Jason Stuart’s acclaimed short screens Friday, October 2 at 7 p.m. at the Hudson Theater in Los Angeles
LOS ANGELES, CA (The Hollywood Times) 9/7/26 — After making an impression on audiences throughout its growing festival journey, Jason Stuart’s powerful short film Redlining is coming to Hollywood.
Redlining will screen Friday, October 2 at 7:00 p.m. as part of the 2026 Hollywood Queer Short Film Festival (HQSFF), taking place October 2–4 at the historic Hudson Theater, 6539 Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles.
The Hollywood Times is proud to serve as a media partner for this year’s festival, making the inclusion of Redlining especially meaningful to me. I interviewed my longtime friend Jason Stuart about the film earlier this summer after having the opportunity to see it, and it stayed with me long after the screen went dark.
There are films that make their point by shouting, and then there are films like Redlining, which understand that sometimes the most devastating forms of discrimination happen quietly.
I am from Alabama, and there was something about the film’s Southern setting, its rhythms, accents and sense of things left unsaid that immediately felt familiar to me.
But Redlining is about much more than geography.
The 18-minute film centers on a Black and white family living on the same property in Georgia during the redlining era of the 1970s. Through their intertwined lives, the film explores generational wealth, racial prejudice, homosexuality, women’s rights and the lasting legacy of institutional discrimination in the American South.
What happens when the parents are gone? Who inherits the property? Who has been given the opportunity to build wealth, and who has systematically been denied that opportunity?
Those questions propel the film, but Redlining never feels like a lecture.
Its power comes from its people.
Jason Stuart co-wrote, directed, produced and stars in the film, stepping into the role of Andrew, a quiet man who is dramatically different from the outspoken comedian audiences may know from Jason’s decades on stage.
During our interview, Jason explained that he was interested in exploring the life of a man who did not have much of a voice. That restraint became one of the qualities I admired most about his performance.
Click below for our exclusive interview (from a different festival):
At the center of the story are people whose relationships, histories and loyalties have developed within a society that has already made decisions about their worth based on race, gender and sexuality.
For LGBTQ+ audiences, that experience of being denied opportunity or belonging because of who you are will feel particularly recognizable.
Jason himself made that connection immediately when we discussed the film.
Rather than turning its characters into symbols, Redlining lets them be human beings. The discrimination surrounding them is institutional and political, but its consequences are deeply personal.
That distinction matters.
The film features an impressive ensemble that includes Alexandra Paul, Jason’s longtime friend best known to millions for Baywatch. Jason wanted audiences to have the opportunity to see another side of Paul as an actress, and her work here demonstrates a range far removed from the television image with which she has long been associated.
Writer and actress Lee Garlington also played an important role in shaping the screenplay. Jason initially wrote the story himself but knew it needed further development. Garlington helped reorganize the material, deepen the characters and strengthen the storytelling.
The ensemble also includes Dalila Ali Rajah and Kareem Ferguson, whose perspectives helped Jason approach the Black family at the center of the story with greater authenticity.
That willingness to listen became one of the recurring themes of my conversation with Jason.
He did not want to assume that because he had created the story, he automatically understood every experience represented within it. He listened to his collaborators and allowed their perspectives to change and improve the film.
Producer Steve Campbell was another essential part of bringing Redlining to life, while filmmaker Billy Clift contributed behind the camera and in the editing process.
Jason’s approach was collaborative. He wanted the artists who helped create the movie to feel a genuine sense of ownership in it rather than treating Redlining simply as “his” film.
That philosophy carries over to what Jason ultimately hopes audiences take away from the movie.
When I asked what he wanted people to remember after watching Redlining, he spoke about opening people’s eyes to experiences they may know very little about.
The goal is not simply to tell audiences discrimination exists.
It is to let them see what discrimination does to people.
That is an important difference.
Jason has spent decades making audiences laugh as a comedian and has built a substantial acting career, but Redlining also makes a persuasive case for Jason Stuart the filmmaker.
His experience working with filmmakers including Sean Baker on Tangerine, Ira Sachs on Love Is Strange and Nate Parker on The Birth of a Nation helped reinforce his belief in movies as a way of entering somebody else’s world for a short time.
You enter a dark theater.
You watch someone else’s life.
Perhaps you see something you never understood before.
And if the filmmaker has done the job well, you leave knowing a little more about another human being than you did when you walked in.
Redlining accomplishes that.
Its expanding festival journey has taken the film to audiences across the country and beyond, and the Hollywood Queer Short Film Festival offers Los Angeles audiences another opportunity to experience it on the big screen.
The timing also feels particularly appropriate for a festival whose 2026 message is “Visibility Is Resistance.”
Stories involving LGBTQ+ lives, racial inequality and historical discrimination remain essential precisely because the forces that created those inequities have not simply disappeared.
Redlining looks backward, but its questions are very much of the present.
Who gets a home?
Who gets an inheritance?
Who gets to accumulate wealth?
Who gets to openly love another person?
And who gets to decide?
What makes Redlining effective is that Jason Stuart never forgets the people underneath those questions.
I see many short films, and one of their greatest challenges is making audiences believe that the characters had lives before the first frame and will continue to have lives after the last.
Redlining succeeds.
These people have histories, secrets, loyalties, relationships and fears. They live within social systems that can determine their opportunities before anyone has even taken the time to know them.
The film is thoughtful without being timid, political without forgetting the people at the center of the politics, and personal without losing sight of the larger story.
Perhaps its most important request of the audience is also its simplest:
Look. Listen. And for 18 minutes, stand in somebody else’s shoes.
That is what good filmmaking can do.
And Redlining does it very well.
SCREENING INFORMATION
REDLINING
Hollywood Queer Short Film Festival
Friday, October 2, 2026 — 7:00 p.m.
Hudson Theater
6539 Santa Monica Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90038
Hollywood Queer Short Film Festival
October 2–4, 2026
The Hollywood Times is an official media partner of the 2026 Hollywood Queer Short Film Festival.
By Valerie Milano, Publisher/Senior Editor, The Hollywood Times
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