Repping best view to date into the world of the Indian eunuch, “Between the Lines: India’s Third Gender” may not answer all the questions it poses, but helmer Thomas Wartmann provides an intimate glimpse at a community whose members are considered pariahs and conduits of supernatural force. Following shutterbug Anita Khemka in her quest to discover why these castrated men fascinate and repel, docu concentrates on three personalities and uses them as guides to their highly stratified world. Under its nautch skirts, film has strong enough legs to step out into international arthouses.
In the first person, a documentary that shows us the experience of Vida Rodriguez, formerly Inocente Duke, in situations that the Trans Law favors: what happens when entering a sauna, locker room, or a public service (even in the Congress of Deputies). An experience that, with respect and large doses of humor, brings us face to face with a law and its difficulties in its implementation.
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.
A hilarious and at times provocative film about a middle-aged American single-mother living in Switzerland and her quest to find out if she'll be invisible when she's no longer the woman with the biggest breasts in the room.
The unbelievable story of 22 year old Or, who secretly finances his sex change operation in Thailand by lying to his conservative parents and then returns home as a woman to face her new life, her family and the cost of living her dream
Arguing that advertising not only sells things, but also ideas about the world, media scholar Sut Jhally offers a blistering analysis of commercial culture's inability to let go of reactionary gender representations. Jhally's starting point is the breakthrough work of the late sociologist Erving Goffman, whose 1959 book The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life prefigured the growing field of performance studies. Jhally applies Goffman's analysis of the body in print advertising to hundreds of print ads today, uncovering an astonishing pattern of regressive and destructive gender codes. By looking beyond advertising as a medium that simply sells products, and beyond analyses of gender that tend to focus on either biology or objectification, The Codes of Gender offers important insights into the social construction of masculinity and femininity, the relationship between gender and power, and the everyday performance of cultural norms.
In Swole I continue to document my commitment to an intensive and transformative gym and diet regimen, as well as the communities that form around such activities, sustaining themselves through texting and sharing videos and photos on social media. I learn the vocabulary of my new community.
The documentary by Mari Soppela focuses on glass ceilings, a metaphor for the invisible borders between men and women in work life. Talk about glass ceilings is usually associated with women’s opportunities to advance to well paid managerial positions, but the documentary connects itself more broadly to the structural problems of work life from women’s perspective. Glass ceilings are long trials about equal pay, having to continually prove one’s skills, and 85-cent euros. The topic cannot be handled without intersectional crossings: what are invisible glass ceilings for some, are solid concrete for others.
My Transparent Life chronicles the journey of one trans man, one trans woman and a trans couple as transition from the sex they were born with to the sex they identify with.
Five transgender women share their prison experiences. Interviews with attorneys, doctors, and other experts are also included.
Six young people discuss the "gender affirming" medical care they received for gender dysphoria and how they subsequently came to believe this was the wrong treatment.
An intimate documentary about a trans woman's isolation and decision to leave her home country of Azerbaijan in pursuit of a safer life. Using the metaphor of a rabbit, that comes from her nickname "bunny," she presents her relationship with her family, country, music, and protest, intercut with home videos.
An exploration of the Samoan faafafine, boys who are raised as girls, who fulfill a traditional role in Samoan culture. In the past they have shared women's traditional work but today are becoming more westernized and look more like drag queens. Several anthropologists comment on the phenomenon examining issues of culture and gender and the complexities of sexual identity.
Kyle Dean was a misfit in her North Carolina school. She was called "Creature" because she was a boy who knew she was a girl in part of the country where such things were not understood or tolerated. As soon as she could she left North Carolina for Hollywood where she felt that she'd stand more of a chance of becoming who she wanted to be. Now as Stacey she's going back to visit with with Mom and Pop.
A portrait of an unforgettable transgender schoolteacher in Herat, Afghanistan, who shines even with the prospect of the Taliban’s return.
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.
What makes a male, and what makes a female? Where do we draw the line, and does it really matter? Sharon-Rose Khumalo, a South African beauty queen, plunges into an identity crisis after finding out she is intersex. In her quest to deal with gender dysphoria, she needs the guidance of somebody just like her. The only person who will help is Dimakatso Sebidi, a masculine presenting intersex activist, who turns out to be her complete opposite. The two parallel but divergent stories offer an intimate look at the struggle of living in a male-female world, when you are both or neither. For the first time in a creative documentary, Who I Am Not gives a voice to the long ignored and mostly silent two percent of the world's population: the intersex community.
A documentary exploring sexism and patriarchy in Kosova.
The fourth generation in his family to be born intersex, Jewish Rabbi Levi was assigned the female gender at birth and grew up thinking he was sick and defective. "In the Image of God" tells the story of his struggles and transitions, culminating today in a life as a religious leader and an LGBTQI+ activist living happily in Los Angeles with his wife.
Katie Couric travels across the U.S. to talk with scientists, psychologists, activists, authors and families about the complex issue of gender.