Now for another installment from the English 227 LGBT broadcast.
Southern Comfort, directed by Kate Davis and released in 2001, is a documentary detailing the lives and journeys of Robert Eads and the people dear to him.
Honestly, much of this film seemed to me to go hand in hand with Freeheld. The connections between them are monotonously obvious, but my mind drew them nevertheless: in both, the person who is the primary focus of the piece is battling terminal cancer and both have themes of struggle against and rejection from parts of the larger "normative" societies they live in. However, Southern Comfort has a host of themes and issues all its own.
For one, it centers around the lives and struggles of Transfolk, who, we discussed several times in class, are "a minority within a minority," especially where education and awareness are concerned. There seems on a whole to be less opportunity for Transfolk to form their own communities, become established as an identity, and be accepted outside of the larger LGB superminority. In a way, Southern Comfort is a motion against this lack of proverbial social screentime.
The film takes its name from another institution which is working towards stronger Transfolk communities, the convention Southern Comfort. It is the largest conference of its kind in the United States and has a reputation of safety and inclusiveness for all LGBT people.
Throughout the documentary, Robert and the people nearest and dearest to him - his "chosen family," as he would say - discuss the issues and concepts of passing, identity formation, rejection, acceptance, self-creation, and the attempt at forging the ideal community. All of these are legitimate, important, and exceedingly prone to triggering conversation (or debate).
Like Freeheld, Southern Comfort is poignant, heart-felt, and vivid, and, also like Freeheld, I would absolutely recommend it.
Links
IMDb
Wiki, both for the film and the convention
Postscript!
Fun Fact for all you Grammar Geeks:
I have it on very good authority that
Transgender is an adjective.
Transsexual is a noun.
And don't let Dictionary.com tell you otherwise!
Showing posts with label documentary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label documentary. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Freeheld
This was one of the many films we watched in my English GLBT literature class.
Released in 2007, Freeheld was directed and produced by Cynthia Wade, with the help of additional producers Matthew Syrett and Vanessa Roth. It has won several awards, including the Academy Award for Best Short Documentary in 2008. Significant, suspenseful, and heartfelt, the documentary tells the story of Lieutenant Laurel Hester, a policewoman dying of lung cancer who is, despite it, fighting for the right to leave her pension to her partner, Stacie against the ruling of the Ocean County, New Jersey Board of Chosen Freeholders.
This film is shot with a brutal sort of honesty. Little is withheld, especially with regards to the physical and emotional deterioration of both Laurel and Stacie as their - and their community's - campaign against the Freeholders goes on. While Freeheld can be very empowering in the regard that a community comes together to try and make a difference in the face of adversity and discrimination, it is also starkly grounding: after all, 2007 was not that long ago.
I would recommend this film for all of these reasons, especially for its down to earth, unyielding honesty about the nature of communities, the nature of the American court system of not very long ago at all, and especially the nature of the human condition at its most sensitive time - at its close.
Additional Information at:
IMDb
Wikipedia
Released in 2007, Freeheld was directed and produced by Cynthia Wade, with the help of additional producers Matthew Syrett and Vanessa Roth. It has won several awards, including the Academy Award for Best Short Documentary in 2008. Significant, suspenseful, and heartfelt, the documentary tells the story of Lieutenant Laurel Hester, a policewoman dying of lung cancer who is, despite it, fighting for the right to leave her pension to her partner, Stacie against the ruling of the Ocean County, New Jersey Board of Chosen Freeholders.
This film is shot with a brutal sort of honesty. Little is withheld, especially with regards to the physical and emotional deterioration of both Laurel and Stacie as their - and their community's - campaign against the Freeholders goes on. While Freeheld can be very empowering in the regard that a community comes together to try and make a difference in the face of adversity and discrimination, it is also starkly grounding: after all, 2007 was not that long ago.
I would recommend this film for all of these reasons, especially for its down to earth, unyielding honesty about the nature of communities, the nature of the American court system of not very long ago at all, and especially the nature of the human condition at its most sensitive time - at its close.
Additional Information at:
IMDb
Wikipedia
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Paris is Burning
I must ask for your forgiveness, world at large! I am presenting my reviews out of order. Fie and for shame!
Paris is Burning is a documentary I encountered through my English 227 class. Directed by Jennie Livingston and released in 1990, it chronicles the lives of New York's underclass of the late 1980s, namely the attendees of 'Balls' - events some of us might argue could be called Drag Shows. The film has received twelve very well-deserved awards, and is considered one of Miramax Films' earliest successes.
I think my favorite part of this documentary is that it presents the viewer with vocabulary - words like House, Reading, Shade, Voguing, and Mopping - and educates the viewer not only through explanations offered by the Ball-goers, but through demonstration. My second favorite part is that it represents so totally and unabashedly a slice of life which is so often swept under the carpet, and not just in the sense that it deals with people who have sexual, gender, or image identities which are counter to what is considered socially "normative." It also has a lot of statements to make about oppression based on other forms of identity, especially race. The quote that honestly stuck with me the most throughout the whole film speaks to all of the above. The shot, I recall, was of a young man standing on the sidewalk in the pseudo-night of New York city, and he said: "I remember my dad - he'd say you have three strikes against you in this world. Every black man has two - that they are black and they are male. But you're a black and you're a male and you're gay.... If you're gonna do this, you're gonna have to be stronger than you ever imagined." Something in those words, for me, epitomized the struggles prevalent in the whole film. Not even in the specifics of it, just in that simple phrase, "You're gonna have to be stronger than you ever imagined."
It's a wonderful piece of work. I would love to own it, to see it again, to talk to scores of people about it and get their thoughts. It made me want to go to New York and see what I can, two decades later, and sort through the city for traces of that culture.
Interested? Check it out!
IMDb
Wiki
Paris is Burning is a documentary I encountered through my English 227 class. Directed by Jennie Livingston and released in 1990, it chronicles the lives of New York's underclass of the late 1980s, namely the attendees of 'Balls' - events some of us might argue could be called Drag Shows. The film has received twelve very well-deserved awards, and is considered one of Miramax Films' earliest successes.
I think my favorite part of this documentary is that it presents the viewer with vocabulary - words like House, Reading, Shade, Voguing, and Mopping - and educates the viewer not only through explanations offered by the Ball-goers, but through demonstration. My second favorite part is that it represents so totally and unabashedly a slice of life which is so often swept under the carpet, and not just in the sense that it deals with people who have sexual, gender, or image identities which are counter to what is considered socially "normative." It also has a lot of statements to make about oppression based on other forms of identity, especially race. The quote that honestly stuck with me the most throughout the whole film speaks to all of the above. The shot, I recall, was of a young man standing on the sidewalk in the pseudo-night of New York city, and he said: "I remember my dad - he'd say you have three strikes against you in this world. Every black man has two - that they are black and they are male. But you're a black and you're a male and you're gay.... If you're gonna do this, you're gonna have to be stronger than you ever imagined." Something in those words, for me, epitomized the struggles prevalent in the whole film. Not even in the specifics of it, just in that simple phrase, "You're gonna have to be stronger than you ever imagined."
It's a wonderful piece of work. I would love to own it, to see it again, to talk to scores of people about it and get their thoughts. It made me want to go to New York and see what I can, two decades later, and sort through the city for traces of that culture.
Interested? Check it out!
IMDb
Wiki
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