Since we started QUEERGURU in 2015 there has been a very significant increase in the number of films made about the transgender/gender-queer community. They are not only very informative and entertaining but each of them makes their own significant contribution to the continuing dialogue about LGBTQ communities as a whole. We need these movies to tell our stories, especially In today’s political climate where transphobe is scarily rampant
QUEERGURU'S TOP PICKS OF TRANS FILMS IN 2023
are literally from around the globe. inc India, South Africa, Iran, Germany,
UK and of course the US. Here they are in alphabetical order:
A Place Of Our Own is a new feature film about the trials and tribulations of a couple of transgender women In Bhopal, India, and is a tragic reminder of how life for them has not progressed at all in society. The film, made by the Ektara Collective, an independent collaborative of filmmakers which makes films about and involving marginalized and disenfranchised communities, perfectly captures the lows ….. and the highs ….. of the women’s search for accommodation after their latest landlord has illegally evicted them.
Beyond The Aggressives: 25 Years Later Conversations around gender and sexual identities are hot topics these days. In the heat of the moment, however, it’s useful to look back at how such conversations were framed in previous eras, and how our thoughts have evolved over time. Daniel Peddle’s ground-breaking 2005 documentary, The Aggressives, documented the beliefs, lives, and aspirations of a group of six fabulous aggressives, masculine presenting/identifying queer people of colour who were assigned female at birth. The six people featured were all from New York and were filmed over a period from 1997 to 2004. His 2023 follow up documentary, Beyond the Aggressives: 25 Years Later, revisits four of the original six contributors, Kisha, Octavio, Trevon, and Chin, to examine where life has led them. Filmed from 2018 to 2023, the film is a fascinating insight into how the narrative on gender and sexuality has evolved for these people, and how the queer individuals featured have carved out lives for themselves in American society.
Casa Susanna is a compelling documentary about a group of cross-dressing men/trans women in early 1960s America. Acclaimed French screenwriter/director Sebastien Lifshitz opens up a world few of us would know about had it not been for a set of photographs found at a New York flea market in 2004.
Chasing Chasing Amy is an interesting documentary that takes a deep dive into the complex legacy of Kevin Smith’s 1997 indie film Chasing Amy, its effect on queer people
Chasing Chasing Amy director Sav Rodgers was a young teenager in Kansas when Chasing Amy was released. Rodgers connected with the film and watched it every day for months on end. He remains obsessed with the film and to date has watched it over 200 times. Rodgers’ passion for the film and his documentary is infectious – this rarely comes across in documentary filmmaking – and the result is that he gets a lot out of the generous content of his interviewees.
CLOCKED. Adolfo Rivera (Germain Arroyo) is an energetic 18-year-old Puerto Rican boxer from a conservative Catholic family in Miami, Florida. He is talented and has won each of his fights so far, under the guidance of his handsome trainer, his brother Ramon (Danon Leyva). He lives at home in a close-knit family with his mum and dad. His mother has plans for him to marry a friend’s daughter Camila (Marisa Davila), but Adolfo is secretly coming to terms with the fact that he desires to transition into a woman. He juggles his macho training and fighting schedule with secret trips to cosmetic stores to buy make-up which he experiments with at home. He keeps a box under his bed full of cash from his fight winnings, saving up for his surgery to transition. He finds it tough to keep a lid on his secret, especially in the face of the occasional homophobic comments from his family, and eventually seeks respite with the local drag community, who take him under their wing. How can he get to where he needs to be in life? His biggest fight.
What was intended as one of the best ‘welcome home’ stories at Outfest LGBTQ Film Festival in Miami suddenly turned into a celebration of life for one of the stars of the award-winning Kokomo City. This trail-blazing documentary is the debut of Miami local D. Smith who directed, produced, and edited it and had been excited at screening it on their home terrority.
Their journey on how the film came to be made starts out of pure frustration after D Smith suddenly got blackballed from the music industry when they started to transition. They went from being in great demand producing songs for Lil Wayne,Keri Hilson, Billy Porter and André 3000. to being unemployed, broke, and homeless. In fact, Smith was still homeless when she began working on the project, with a camera being purchased by a host where she was once staying, and a laptop by a producer.
Orlando, My Political Biography is a fantastic, award-winning documentary film by Spanish philosopher/director Paul Preciado. The film is a homage to trans/non-binary lives and Virginia Woolf’s classic 1928 novel, Orlando, A Biography. The original novel is based on the wild family history of Woolf’s lover, the aristocratic poet and novelist, Vita Sackville-West. The core story is about a male thirty-something poet, Orlando, alive during the reign of Elizabeth I, who falls asleep for a week and then wakes up as a woman. She then survives for hundreds of years without aging and meets key figures of English literary history along the way. It’s considered a feminist/trans classic.
Oskar’s Dress tells the story of nine years old Jewish roots trans-Oskar / Lili (Lauri) through the perspective of the father Ben (Florian David Fitz) a divorced homophobic policeman with drinking problems and acceptance issues, who, unexpectedly, has the chance to immerse deep into parenthood. It makes a difference to live in Germany where there is the right to free development and physical integrity, and truly professional social workers of the Child Protective Services are in charge, as it is shown in favor of the minor´s rights.
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Runs In The Family: Directed by Ian Gabriel and written by, and starring his trans-man son, Gabe Gabriel, Runs In The Family is a comedy-drama adventure that focuses on the beautiful relationship between a father Varun (Ace Bhatti) and his trans-man son River (Gabe Gabriel). We follow them as they spend a few days together on a road trip from Cape Town to pick up their estranged mother Monica (Diaan Lawrenson) from a rehab clinic in Eswatini. River’s mother abandoned the family when he was aged one and he hasn’t heard from her since, so he’s not too keen to go and see her. He is, however, her only next-of-kin as his father hadn’t married her, so he is the only person authorized to pick her up from the rehab. Time is also of the essence for River as he has a big drag competition in Cape Town in two days. If he wins the top prize at Her Vajesty’s, The Queen’s Drag Ball, he will finally have enough money to pay for his top surgery.
This Is Not Me “I don’t want to be free of you. I want you to be free.” cries Shervin Ramezan’s sympathetic father as the family discusses the possibility of 16-year-old Shervin moving abroad to transition to a man in a more hospitable environment than Iran. Saeed Gholipour’s moving documentary follows Shervin and fellow trans man, Saman Ghazian, 27, for three years as they navigate the complex, and often inhumane, journey of transitioning in Iran.
The Stroll This authentic yet deeply authoritative work by Kristen Lovell and Zackary Drucker is. a threading of black and brown trans history, NYC gentrification, sex work, technology, and culture that is as well-sourced and logically tight as an academic work, as personal as poetry, as moving as an obituary, and as fierce as firefighting.
Beyond the personal stories is an eye for the dynamics of cultural evolution. NYC Mayor Guiliani’s zero-tolerance policies followed by 9/11 sped up the transition from street solicitation to online procurement. The swathe of deaths from AIDS amongst gay men who owned plots of land in the meatpacking district allowed property developers to buy up space and gentrify. It is the combination of the stories of culture, community and commerce that make this an intellectually rewarding as well as an intimately compelling documentary. Hard truths beautifully told.
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