Cinema Politica Highlights Two Films for Transgender International Rights and Education Day
As right-wing powers escalate a violent crusade against transness, the need to spotlight and honour the work of trans activists becomes increasingly imperative. To celebrate Transgender International Rights & Education Day, Cinema Politica has selected two films that exemplify trans struggle for recognition in a world of neglect and venomous bigotry. From Canada to the Philippines, these titles chronicle survival and resistance from the domestic quarters of modern day parenthood to the legislative platforms of congress.
OUT RUN
As leader of the world’s only LGBTQ+ political party, Bemz Benedito dreams of being the first transgender woman in the Philippine Congress. But in a predominantly Catholic nation, rallying for LGBTQ+ representation in the halls of Congress is not an easy feat.
Bemz and her eclectic team of queer political warriors must rethink traditional campaign strategies to amass support from unlikely places. Taking their equality campaign to small-town hair salons and regional beauty pageants, the activists mobilize working-class trans hairdressers and beauty queens to join the fight against their main political opponent, a homophobic evangelical preacher, and prove to the Filipino electorate that it’s time to take the rights of LGBTQ+ people seriously. But as outsiders trying to get inside the system, will they have to compromise their political ideals in order to win?
Culminating on election day, OUT RUN provides a unique look into the challenges LGBTQ+ people face as they transition into the Philippine mainstream and fight for dignity, legitimacy, and acceptance across the globe.
TRANSGENDER PARENTS
TRANSGENDER PARENTS is about love, life and kids after a gender transition. It shares the struggles and strengths of several trans women and trans men navigating different stages of parenting: from pregnancy, through raising infants, toddlers and teenagers. Some, who transitioned prior to founding their families, experience fertility clinics and hospital births; others, who transitioned in the presence of their kids work to renegotiate their identity and relationships within their families. All are openly out in the world as trans and as parents in ways that weren’t possible 20 years ago.
Syrus and Nik, both in their 30s, live in downtown Toronto. We follow their story from Syrus’s pregnancy to the 2nd birthday of young Amélie as they make their way in the world as black gay trans men with a blond blue-eyed daughter.
Aiyyana is a Haudenosaunee grandmother who was born male and has journeyed through genders and considers herself a transformed woman. An accomplished writer and award-winning theatre artist, Aiyyana is building a home on her childhood reserve along with one of her adult children.
Originally, from Alberta, Jenna is a 30-year-old trans-mother-to-be who runs an organic farm with her partner near Montreal. We learn about her path to motherhood, and witness the hours following the arrival of her baby.
Stefonknee is a trans woman of 45 who came out when her 7 children were almost all teenagers. The process of finding herself and going public has been too much for most of her family to bear. She has moved to Toronto from rural Ontario where she is a speaker and activist. We follow her on a visit to her hometown as she tries to heal broken connections.
Hershel, a Jewish trans man in his late 60s, is a psychotherapist whose son was 19 years old when he transitioned. We witness their loving and at times difficult relationship as both speak candidly about their experiences as parent and child over the last fifteen years.
