Friday Night Film Fiesta
The Philadelphia Trans-Health Conference is happy to present several award-winning films on Friday night (June 12, 2009) to both educate and entertain. The conference’s Film Fiesta, now in its second year, will feature the films listed below. Admission is free to all Community Days participants.
In addition, there will be an all-day film-series during Thursday's Providers Day (June 11, 2009).
Registration for Community Days is free! Please register today to reserve your program book. After April 30, 2009, program books are not guaranteed.
Still Black: A Portrait of Black Transmen (2008)
Kortney Ryan Ziegler, Director; Awilda Rodriguez Lora, Producer (78 minute runtime). An alternative feature-length documentary that explores the lives of six black transgender men living in the United States. Through the intimate stories of their lives as artists, students, husbands, fathers, lawyers, and teachers, the film offers viewers a complex and multifaceted image of race, sexuality and trans identity.
against a trans narrative (2008)
Directed by Jules Rosskam (61 minute runtime) “against a trans narrative” functions as a dialog – between friends, cultures, and generations – addressing issues of representation, identity-formation, and the various forces that act together to build (and dismantle) communities. Specifically, the film analyzes the construction of the dominant trans-masculine “narrative” and how this influences and potentially hinders people’s conceptions of themselves. What forms of regulation, self or otherwise, must we partake in to be part of a community, and at what cost? The goal of this video is to instigate conversations amongst feminists, queers, transfolks, and anyone else invested in radically shifting the ways in which we construct personal and historical narratives. “against a trans narrative” is striking in its endeavor to speak to the same communities it represents, but through its integrity, can resonate with anyone who has ever struggled to reconcile their identity with the communities they come from or belong to.
TRANSforming Healthcare (2008)
Directed and Produced by Derek Brockett, Ann McNair, Ethan Suniewick (18 minute runtime). This short documentary describes the discrimination many transgender people face in healthcare settings and offers advice for providers towards improving their transgender cultural competency. This video screened at Frameline’s 2008 San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival and has been used as a training tool for physicians nationwide.
How Do I Look (2007)
Directed by Wolfgang Busch, Kevin Omni, and Luna Khan (80 minute runtime). Ten years in the making – and with a budget of under $20,000 – How Do I Look is about the Harlem Ball community, which you know from Madonna’s video Vogue and documentary Truth or Dare and from the movie Paris Is Burning. This film is a chronicle of the Harlem Ball tradition, featuring the gritty and glamorous testimony of African American and Latino gay and transgender people who excited the runways of Harlem and beyond.
Red Without Blue (2007)
Directed and Produced by Brooke Sebold, Benita Sills, Todd Sills (77 minute runtime). This is a groundbreaking documentary about the indestructible ties of family. This visually arresting film chronicles the close yet sometimes strained relationship between identical twins Mark and Alex as Alex undergoes a transformation into a woman named Clair. Red Without Blue, whose title refers to the colors the twins wore as children to distinguish between the two, provides a heartbreaking, but ultimately optimistic look at the tribulations of growing up gay and transgender in rural Montana and maintaining strong family bonds in the face of adversity.
Godspeed (2007)
Directed by Lynn Breedlove and Jen Gilomen; Produced by Kami Chisholm (15 minute runtime). A speed freak bike messenger who passes as a boy fights the world and his own lust for thrills to win the love of a stripper, and finds his heart on the way. It’s a universal tale of love, addiction, and redemption in San Francisco’s cool punk late 80’s, when every club on Valencia blasted a local band, everyone wore black, bike messengers were the new pony express, and strippers, their saloon girls.
The Bond (2007)
This short documentary highlights the relationship between a father and his transgender daughter.
