SLAMDANCE 2023 Reviews: Emily Kaye Allen’s CISCO KID looks at a queer woman creating an unexpectedly American paradise
If Cisco, Utah didn’t actually exist, a fiction filmmaker would have had to invent it eventually. (Once Cisco Kid gets a wide release, look for some to invent versions of it anyway.) A ghost town once built to serve the railroad, it’s long since been bypassed by the highways, and as of the 2020 census boasted a population of 4, though in Emily Kaye Allen’s documentary Cisco Kid, it appears to vacillate between one and two. Eileen Muza, who uses they/them pronouns, is one of those one or two in the town, upon which many condemnation-level structures still stand. Gradually, and with the aid of fully functional manufactured/ mobile home to sleep in, they reclaim the place.
It’s a libertarian loner’s paradise, with electricity hook-ups but limited water – Eileen bathes in a bisected oil drum with a fire pit underneath. They’re young and healthy, thankfully, because Heaven forbid a medical emergency happen in the middle of nowhere. Their smartphone and laptop seem to get signals just fine, though. As they put it, from a certain point of view, it’s the people who keep going to jobs they hate, or who dare to raise a family, who are arguably braver than someone who chooses to live in isolation.
If not for the fact that Eileen directly addresses the camera, you might not know Cisco Kid is a documentary. With the rusted structures and decaying shacks lovingly shot at golden hour, and casual interactions with the odd tourist or railway worker feeling unaware of the camera, it could easily be a Harmony Korine-style piece of faux-verite. As reality, the camera is so present, and the occasional word spoken from behind it so casual, that one might also wonder of the filmmaker is Eileen’s partner; in fact, director-editor-cinematographer Allen had never met Eileen before production began.
Used to being absolutely and totally alone, Eileen is fairly un-self conscious with no qualms, for example, about getting naked. Allen films such moments carefully nonetheless, both respecting modesty Eileen may not realize they need if the movie goes wide, and keeping the rating family friendly – assuming that the spray-painted F-words on some of Eileen’s structures don’t blow that apart.
Eileen, and Allen, make this look like a dream life, at least in the moment. The memories and remains of previous residents who died of old age, however, suggest a future there that may be less fun. Meanwhile, even when a sex offender moves in to what amounts to “next door,” it’s all handled fairly low-key. For the tourists who do find the place, Eileen works to develop some of the property into Airbnbs. As one of six kids growing up, they relish the ability to be well and truly alone, while prizing occasional interaction – the worst thing a tourist can do is drive by while taking pictures, not stopping to say hi.
Cisco Kid may seem like the sort of movie that very much risks spoiling the beauty its chronicling. By showing Eileen’s life in such a beautiful way, it’s sure to encourage more people to seek out Cisco. In fact, though, what the movie doesn’t say is that Eileen is working to build an artist-in-residency community. The movie’s more concerned with her making the place reasonably functional first, without as much emphasis on the artistic nature of it. But as the kind of fly-on-the-wall doc that doesn’t offer additional context nor narration, it shifts that burden to the viewer. It matters less what the artist thinks than whether you see the art there, even if the hands that form it appear more practicality minded.
With the larger desert-based art project of Burning Man now falling victim to overexposure and celebrity “glamping,” one hopes there’s a plan in place for Cisco, lest it be discovered by the whole world – a well-vetted residency program seems like it can maintain control, but there’s surely nearby land that Eileen does not own. For now, Allen makes it feel like our little shared secret, and an increasingly desirable return to the frontier in a time of non-stop noise and confrontation. Eileen attributes their cigarette habit to the stress of being gay in America, which implies they felt driven out of society at large, to some degree. That they turned it around into a modern kind of wild west entrepeneurship is arguably as American as it gets, and certainly the best revenge.
