Sam Carson is a filmmaker and photographer creating on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung.

Sam Carson is a trans filmmaker and photographer creating on the unceded lands of theWurundjeri Woi Wurrung. She is a current Film and Television Honours student at the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA). Carson’s practice focuses on radical arts communities and queer thought, particularly in gender and the body. In her work she strives to antithesise cis-hetero experiences, at once aiming for engagement with and distance from hegemonic boundaries. Carson is currently writing her honours thesis on trans-authored filmmaking and is in pre-production on her first feature film, Teenage Wildlife and the VCA short film Emile is Missing.

Recent works include ‘Body Cosmos’ (2024), an exploration of the body under surveillance through AI imagery, ‘The Last Cinema’ (2022), a short narrative film about a dilapidated moviehouse (winner: Best Experimental Short, Sydney Short Film Festival, 2024), ‘Symbiotic Reckoning’ (2021) a video installation of ‘Energetic Heat Maps’ representing trans bodies (without their ‘fleshy outer layers’) and ‘On Our Own Terms’ (2020), a photo series exploring the hidden queer histories of Collingwood, Melbourne.  

Other credits include ‘Air Hunger’ (2023) - Gaffer; ‘Black Trans Miracle’ (2022) – 2nd AC; ‘Disco Sunset’ (2021) - Cinematographer; ‘Hiatus Kaiyote, Canopic Jar’ (2021) – Art Department; ‘Spud’ (2021) - Cinematographer; ‘The Ghost in His Reflection’ (2021) - 1st AD; ‘Painters and Dockers - Die Yuppy Die’ (2019) – 2nd AC.

Carson’s work aims to communicate that truth and liberation can be found within strong communities, and that new visual vocabularies must be invented to properly represent the trans experience in film.