Our journey that we are always on to gain unqualified acceptance for the LGBTQ community ….. especially for our trans brothers and sisters is helped greatly by our visibility. It shows that we have reached the point of nt only being proud of whom we are but want to share that with the world.
To that end, Queerguru, has tried to cover as many films as it can that help continue a healthy dialogue about the trans community. Sadly some of these are about the unsafe world that many have to deal with on a daily basis including physical and verbal abuse.
However OutLoud is not one such story. It’s a glorious film of celebration and happiness which was a sheer joy to watch. It not only show trans people existing on their own terms, doing what makes them happy without the weight of explaining themselves every minute.
Musician Lindsey Deaton came up with the idea of setting up a Chorus made up of transgender and gender nonconforming people. This documentary by Gail Willumsen and JIll Shinefield covers their very season back in 2016. Deaton is under no illusion that this will be an easy task as many of the potential members had little or no singing experience They were however, like us, totally swept up by Deaton’s infectious energy and real enthusiasm.
The Chorus had already booked a gig some six months away so they met every Sunday in a local church in LA to practice and rehearse the diverse program Deaton had devised. There was an additional hurdle to overcome as many of the singers were in various stages of transitioning a process that greatly affected their voices. When each of them auditioned Deaton would assign them to be tenors or baritone on how they sounded, not by how the looked.
During the early days, the sounds coming out of the rehearsals were hardly music to our ears, and made us question’s Deaton’s unwavering faith . She of course knew what she was doing, and the newly trained voices that rang out on the night on the Concert were so good they sent shivers down up spine.
Director Willumsen’s cameras were were very inch of the way and captured how the Chorus blossomed. Equally important was she interspersed clips of rehearsals with mini intimate portraits/interviews with some of the key members of the Chorus. Hearing each of their different stories was. fascinating and made us feel so much more connected to what they aspired to achieve.
Some of their tales were not always happy ones, and Deaton made us remember the harsh fate that the trans community still face on daily basis, with a special tribute number to all those who had been murdered, In fact whilst the Chorus’s own story (and it progress since the film) is a real reason for celebration, the murder rate within the community is still alarmingly high.
Talking of positivity though, another heart warning fact was that this Trans Chorus of Los Angeles had been sponsored by the celebrated Gay Men’s Chorus of LA (formed in 1979). Seeing them being embraced like this makes on feel so proud of the whole LGBTQ community.
OUT LOUD is such a excellent example of how our community can gain so much more than visibility and acceptance by coming together, and that reason alone makes this engaging film a real must see
(For Future Screenings https://twitter.com/TransChorusLA)
Labels: 2020, documentary, Trans Chorus
