Trans Cinema: Making Communities, Identities, and Worlds

This expansive overview from Horak (Girls Will Be Boys), a film studies professor at Carleton University, analyzes films and videos made by transgender creators in the U.S. and Canada from the 1990s to the 2020s, demonstrating that “trans filmmaking can create new worlds of possibility.” She begins by examining harmful stereotypes in mainstream media, noting trans characters have historically been used to provoke laughter, fear, or pity. The rise of trans activism and creation of trans film festivals in the 1990s led to a burst of trans-made films. This continued into the 2000s with the proliferation of affordable technology like digital cameras, editing software, and online platforms like YouTube, where amateurs could distribute their work. Horak examines key themes in trans-made films, like chosen families; often exiled from their communities of origin, trans people rely on circles of queer friends, as seen in Wu Tsang’s 2012 documentary, Wildness, which explores how a bar in Los Angeles offers community to trans Latina women. Trans-made films also reveal the complex personhood of trans youth, explore sexuality and desire, and grapple with questions of embodiment and transition. Though it occasionally leans on academic jargon, Horak’s survey is impressively comprehensive, as it includes big-budget films as well as short-form videos on TikTok. The result is a significant contribution to trans media studies. (Apr.)