IX Side by Side LGBT Film Festival, Saint Petersburg, 2016 IX Side by Side LGBT Film Festival, 2016 | Page 17

19 november, sa
17:50—20:35
WE'VE BEEN AROUND
Rhys Ernst, USA, 2016, 25 min
2016 — Seattle Transgender Film
Festival, Jury Prize
2016 — Outfest, Los Angeles, Audience
Award
We’ve Been Around is a series of short films celebrating
the lives of just a few transgender pioneers through history.
Directed by Rhys Ernst (co-producer of Amazon’s hit
Transparent) and produced by Christine Beebe, We’ve
Been Around is series of documentary shorts* that
chronicle the lives of Lucy Hicks Anderson, STAR, Albert,
Little Ax and Lou Sullivan. Each trans* trail-blazers
in their own right, and each with stories that have, until
recently, gone largely unnoticed by mainstream society.
From the narrators to the composer to the animator, the
series was made with a breadth of talent from the trans*
community. The team includes Transparent actress
Alexandra Billings; writer and filmmaker Susan Stryker;
and trans historian Monica Roberts.
THE TRANS LIST
Timothy Greenfield-Sanders,
USA, 2016, 57 min
The Trans List explores the range of experiences lived
by Americans who identify as transgender. No two experiences
of trans* people are exactly alike. Transgender, trans- sexual,
genderqueer, bi-gender and non gender-binary are just a few
of the multitude of self-identifiers in the trans* community.
This film gives a platform to a diverse group of eleven
individuals to tell their stories in their own words
of their experience with identity, family, career, love,
struggle and accomplishment.
Ekaterina Messorosh — trans activist, presenter
«As a trans person and a trans activist, I am often confronted with the question of
visibility in the media. Inside the trans community, opinions on this matter can be quite
the opposite from one another. However, I see another interesting aspect of this issue:
what is the opinion of cis-gender people? As a result of media representation what kind
of has been formed of trans people? Does this media image represent reality? Has
the media helped in the fight against transphobia, or vice versa, do they broadcast and
reinforce stereotypes?»
Cáel M. Keegan is an expert in LGBTQ Studies whose research specializes in the analysis of
transgender media, image production, and aesthetics. Over the course of his career, he has published
multiple articles on the global circulation of queer and transgender images, including pieces that
investigate the emergence of the transnormative subject in film/television of the Global North,
queer juvenility in midcentury American popular melodrama, transgender phenomenologies of
image reception, trans masculinities and the visibility dynamics of photographic portraiture, and
the political economy of post-2008 LGBT film production.
After-film discussion will be about the representation and self-representation of trans*-
people in media and cinema, the visibility of transgender people (the benefits and
drawbacks) and about recent tendencies.