documentaries about trans women

Trans Women of Color In a Theater Near You: ‘Mala Mala’ and ‘Tangerine’

This repost by staff writer Ren Jender appears as part of our theme week on Depictions of Trans Women.

Whenever people who aren’t queer make a film about queers, I’m always very wary about seeing it. Over 30 years ago, I had made up my mind to go to my first queer bar, but stopped in a revival movie house to see a film beforehand, which contained a surprise: an explicit male-male rape scene. The victim was the main character, in a jailhouse. His attacker was his cell mate, a grotesque, possibly mentally disabled, bald giant who had some teeth missing: he smiled as he came and sent a shiver of revulsion through the audience. No reviewer had warned about this scene, probably because this portrayal of a queer character was typical for the time. After the film was over I didn’t go to the bar. I just headed home instead.

Maybe sitting through years of shitty queer characters in films and TV has sensitized me, because, even though I’m not trans*, I often get a similar, sickly feeling about films and TV with trans* characters made by people who aren’t trans*, most recently the two (or maybe it was one and a half) episodes of the Emmy-nominated Transparent I watched when (cis) people I respect raved about it. The trans women I’ve known seem very unlike the long-suffering main character (played by a man in a dress: Jeffrey Tambor, who is winning awards for the role). They also don’t seem like the martyr played by Jared Leto (another award-winning man in a dress) in the clips I’ve seen from Dallas Buyers Club. The trans women I’ve known also aren’t the metaphorical punching bag Transamerica‘s Felicity Huffman (for once a woman — though a cis one — in a dress: perhaps why she didn’t win as many awards) played either.

In the first few scenes of the recently released documentary Mala Mala (directed by Antonio Santini and Dan Sickles) about trans* women in Puerto Rico I briefly had some trepidation when the camera (the striking cinematography is by Adam Uhl) couldn’t resist (like director Abdellatif Kechiche with his star in Blue Is The Warmest Color) an objectifying focus on the ass of trans activist Ivana. She tells us she wanted her hips and thighs to resemble those of the Latina women she admired, even though her frame is quite slender. Though proud to be Puerto Rican (and often acting as a spokesperson for trans rights there) Ivana considers herself “made in Ecuador” where she had her procedures done.

But the film has enough different types of trans* people (including some drag queens and others who don’t consider themselves women: I would have liked to see interviews with the dark-skinned Afro-Latinas we see in performance) and spends a lot of time letting us get to know them (without seeming to waste a moment) that I forgot about the fascination with Ivana’s butt. We first meet Ivana when she is distributing condoms to trans women sex workers on the street. We get the low-down on what sex work is like for trans women from Sandy who tells us she and other trans women have to be more beautiful than the cis women sex workers on the street or they won’t attract clients.

Some of the trans* people we also get to know are: an older woman who laments what she sees as a lack of reflection in younger trans women, a drag queen with an interest in corporate law whose role model is Marilyn Monroe, a trans guy who isn’t able to get testosterone, and a drag queen who carefully differentiates herself from “prostitutes” and becomes a contestant on RuPaul’s Drag Race. By focusing on nine people who often have differing opinions, the film gives us a taste of the richness and variety found within the trans* community. And because the film stays focused on these nine, we see them go through transformations that transcend the physical. Sex worker Sandy allies herself with Ivana, while also wondering why the funds set aside for trans* women in Puerto Rico don’t do more for them. They band together with other trans* women to form a new trans* rights group with Sandy telling us that they will wear shirts up to her necks and pants that cover their legs (in contrast to her usual short, low-cut dresses) so legislators will focus on their faces and what they have to say. Kickstarter-funded and executive-produced by veteran of the New Queer Cinema Christine Vachon, Mala Mala is beautiful to look at (from Puerto Rico’s green hills and blue ocean to neon tinted street scenes) and is one of the best and most moving films–narrative or documentary–I’ve seen all year.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rftiozFCa8″ iv_load_policy=”3″]

Tangerine, a comedy (directed by Sean Baker who also co-wrote the script with Chris Bergoch) that had its premiere at Sundance is about trans women of color sex workers and has been getting some surprisingly glowing reviews. Maybe because I kept comparing it to Mala Mala, I was disappointed. I can see what people reacted to: the two main characters, Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) and Alexandra (Mya Taylor) are vivid and funny (and played by talented, trans women). The film is also stunning to look at: co-cinematographers Baker and Radium Cheung give us a Los Angeles that has never looked more crisp and unforgiving in its sunniness, especially amazing considering the film was shot entirely on iPhones (equipped with special lenses, but still). Perhaps those who love this film were reminded of the early work of John Waters or Pedro Almodóvar, but those two, at least before they became big-time directors were part of the milieu they made films about, which isn’t the impression I get about Baker (who has also worked as a TV producer). Some of the interplay between the characters seems pretty generic: the plot, if there is one, focuses on Sin-Dee trying to track down the woman (“A real bitch with vagina and everything”) Sin-Dee’s pimp, Chester, “cheated” on her with. Waters and Almodóvar didn’t have the tightest plots in their early films either (one of Waters’ films centered on Divine getting “cha-cha heels”), but the details seemed more acutely observed–and nobody said about their films, when they were first released, that they seemed like anyone else’s.

Tangerine has some good comic moments: I was especially taken with a scene, shot from the inside of the front windshield, of a blow job received during a car wash and Rodriguez’s peerless reading of lines like “I promise, I promise” in response to Alexandra asking her to not cause “drama.” But we see how little we know about Alexandra and Sin-Dee’s interior lives when we spend time with Armenian immigrant cab-driver, Razmik (Karren Karagulian). Unlike the rest of the characters, Razmik has the ability to surprise us and to make us wonder what he’s thinking–or what he’ll do next. A film with trans women actresses this good shouldn’t have a cis man be its most interesting character. If trans women start making their own films with iPhones, maybe we’ll see characters that match these women’s talents.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALSwWTb88ZU” iv_load_policy=”3″]

___________________________________________________

Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing, besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks, has also been published in The Toast, RH Reality Check, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender

Trans Women of Color In a Theater Near You: ‘Mala Mala’ and ‘Tangerine’

Maybe sitting through years of shitty queer characters in films and TV has sensitized me, because, even though I’m not trans*, I often get a similar, sickly feeling about films and TV with trans* characters made by people who aren’t trans*, most recently the two (or maybe it was one and a half) episodes of the Emmy-nominated Transparent I watched when (cis) people I respect raved about it. The trans women I’ve known seem very unlike the long-suffering main character (played by a man in a dress: Jeffrey Tambor, who is winning awards for the role). They also don’t seem like the martyr played by Jared Leto (another award-winning man in a dress) in the clips I’ve seen from Dallas Buyers Club. The trans women I’ve known also aren’t the metaphorical punching bag Transamerica‘s Felicity Huffman (for once a woman– though a cis one–in a dress: perhaps why she didn’t win as many awards) played either.

ZaharaNonDrag — “Zahara Montiere” out of drag

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rftiozFCa8″ iv_load_policy=”3″]

Tangerine, a comedy (directed by Sean Baker who also co-wrote the script with Chris Bergoch) that had its premiere at Sundance is about trans women of color sex workers and has been getting some surprisingly glowing reviews. Maybe because I kept comparing it to Mala Mala, I was disappointed. I can see what people reacted to: the two main characters, Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) and Alexandra (Mya Taylor) are vivid and funny (and played by talented, trans women). The film is also stunning to look at: co-cinematographers Baker and Radium Cheung give us a Los Angeles that has never looked more crisp and unforgiving in its sunniness, especially amazing considering the film was shot entirely on iPhones (equipped with special lenses, but still). Perhaps those who love this film were reminded of the early work of John Waters or Pedro Almodóvar, but those two, at least before they became big-time directors were part of milieu they made films about, which isn’t the impression I get about Baker (who has also worked as a TV producer). Some of the interplay between the characters seems pretty generic: the plot, if there is one, focuses on Sin-Dee trying to track down the woman (“A real bitch with vagina and everything”) Sin-Dee’s pimp, Chester, “cheated” on her with. Waters and Almodóvar didn’t have the tightest plots in their early films either (one of Waters’ films centered on Divine getting “cha-cha heels”), but the details seemed more acutely observed–and nobody said about their films, when they were first released, that they seemed like anyone else’s.

Tangerine has some good comic moments: I was especially taken with a scene, shot from the inside of the front windshield, of a blow job received during a car wash and Rodriguez’s peerless reading of lines like “I promise, I promise” in response to Alexandra asking her to not cause “drama” But we see how little we know about Alexandra and Sin-Dee’s interior lives when we spend time with Armenian immigrant cab-driver, Razmik (Karren Karagulian). Unlike the rest of the characters, Razmik has the ability to surprise us and to make us wonder what he’s thinking–or what he’ll do next. A film with trans women actresses this good shouldn’t have a cis man be its most interesting character. If trans women start making their own films with iPhones, maybe we’ll see characters that match these women’s talents.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALSwWTb88ZU” iv_load_policy=”3″]

___________________________________________________

‘Kate Bornstein is a Queer and Pleasant Danger’: A Portrait With Missing Pieces

We have to turn to documentaries to find transfeminine characters in film who are fully formed (and also actually played by transfeminine people) whether they are the stars of ‘Paris Is Burning,’ the lesser known (but still excellent) solo portrait ‘Split’ or are part of the protagonist’s life as seen in ‘Southern Comfort.’ Trans director Sam Feder’s ‘Kate Bornstein is a Queer and Pleasant Danger’ (although it is named after Bornstein’s memoir the film is not an adaptation of the book) is the long overdue documentary on trans performer, writer and thinker Kate Bornstein (and will play as part of Outfest in Los Angeles on July 12).

When I was a kid, one of the first trans* characters (the asterisk denotes the spectrum of gender identity) I saw onscreen was at a drive-in: she used martial arts to kick the shit out of some cisgender straight guy and held a gun to the head of another. If you haven’t actually seen Freebie and the Bean (and you shouldn’t), you might think those scenes sound pretty cool, but that character (and I’m using the word loosely) is one in a long line of dangerous, deceptive, twisted trans* women. The revelation that a “man” is wearing a wig and a dress while killing or assaulting victims–as in Psycho or later in Dressed To Kill and Silence of the Lambs–is a “shocking” twist, meant to further repulse the audience.

Recent efforts haven’t fared much better: films have just traded one trope for another. Instead of the evil trans* woman we now have the suffering trans* woman whose main function is to endure whatever cruelty and degradation the filmmakers wish to throw at her in Transamerica or the recent Dallas Buyers Club, a film I haven’t seen out of principle (I was on the fringes of AIDS activism in the 90s: straight men weren’t the protagonists of that story), but which seems predicated on a trans woman suffering and acting as a human sacrifice so the formerly transphobic “straight” guy star can show the audience how compassionate and accepting he’s become.

We have to turn to documentaries to find transfeminine characters in film who are fully formed (and also actually played by transfeminine people) whether they are the stars of Paris Is Burning, the lesser known (but still excellent) solo portrait Split or are part of the protagonist’s life as seen in Southern Comfort. Trans director Sam Feder’s Kate Bornstein is a Queer and Pleasant Danger (although it is named after Bornstein’s memoir the film is not an adaptation of the book) is the long overdue documentary on trans performer, writer and thinker Kate Bornstein (and will play as part of Outfest in Los Angeles on July 12).

Bornstein–with her trademark Anna Wintour bob, facial piercings, tattoos, and multicolored glasses–is someone whose work is as distinctive as her appearance. I’ve seen and heard her many times through the years, mostly in performances, readings and interviews, but I’ve read just a small fraction of her impressive output. So in a lot of ways, I felt like I either knew not enough or too much to be part of the intended audience for this film. Occasionally the film would tell me something I didn’t already know, as when we find out Bornstein’s first person account and resource about staying alive in spite of suicidal thoughts: Hello Cruel World was dedicated to a friend’s son who had killed himself. But more often as the film acts as a kind of “Kate Bornstein 101” we see performances and listen in on readings that are familiar to many of us. I would’ve liked more of Kate (or someone) reading the work she usually doesn’t include in her performances and readings.

The sequence in which Bornstein talks about her estranged daughter, Jessica, with the woman who is the daughter’s biological mother just left me with more questions. Both parents were Scientologists at the time and because the daughter is still active in Scientology she is forbidden from seeing Bornstein, but what of her other mother? We don’t find out, the same way we don’t find out why a pre-transition Bornstein was a single parent for part of Jessica’s very early life.

We feel the ache Bornstein has for the absence of her daughter (and grandchildren, whom she has never met) 40 years after she last spent time with Jessica. Perhaps partly because of this loss, Bornstein takes on the role of actively encouraging and nurturing younger transfolk. She says she looks forward to the world these 22-year-olds will preside over, and it’s them she’s talking about when she asserts she would like to be remembered as “someone who looked after her kids.” But in spite of the mutual love she and the younger generation of trans people have for one another, like a lot of loving parents, Bornstein seems, at times, to have trouble listening to her children. Bornstein, along with other prominent transfolk of her generation, Mx Justin Vivian Bond and Jack Halberstam defends the label “tr*nny”–but in the film she seems to confuse the word with trans identity itself, which is puzzling since Bornstein was one of the first public figures to identify primarily as “trans” instead of as a man or woman– a decision she explains during a performance/lecture captured in the film.

kate-bornsteinphotosession — Kate during a photo session

Like the other well-known trans people who wish to celebrate the word “tr*nny,” she doesn’t distinguish between being able to claim the label for herself and using it for other trans people–especially trans women–who consider the word a slur. Some who advocate for its use have likened “tr*nny” to “queer” which was also once a controversial, reappropriated label (one that still makes many straight people uncomfortable), but the difference is that “trans” can pretty much always be used instead of “tr*nny”, but “queer” isn’t always interchangeable with the more respectable “LGBT”: a lot of us who identify as “queer women” would object to being called “lesbian,” “bisexual,” or the completely clueless “gay.” A better analogous word to “tr*nny” might be “f*ggot” which some gay men call themselves but don’t wish those outside their community to call them–ever.

Bornstein has had a lot of influence, not just on younger trans people, which we see, but also on other trans writers and performers, none of whom are interviewed in the film. Instead we see repeat scenes of Bornstein in her brownstone apartment, interacting with her animals. I spend a lot of my time petting my cat and telling her how wonderful she is too, but in a fairly short film about someone with as many ideas as Bornstein has (and as many different types of lives she’s led), including more than one of these scenes seems like wasted time.

We also don’t see the sea change that has happened in the past few years: instead of white people (most of them, except for Bornstein and a few others, transmasculine) at the forefront of trans visibility and advocacy, as they were in the 1990s and 2000s, now women of color like Janet Mock and Laverne Cox are the face of the trans community. And because those women have a larger platform than writers and performers like Bornstein ever had (Mock is a former editor at People.com and Cox is featured in the wildly popular Netflix show Orange Is The New Black), more people know them, following them on Twitter and their appearances in the media. And as Bornstein has made trans suicide an issue she tries to draw attention to, Cox and Mock have both used their fame to publicize issues the mainstream media might not otherwise cover–and which white trans activists have also been slow to rally around, like the unjust imprisonment of trans women of color Cece McDonald and Jane Doe. So seeing Bornstein portrayed in a vacuum in the film is frustrating. We see her with friends, with her partner Barbara Carrellas, adoring college-age audiences and in one blink-and-you-miss-it scene the men behind Original Plumbing who acknowledge their debt to her, saying, “You came before us and carved out space.” But we don’t really see or hear prominent trans activists and public figures talk in any depth about her influence on their own work and lives–even those who have written and talked about that influence elsewhere. This omission seems especially glaring since Bornstein herself has publicly expressed admiration, on Twitter and elsewhere, for those who have come after her.

Know what makes me proud? @janetmock grand marshal #SFPride, @Lavernecox grand marshal #nycpride. Wow. #NeverThoughtIdLiveToSeeTheDay #trans

— Kate Bornstein (@katebornstein) June 30, 2014

Though Bornstein has had a litany of serious health problems in recent years, we still see her with a vaporizer pen for much of the film (she quit smoking and vaping in 2012 after a cancer diagnosis). At the end Kate faces a health crisis and comes to an epiphany. She states, “For the first time in my life I realize I want to stay…I’m doing everything I can to make that happen.” As a coda we find out her current prognosis is good. She might just live long enough to see those college kids in charge after all.

Trailer for Kate Bornstein Is a Queer and Pleasant Danger from sam feder on Vimeo.

____________________________

Editor’s note: corrections have been made from the original review, which made it sound as if Bornstein continued to smoke after a cancer diagnosis; she quit the day she found out.

___________________________________________________

Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks has appeared in The Toast, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender.