All about my father

Alt Om Min Far, as it is known in Norwegian, is a feature-length documentary made by a straight son about his transvestite father Esben, also known as Esther Pirelli (now that would be good drag name!). It is a well made documentary and won the Teddy Award for Documentary at the 2002 Berlin Film Festival and the FIPRESCI Award at the 2002 Gothenburg Festival. The film is full of tensions as the son tries to get his father to explain why he has ruined his family and how he cannot accept Esther Pirelli as his father. The father on the other hand wants the world to know that gender is a fluid and personal concept and he wants to be a man and a woman. This is a very personal portrait and not a lot of questions are answered. We see the father launching a book and he is obviously warmly embraced by the Norwegian transsexual community but we’re not sure why Esben is so set on his/her path nor what non-family members think. Still, it is an important window into lives very rarely seen on the big screen. All About My Father screens at the State Theatre in the second week of the Sydney Film Festival.

Georgie Girl and All About My Father are two of the three films (the third is The Laramie Project) in this year’s Sydney Film Festival which directly feature queer content. Interestingly in the case of two of these films, one is about a male to female transsexual and the other about a male to female transvestite.