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Tracing the History of Trans Filmmaking with the Transgender Media Portal

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Tracing the History of Trans Filmmaking with the Transgender Media Portal TRACING THE HISTORY OF TRANS FILMMAKING WITH THE TRANSGENDER MEDIA PORTAL LAURA HORAK @TheLorak TransgenderMediaPortal.org @TransMediaPortl CARLETON UNIVERSITY, ALGONQUIN TERRITORY ALL ATTENTION GOES TO CIS-MADE WORK vs Trans artists have made thousands of films and videos—incredible, funny, devastating, aesthetically innovative work in all different genres. But this work can be hard to find. TRANS WORK NOT BEING ARCHIVED From The Transvestite Today (1987) at the Transgender Archives at the University of Victoria HIGHLIGHTS FROM 100 YEARS OF TRANS FILMMAKING THE SILENT ERA (1890S-1930S) “Trans and cinema have grown up together.” – Susan Stryker in Disclosure (2020) Writer Karl Martha Baer Performer Edna AKA Billy Foster AKA N. O. Body American child actor (active 1911-1915) German-Jewish trans intersex man 29 films, mostly boy roles 1907 autobiography, Memoirs of a Man’s “They always give me boy parts and I Maiden Years, adapted to film in 1919 like them better than just being a girl.” 1950S: SPECTACULAR TRANS FEMININITIES Christine Jorgensen greeting Director Ed Wood the NYC press in 1953 as Glen in Glen or Glenda (1953) 1960S & 1970S: COUNTERCULTURE & EDUCATORS • Flawless Sabrina’s The Queen (1968) • Warhol superstars Candy Darling, Jackie Curtis, and Holly Woodlawn • John Waters’ early films with Divine • Wendy Carlos: A Clockwork Orange (1971), The Shining (1980), TRON (1982) 1960S & 1970S: COUNTERCULTURE & EDUCATORS • Erickson Educational Foundation • I Am Not This Body (1970) Erickson Educational Foundation Newsletter 3, no. 2 (Fall 1970): 2. 1990S: FIRST TRANS FILM FESTIVALS Toronto, Ontario London, England San Francisco, California September 12, 1997 October 29 – November 2, 1997 November 22, 1997 2000S & 2010S: RISE OF AMATEURS & PROS • Over 800,000 trans-made YouTube videos • YouTube celebs: NikkiTutorials, Gigi Gorgeous, Nikita Dragun, MilesChronicles, etc. • Web series: Her Story, Eden’s Garden, These Thems, Razor Tongue 2000S & 2010S: RISE OF AMATEURS & PROS • Hollywood: Janet Mock, Laverne Cox, Zackary Drucker, Sam Feder, Silas Howard • Yance Ford nominated for Academy Award in 2018 Yance Ford BUILDING THE TRANSGENDER MEDIA PORTAL GOALS 1. Make trans-made film more available 2. Research landscape of trans filmmaking • What kinds of aesthetic, generic, and narrative strategies have trans filmmakers used? • How has trans-made cinema changed over time? • What kinds of arts infrastructures have made it possible for trans people to create audiovisual work? • How have trans-made films circulated and how have these circuits been created and sustained? STAGE 1 (NOW) • Public website TransgenderMediaPortal.org • List of BIPOC trans filmmakers • “Support Trans Artists” • Bibliographies • Syllabi • Pilot private database • Records for Filmmakers, Films, Festivals, Archives, Distributors, Funding Bodies • 1536 records—566 people and 476 films STAGE 2 (FALL 2023) • Database open to the public • Search and browse all database records • Public able to add, edit, and delete content • Edit-a-thons at trans and LGBT film festivals MAKING THE TMP A TRANS TECHNOLOGY 1. Involving trans people in every part of process 2. Designing to meet stated needs of trans filmmakers, programmers, students & activists 3. Paying trans RAs, speakers & testers quickly and well 4. Materially supporting trans artists DATA ABOUT PEOPLE’S IDENTITIES • Open vocabularies • Multiple values • No standard vocabularies (at this point) • Maintain specificity of language • Prioritize language coming out of grassroots communities not institutions • Deadnames: Included in records but hidden CHALLENGES • Messy metadata • Interoperability • Data analysis • White-dominated research team See trans user feedback and our project’s commitments to BIPOC trans leadership in our usability test report on Humanities Commons https://hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:30641/ Go to: carleton.ca/TransMediaLab carleton.ca/TransMediaLab TransgenderMediaPortal.org @TransMediaPortl.
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