“Sean DeLear (1964-2017) was a magnificently flamboyant, exuberantly transgressive figure who enchanted the music and art underground of Los Angeles in the late 1990s and early 2000s. But with the posthumous release of his equally intimate and explicit teenage diaries from 1979 in 2022, he revealed himself as a truly groundbreaking cultural figure: I Could Not Believe It is the joyful chronicle of the experiences of a young Black, queer, and creative person finding his identity, voice, and style—decades before Barry Jenkins’ (much more subdued) film Moonlight.
The Life of Sean DeLear is a vibrantly diverse, lively documentary portrait of this irresistibly charismatic one-of-a-kind individual, designed in a celebratory yet commendably clear style by writer and director Markus Zizenbacher.” (Neil Young)
Director Markus Zizenbacher entrusted us with the task of interweaving the archival Super-8 tapes with the current original audio from the interviews.