Two bodies and one mind, this is the extraordinary story of one pair of conjoined twins in today's world.
Julia is a young transgender woman who left her home country of Lithuania. Now living in Germany, she walks the streets of Berlin, working as a prostitute to survive. This documentary revisits Julia over a ten-year period of her life.
Set in a small town in the region of Tamil Nadu, in southern India, the film follows the days and works of a hijra family. Silky, Mahima, Trisha, Durga, Kuyili, Priyanka, Vasundhara and Yamuna, under the firm protection of their guru Lakshmi Ma, deliver snippets of their marginal but sovereign existence. From a millenia-old sacred tradition to getting by every second, "Guru" composes with them a poem of intertwined voices in which the world is a tough playground, where the third gender is primarily the resistance force of a life shared.
Sascha’s name wasn’t always Sascha. But now it is. Sascha doesn’t identify as a man or as a woman, but as trans non-binary. A story about what it means to live in a society that wasn’t expecting you. A glimpse into a life that allows us to question our own categories. And a film about what it means to be oneself.
For decades, performance artist and writer Kate Bornstein has been exploding binaries and deconstructing gender. And, her own identity. Trans-dyke. Reluctant polyamorist. Sadomasochist. Recovering Scientologist. Pioneering Gender Outlaw. Kate Bornstein Is a Queer and Pleasant Danger, joins her on her latest tour capturing rollicking public performances and painful personal revelations as it bears witness to Kate as a trailblazing artist theorist activist who inhabits a space between male and female with wit, style, and astonishing candor. By turns meditative and playful, the film invites us on a thought provoking journey through Kate's world to seek answers to some of life's biggest questions.
Violeta leads a normal life in a well-off family, with loving parents, surrounded by everything the heart of an eleven-year-old girl might wish for. But she hasn’t always been the pretty girl she is today; she was born a boy. At age 6, she baffled her parents (the famous adult movie stars Nacho Vidal and Franceska Jaimes) when she told them she wanted to be called and dress as a girl. After the initial shock, they decided to give her all their support on the long and tough road that will lead to her becoming a woman someday. Violeta faces many challenges, medical (such as deciding whether or not to take hormone-blockers to stop the development of masculine features as soon as puberty kicks in) and legal (obtaining an ID card with her new name and gender). Later, she may consider getting a sex reassignment procedure, or the possibility of becoming a mother through adoption.
Fred Martinez was a Navajo youth slain at the age of 16 by a man who bragged to his friends that he 'bug-smashed a fag'. But Fred was part of an honored Navajo tradition - the 'nadleeh', or 'two-spirit', who possesses a balance of masculine and feminine traits.
It wasn’t long until Ethan knew that he wasn’t Irene, meanwhile, Sarah wondered why it wasn’t the colour of her skin that made her feel so different from the others but, in fact, the stigma of living with HIV. Those are some of the stories from "DIVERSXS".
Every day our changing climate pushes us closer to an environmental catastrophe, but for most the problem is easy to ignore. David Hallquist, a Vermont utility executive, has made it his mission to take on one of the largest contributors of this global crisis-our electric grid. But when his son Derek tries to tell his father's story, the film is soon derailed by a staggering family secret, one that forces Derek and David to turn their attention toward a much more personal struggle, one that can no longer be ignored. - Written by Aaron Woolf
As a trans woman Vida Morant lives by some of the mandates of what a woman should be while actively fighting others. In the intimacy of her home, at the theatre, on the radio, at the city hall.
Seizing her power as she confronts her mortality, trailblazing trans activist Connie Norman evolves as an irrepressible, challenging and soulful voice for the AIDS and queer communities of early 90's Los Angeles.
On stage, wearing a vinyl corset and stiletto boots, s/he's Venus, lead singer of the glam rock band All The Pretty Horses. At home in Minneapolis with Lynette, her wife of twenty years, s/he's Steve. Born male, Venus is transgender. S/he's "in between" — taking female hormones, but not planning to have sexual reassignment surgery. To some, s/he's a pioneer, courageously exploring a brave new world of gender identity, free of categorization. To others, s/he's a freak. VENUS OF MARS is both the unique coming out story of Venus' gender-redefining journey, and the truly contemporary love story of a couple weathering dramatic changes in uncharted relationship territory.
In the 50s and 60s, deep in the American countryside at the foot of the Catskills, a small wooden house with a barn behind it was home to the first clandestine network of cross-dressers. Diane and Kate are now 80 years old. At the time, they were men and part of this secret organization. Today, they relate this forgotten but essential chapter of the early days of trans-identity. It is a story full of noise and fury, rich in extraordinary characters, including the famous Susanna, who had the courage to create this refuge that came to be known as Casa Susanna.
It often happens that at the moment of death, transgender individuals are shorn of their identity. Their families are ashamed, the funeral takes place in secret, and on the tomb appears the name the deceased had before their transition, in one stroke nullifying the entire life path they had chosen. The same thing happened to Antonia. Her girlfriends gather to honor her memory and give her back her identity denied. In telling her story, the film’s stars, all drawn from the variegated transgender world, interweave the narrative with tales of their own lives, experiences, and memories.
In the spotlight of global media coverage, the first transgender woman ever to perform as Don Giovanni in a professional opera, makes her historic debut in one of the reddest states in the U.S.
Katoey meets three people in rural Thailand who are clearly and confidently women even though their bodies are male. Integrated to an impressive degree into society, these women have successfully overcome the difference between their physical and mental genders.
A trans Vietnamese woman's deadname being repeated over and over again.
Trailblazing artists, activists, and everyday people from across the spectrum of gender and sexuality defy social norms and dare to live unconventional lives in this kaleidoscopic view of LGBTQ+ culture in contemporary Japan.
Describing herself as a 'street queen,' Johnson was a legendary fixture in New York City’s gay ghetto and a tireless voice for LGBT pride since the days of Stonewall, who along with fellow trans icon Sylvia Rivera, founded Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries (S.T.A.R.), a trans activist group based in the heart of NYC’s Greenwich Village. Her death in 1992 was declared a suicide by the NYPD, but friends never accepted that version of events. Structured as a whodunit, with activist Victoria Cruz cast as detective and audience surrogate, The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson celebrates the lasting political legacy of Johnson, while seeking to finally solve the mystery of her unexplained death.
Katie Couric travels across the U.S. to talk with scientists, psychologists, activists, authors and families about the complex issue of gender.