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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.
The Queerguru do their utmost to review as many of them as we can, whether they be from Canada, Pakistan, Brazil, Australia, Cuba, UK, and USA etc, and so
Here are our very favorite ones from 2022 …..
The award-winning queer filmmaker Sebastien Lifshitz, whose day job is as a Professor at La Fémis the film and television school of PSL Research University’s new film CASA SUZANNA is his third documentary with transgenderism as the subject matter. Bambi, his spell-binding story Marie-Pierre Pruvot, an Algerian, born trans woman who had a long and prominent career as a dancer and showgirl in Paris in the 1950s and 1960s, under the stage name Bambi which netted him his first Teddy Award.
Now in Casa Susanna, Lifshitz takes a very affectionate look at the secluded resort in the Catskills in up state NY that in the 1950s and 60s was a discreet refuge for cross-dressing men and transgender women. It’s an unstructured story with two of the resorts’ original visitors, now both octogenarians recalling as much as they can of what this bolt-hole meant to them
Dawn: A Charleston Legend. Ron Davis’s fascinating documentary on Dawn Langley Simmons plays out like a hard-to-believe fictional story surrounded by an air of utter sadness. Although we get a distinct impression that although Dawn herself may have agreed her life was tough, she would with an air of bravado and fortitude definitely describe it as being happy.
Much of her life was played out in the tabloid press from her early life when she was still Gordan Langley Hunt. Born in England in 1922, her parents worked as servants at Sissinghurst Castle, the English estate of biographer Harold Nicolson and his novelist wife, Vita Sackville-West. Maybe this fact would influence parts of Gordon’s life as he would also turn out to be a very successful novelist, and would also take a same-sex lover as Sackville-West did with Virginia Wolfe.
Donna is a heart-warming documentary that follows trans activist, performer, and former Cockette, Donna Personna, as she learns, later in life, to live her most authentic trans life and to reconnect with her family as a woman. “This is who I want to be and who I want to show the world”
Director Jay Bedwani has created an intimate portrait of an inspiring, energetic woman who shows us it’s never too late to begin living our true lives. His trademark style of quiet observation shows a remarkable woman who wins over her family with a combination of warmth, friendship, gentle humility and strength. His candid study is well shot and produced and focuses on a true-life well-lived in the present with a nod to the future.
This is a beautiful, poetic piece of work. A true San Francisco story. Donna is very likable. As she says, “When you’re free to be yourself, you can be magnificent.”
FRAMING AGNES. Canadian trans filmmaker Chase Joynt confidently left Sundance Film Festival clutching two awards, knowing he has been successful in a rare achievement. His sophomore feature-length documentary Framing Agnes is even better than his remarkable debut No Ordinary Man which he co-directed with Aisling Chin-Yee.
In this new movie, Joynt gently chips away at how being transgender is so widely misunderstood mainly by our sheer ignorance. His film continues an important message to dispel so many long-held myths as it gives such dignity and grace as part of a continuing dialogue about the transgender community.
P.S. Canadian trans filmmaker Chase Joynt the director and co-writer of Framing Agnes sits down with co-writer #MorganMPage to talk with QUEERGURU about their excellent new film https://queerguru.com/filmmakers-chase-joynt-and-morgan-m-page-talk-about-framing-agnes-one-of-the-very-best-queer-films-at-sundance-2022/
The past few years have seen an increase in queer-themed films coming out of Muslim countries including Joyland, the directorial debut from Pakistani filmmaker Saim Sadiq.
Sadiq’s film is an intense analysis of the crippling effect ‘traditional family values’ on gender and sexuality can have on individuals in 21st Century families, not just in Pakistan, but in conservative households across the world. Many of the family members in this structure are slightly lost and downtrodden, and contrast sharply to the assertive, driven, fearless Biba who has no such strictures around herself.
Winner of the Queer Palm and Un Certain Regard Joyland promises to make an impact as Pakistan’s chosen entry for Best International Feature Film at next year’s Academy Awards Oscar’s ceremony.
PRIVATE DESERT is a Brazilian queer drama that is about hopelessness and hope at the same time. The film opens with the protagonist Daniel (Antonio Saboia), a police officer, jogging in the middle of the night. The scene immediately highlights a sense of him running away from himself and the almost palpable loneliness. In the first half an hour of the film, the strong bond between Daniel and his ex-police officer father hogs the limelight as they go about their daily lives. Daniel shares a buddy-like relationship with his father in which the former can crack a willy joke without any cognizance of discomfort. Alas, everything is not hunky-dory. Daniel is facing trial for roughing up a new recruit during police training. He spends most of his time chatting with a girl (Sara) online as a means to stave off facing the music of his reckless actions. Taking constant care of his old and feeble father Daniel realizes that life is short and he should follow his heart; wherever it takes him. The film picks up pace when Sara, his heart’s desire, stops responding to Daniel’s texts and voicemails, and he decides to go seek her out in her hometown. From this point on, the film shifts genre – from a family drama to a soul-searching road movie
The scene that will stay with me for a long time is the one where Daniel asks Sara to return the dress that the latter bought with the former’s money. And Sara puts on the dress for one last time as ‘she’ wants Daniel to see ‘her’ in the dress, at least once. A pure, unfiltered cinematic moment.
Queens of the Revolution is filmmaker Rebecca Heidenberg‘s first feature film. It begins with the ritual of Ms. Cinthya dressing up for her performance at El Mejunje, a cultural center in Santa Clara, the capital of the Central Cuban province of Villa Clara. The city of Santa Clara, also known as Liberal City, has a revolutionary history and landmarks like Ernesto Che Guevara´s Mausoleum. The film has a Caribbean milieu that, at first, is reminiscent of Old Havana
El Mejunje, under the direction of Ramón Silverio, is a revolutionary cultural Project that influences the minds of the people, it is inspired by union, no matter the differences, instead of division. The place, like a fabled Phoenix, opened its doors in 1991, in a difficult time known as the Special Period (several years of economic crisis due to the downfall of the Soviet Union and the reinforcement of the US embargo). El Mejunje, an open área (a big patio) with trees surrounded by walls of stone, welcomes cultural diversity, literature, talks, visual arts, performing arts, and gastronomy. It is a meeting place for people of all ages to reaffirm their Cuban identity. El Mejunje is the place its visitors love and care for, in which everyone can come as they are. El Mejunje is a trench of ideas, a meeting place where each individual is respected, a community.
Run For More: So many of us in the LGBTQ+ community have such traumatic experiences when we ‘come out’ that it can have such an adverse effect on our future behavior in society. Even more for those that are the ‘T’ part of the equation. However not so for Frankie Gonzales-Wolfe a transgender woman in Texas who was so exasperated by legislatures passing bills attacking trans people, she decides to make history as the first openly elected transgender official in Texas.
She doesn’t take an easy route as San Antonio’s District 8 is one of the poorest and roughest in the City in Texas probably the most transphobic US State. But right from the start of Ray Whitehouse’s debut documentary, we are so struck by Frankie’s infectious passion and her sheer energy that we know whatever happens it will not be for the lack of giving it her best shot.
So there can be no spoilers here, although there is an unexpected happy ending. Even more important in this current transphobic political climate is we can only hope that in the future we will see more Frankies. The world would be a better place for us all then
PS. Filmmaker Ray Whitehouse talks to Queerguru about A RUN FOR MORE https://queerguru.com/ray-whitehouse-talks-about-a-run-for-more-the-inspiring-story-of-a-transgender-woman-who-wants-a-seat-at-the-table/
THE DREAMLIFE OF GEORGIE STONE The vast majority of films with transgender storylines that we get to view are remarkable for their sheer bravado and how they each make such a significant contribution to the continuing dialogue about the transgender community. Dreamlife however went much further and completely blew us out of the water
Australian Georgie Stone is such an exceptional young woman who knew from a very early age she was a girl trapped in a boy’s body. She not only had the good fortune to have a very supportive family, but she learned to articulate her feelings at such an early age.
In this excellent short documentary filmmaker, Maya Newell impeccably weaves a wealth of archival footage shot over Georgia’s childhood with her now as a young adult. What comes as a complete surprise to us is that the obstacles in her way to fully transitioning are not from family, friends, school, or her doctors, it is actually from the Australian Government.
This very affectionate profile on the actress/model April Ashley is long overdue as is evident in how her star quality simply shines through so brightly on the screen. April’s complicated roller-coaster life would have defeated any lesser person but since she somehow survived being born into a poor working-class Catholic family in 1935 in one of Liverpool’s rougher areas, nothing seem to faze her. Well. outwardly at least April was a very beautiful woman and soon morphs into being a top fashion model in London. In the late 1950s this was not just a glamourous career but one that was full of aristocratic upper-class young women, But by then all trace of her working-class Liverpool brogue had disappeared and Ashley now spoke with a refined posh accent
She married Hon. Arthur Corbett (later 3rd Baron Rowallan) but when this marriage failed, instead of filing for divorce, Corbett sued for an annulment on the grounds of April’s gender at birth even though he was totally aware of her situation. April Ashley had never set to be a role model or a pioneer but she became both and with such grace and dignity that we (queer Brits) will always remember with such great affection and heartfelt thanks.
Wildhood is a beautiful queer coming-of-age story set within Canada’s first nation Mi’kmaq people, a community over 14,000 years old, based in rural Nova Scotia. The road movie introduces us to Link, (Phillip Lewitski), a Two-Spirit, half Mi’kmaq teenager, and his younger half-brother Travis (Avery Winters-Anthony). The term Two-Spirit loosely refers to queer first nation people – a more detailed indigenous definition is the intersection of the relationship to land, gender, sexuality, ceremony, and culture.
The film is about family, discovery, the quest to belong and identity, both in and out of blood family
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