (Reginald Breakfast, Apollo, Kneidl, and Blintz).
As a queer trans man, Nico aims to provide a voice of hope for his community as queer and trans existence continues to be redacted from history, present social landscape, and basic human rights access. He hopes to contribute to the evidence that we are here, we have always been here, and we will always be here, despite it all.
(Update provided in April 2025)