Trans film fest premiere
The Gender Centre will host its inaugural transgender film festival this Saturday, February 20.
Moving from the very personal accounts of Unravelling Michelle, and She’s A Boy I Knew, a Canadian piece documenting the transition of Gwen Haworth and the effect it had on her friends and family, to the wider implications of the Comptons Cafeteria Riots, a series of uprisings which happened three years before Stonewall, which provide the focus for Screaming Queens.
Francophones and foreign film lovers will get a treat from L’Ordre des Mots, a subtitled piece exploring the repression faced by trans and intersex communities. And audiences wishing to learn more about one of the most publicised trans-murder cases in the United States may be interested to see Trained in the Ways of Men, a recounting of the murder of Gwen Araujo and the subsequent trial of her killers.
The film festival is a first for the Gender Centre, and will be hosted in conjunction with the Inner City Legal Centre. Organisers are hoping the event will encourage local filmmakers to create and submit their own trans-based films.
info: The Sydney Transgender Film Festival is on Saturday, February 20, at the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts, 280 Pitt St, from 11am. For a full list of screenings visit www.gendercentre.org.au or call 9569 2366.
Please check out 1st Sydney Transgender International Film Festival
http://www.cinewest.org Closing date is june 30. 2012
1st SYDNEY TRANSGENDER INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL is a screen culture initiative to create a platform for the Australian transgender filmmakers showcasing their short and feature length films alongside of finalists from around the world! STIFF also presents works that have transsexual content by non-trans filmmakers from Australia and beyond.
STIFF aims to attract mainstream audiences to appreciate and recognize Transgender identity and issues through the medium of moving images. As well as undertaking exchange and curatorial programs to establish a network of individuals, groups and events with similar objectives locally and globally.
I wish I had heard about this film festival before today. :(
L’Ordre des Mots is certainly of interest to intersex people, and Gwen’s story about making her film is one intersex people have much to gain to gain from. Yet this is the first I have heard of this festival and it is a little late to begin publicizing it now to our readers.
Sound fabulous except for the name. What about the sex and gender diverse people who do not identify as transgender or even trans. Do they now have to a hold their own film festival? The Gender Centre would do well to take a leaf out of the AHRC’s book and change its idium to The Sex And Gender Diverse SGD)Film Festival so all SGD people may feel welcome.