Alon Kol’s feature documentary TRANSFIXED will be presented within the FOCUS section at the Festival du nouveau cinema in Montreal, Canada, on October 14th and Octber 17th. In the film Martine Stonehouse and John Gelmon are middle-aged underdogs, living with Asperger Syndrome. Despite their social limitations, both dream of getting married, but straight-identifying John refuses to tie the knot until transsexual Martine gets a real vagina. Will Martine and John find together the happiness that they deserve? Transfixed will be released in Canada in early 2016.
Throughout his life, Martine Stonehouse fought for his rights as transgender. His spouse John Gelmone, Asperger’s syndrome and Tourette’s unconditional support. But the two can not consummate their love Martine must undergo the final sex change operation. Although the director Alon Kol had enough material to trace the route of the activist awarded the Pride Award of Toronto in 2012, he chose instead to present the difficult Martine path toward its complete transformation into a woman. A difficult road since even if it is surrounded by friends that show him gratitude and affection, his weight problem, highlighted by several experts, represents a dangerous obstacle to his surgery and his health. Without compromise or complacency documentary Kol enters the intimacy of this woman and reveals a fragile but an unrivaled determination. Forget the prestige Caitlin Jenner; the portrait offers the filmmaker is that of a woman whose daily lives are much more modest and the economic situation certainly more precarious, but the narrative is no less upsetting. While the transgender community is recognized as never before, Martine Stonehouse itself as a heroine to be welcomed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJrLhGOwqsILGBTQ
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‘Straight’ John Refuses to Marry Transexual Martine Until She Gets a Real Vagina in Trans Documentary TRANSFIXED | TRAILER
Alon Kol’s feature documentary TRANSFIXED will be presented within the FOCUS section at the Festival du nouveau cinema in Montreal, Canada, on October 14th and Octber 17th. In the film Martine Stonehouse and John Gelmon are middle-aged underdogs, living with Asperger Syndrome. Despite their social limitations, both dream of getting married, but straight-identifying John refuses to tie the knot until transsexual Martine gets a real vagina. Will Martine and John find together the happiness that they deserve? Transfixed will be released in Canada in early 2016.
Throughout his life, Martine Stonehouse fought for his rights as transgender. His spouse John Gelmone, Asperger’s syndrome and Tourette’s unconditional support. But the two can not consummate their love Martine must undergo the final sex change operation. Although the director Alon Kol had enough material to trace the route of the activist awarded the Pride Award of Toronto in 2012, he chose instead to present the difficult Martine path toward its complete transformation into a woman. A difficult road since even if it is surrounded by friends that show him gratitude and affection, his weight problem, highlighted by several experts, represents a dangerous obstacle to his surgery and his health. Without compromise or complacency documentary Kol enters the intimacy of this woman and reveals a fragile but an unrivaled determination. Forget the prestige Caitlin Jenner; the portrait offers the filmmaker is that of a woman whose daily lives are much more modest and the economic situation certainly more precarious, but the narrative is no less upsetting. While the transgender community is recognized as never before, Martine Stonehouse itself as a heroine to be welcomed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJrLhGOwqsI
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Magnolia Pictures, Duplass Brothers Launch TANGERINE Oscar Campaign for Transgender Stars
Magnolia Pictures and the Duplass Brothers are launching an Oscar campaign for TANGERINE stars Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor, reports Variety. This will reportedly be the first awards season push for transgender actress by a movie distributor in Hollywood history. Rodriguez will be pushed as Lead Actress and Taylor as Supporting. They plan on bids for screenwriting and cinematography for the film as well.
TANGERINE directed by Sean Baker, was released earlier this Summer via Magnolia Pictures, and earned a lot of well deserved attention for not only featuring transgender actresses in prominent roles, but also for its technical feat – it was shot on an iPhone 5s. The film follows a prostitute, who’s just released from prison, and headed to Tinseltown on Christmas Eve searching for the pimp who broke her heart.
Mark Duplass points out that AMPAS is behind the various TV academies in terms of recognizing trans actors; he tells Variety, “Jay and I are new to the Academy, so we’re just figuring this whole thing out. One thing that has become apparent to us as we look at this stuff, it seems that the TV Academy has embraced what’s happening in the trans movement with ‘Transparent’ and ‘Orange is the New Black.’ We feel that the film Academy is a little behind on that front.”
This TANGERINE campaign offers a vital counterpoint to “Oscar bait” campaigns in which straight, cisgender, white actors portray trans characters. Mark Duplass tells Variety of this counterpoint, “This is the time for it. We’re in the middle of a civil rights movement.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALSwWTb88ZU
It’s Christmas Eve in Tinseltown and Sin-Dee (newcomer Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) is back on the block. Upon hearing that her pimp boyfriend (James Ransone, STARLET, “Generation Kill”) hasn’t been faithful during the 28 days she was locked up, the working girl and her best friend, Alexandra (newcomer Mya Taylor), embark on a mission to get to the bottom of the scandalous rumor. Their rip-roaring odyssey leads them through various subcultures of Los Angeles, including an Armenian family dealing with their own repercussions of infidelity. Director Sean Baker’s prior films (STARLET, PRINCE OF BROADWAY) brought rich texture and intimate detail to worlds seldom seen on film. Shot on an iPhone 5s, TANGERINE follows suit, bursting off the screen with energy and style. A decidedly modern Christmas tale told on the streets of L.A., TANGERINE defies expectation at every turn.
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CAROL, I AM MICHAEL, SWORN VIRGIN Among Films on 2015 Chicago International Film Festival LGBTQ+ Lineup
The 51st Chicago International Film Festival (Oct. 15-29) announced the lineup for OUT-Look, its competitive LGBTQ+ program that showcases new artistic perspectives on sexuality and identity. The international OUT-Look program is inclusive of a variety of LGBTQ+ experiences, ranging from Carol (pictured above), the story of a love affair between a wealthy housewife (Cate Blanchett) and a young shop clerk (Rooney Mara, winner of the Best Actress award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival) to I Am Michael, based on the controversial true story of Michael Glatze, a one-time gay-rights activist turned straight, conservative pastor. I Am Michael features outstanding performances by James Franco and Zachary Quinto.
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Rodrigo Bellott, Erin Greenwell and Mylo Mendez Win Queer/Art/Mentorship Fellowships in Film
Queer/Art/Mentorship, the multi-disciplinary, inter-generational arts program that pairs and supports mentorship between emerging and established LGBTQI artists in NYC, has announced the eleven Fellows accepted for its 2015-2016 annual mentorship cycle.
The Fellows chosen in five artistic disciplines are Monstah Black, Eva Peskin and Justine Williams in Performance; Jacob Matkov and Brendan Williams-Childs in Literary; Rodrigo Bellott, Erin Greenwell and Mylo Mendez in Film; Caroline Wells Chandler and Doron Langberg in Visual Arts; and Hugh Ryan in Curatorial.
The 2015-2016 Queer/Art/Mentorship Fellows in Film are
Rodrigo Bellott was born in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. His breakout film, Sexual Dependency won over 15 awards in over 65 film festivals around the world and was also Bolivia’s first film competing for “Best Foreign Language Film” at the 2004 Academy Awards. VARIETY magazine named Bellott as one of the “TOP TEN Latin American Talents to Watch”.
Bellott will be working with Mentor, filmmaker Silas Howard on the film adaptation of his play Tu Me Manques, that explores contemporary queer identity in the moment of historical change in contrast with the current situations in other parts of the world.
Erin Greenwell wrote and directed the feature film My Best Day, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2012. Her other directing endeavors include Oh Come On, a punk DIY performance video for Kathleen Hanna’s band The Julie Ruin and The Golden Age of Hustlers, featuring Justin Vivian Bond’s remake of the iconic song written by legendary punk chanteuse Bambi Lake. In 2006, Greenwell formed Smithy Productions, a production company, with the aim of cultivating talents from the queer/independent art community under the umbrella of narrative and documentary storytelling.
Greenwell will be working with Mentor, director and screenwriter Stacie Passon to develop her narrative feature length script, The Flight Deck, based on the butch/femme lesbian bar scene in Buffalo, NY during the 1950s.
Mylo Mendez is a Texas-born video artist currently based in Brooklyn. Hir work uses humor, narrative, and characters with aberrant bodies to navigate identity, social and geographical borders, and history. Mendez has been featured in group shows in New York City and Austin. Ze received hir MFA from Parsons The New School for Design.
Mendez will be working with Mentor, filmmaker Thomas Allen Harris on a film about the intersection of trans and punk identities and communities in New York City.
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2015 AFI Latin American Film Festival to Open with Lesbian Romantic Drama SAND DOLLARS | TRAILER
The 2015 AFI Latin American Film Festival taking place at the historic AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center in Silver Spring, Maryland from September 17 to October 7, opens with the romantic drama SAND DOLLARS, based on the novel “Les Dollars des Sables” by Jean-Noël Pancrazi. SAND DOLLARS is the fourth film by directors Laura Amelia Guzmán and Israel Cárdenas (COCOCHI, JEAN GENTIL), and stars Geraldine Chaplin (DOCTOR ZHIVAGO, THE ORPHANAGE) as a wealthy foreign tourist who is head over heels for a much-younger local woman. The film was recently announced as the Dominican Republic’s Official Academy Award® Submission.
In the picturesque seaside town of Las Terrenas, French expat Anne (Geraldine Chaplin, DOCTOR ZHIVAGO) has fallen in love with the much younger local, Noeli (Yanet Mojica). But the feeling isn’t exactly mutual — Noeli makes a living scamming off the kindness of tourists. She shares her earnings with her boyfriend, whom she passes off to Anne as her brother. Things become complicated when Anne promises to take Noeli back to France with her.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HeEPnn7ioE
The Closing Night film, TRASH, directed by Stephen Daldry (BILLY ELLIOT, THE HOURS) and written by Richard Curtis (LOVE ACTUALLY, WAR HORSE), follows three trash-picking boys from Rio de Janeiro who team up with two American missionaries, Martin Sheen (THE WEST WING) and Rooney Mara (THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, THE SOCIAL NETWORK), to uncover political corruption.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VN08JrXZ9eM
Other highlights include MESSI, a docudrama about the world’s greatest soccer player; the U.S. premiere of Colombia’s ALIAS MARÍA, straight from its debut at the Cannes Film Festival; Kristen Wiig (BRIDESMAIDS) in NASTY BABY, a Brooklyn-set dark comedy from Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Silva; and WITHOUT WINGS, the first U.S. feature to be made in Cuba since 1959.
The complete schedule of the 2015 AFI Latin American Film Festival is available online.
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Elle Fanning is Transgender Teen in ABOUT RAY to World Premiere at Toronto Film Fest | TRAILER
The Weinsten Company has released the official trailer for ABOUT RAY directed by Gaby Dellal and World Premiere as a Special Presentation at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival. The film which features an all star cast including Naomi Watts, Elle Fanning, Susan Sarandon, Sam Trammel, Linda Emond and Tate Donovan will open in theaters on Friday, September 18th.
ABOUT RAY tells the stirring and touching story of a family of three generations living under one roof in New York as they must deal with a life-changing transformation by one that ultimately effects them all. Ray (Elle Fanning) is a teenager who has come to the realization that she isn’t meant to be a girl and has decided to transition from female to male. His single mother, Maggie (Naomi Watts), must track down Ray’s biological father (Tate Donovan) to get his legal consent to allow Ray’s transition. Dolly (Susan Sarandon), Ray’s lesbian grandmother is having a hard time accepting that she now has a grandson. They must each confront their own identities and learn to embrace change and their strength as a family in order to ultimately find acceptance and understanding.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_86baBTbNtU
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Award-Winning Documentary A SINNER IN MECCA Opens September 4 | TRAILER
The award-winning documentary A SINNER IN MECCA, will open in New York on September 4 and Los Angeles on September 11, before expanding to additional markets and VOD. Recently recognized with the 2015 Outfest Grand Jury Award for Best Documentary Feature, A SINNER IN MECCA follows director Parvez Sharma (A Jihad for Love) as the openly gay Muslim filmmaker documents his pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, where filming is strictly prohibited and homosexuality is a crime punishable by death.
A SINNER IN MECCA audaciously enters a world that has been forbidden to non-Muslims for 14 centuries. The filmmaker documents his journey on nothing more than an iPhone and two smuggled, tiny cameras. On these never-before-filmed streets of ancient Mecca, he joins 4 million Muslims, from the majority, peace-loving pilgrims fulfilling a lifelong calling, to brutal jihadists for whom violence is a creed. They have all entered Mecca for the world’s largest pilgrimage: the Hajj.
This film unflinchingly showcases parts of the dangerous ideology that governs today’s ISIS and how much it has in common with Saudi Arabia’s sacred doctrine, Wahabi Islam. Cabals within the secretive Saudi monarchy have allegedly funded both Al-Qaeda and ISIS over the years. On the streets of Mecca, Saudi Arabia’s most famous son, Osama bin Laden, is sometimes referred to as Sheikh Osama, using the prefix for a learned Muslim man. It is into this Saudi Arabia the filmmaker, an openly gay Muslim man, enters. He is looking to find his own place within an Islam he has always known, an Islam that bears no resemblance to the bastardized versions creating havoc around the Muslim world, in almost daily battles in Europe—where the film will be broadcast by two of its biggest television networks, Arte and ZDF—and in North America.
With A SINNER IN MECCA, the Muslims of Islam are given agency to tell the complex, and now violence-marred story of their faith. And in their midst: a longing Muslim, already labeled an infidel, wondering if he can finally secure his place within this religion that condemns him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzshP2k5FMk
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Kenyan LGBT Award-winning Film STORIES OF OUR LIVES to Open 2015 Harlem International Film Festival
Award-winning film STORIES OF OUR LIVES that documents the hidden personal stories of lovers, fighters, rebels and the community histories that characterize the criminalized queer experience in Kenya, will open the 2015 Harlem International Film Festival on September 9.
The filmmakers and cast risked their very lives to bring to life this insightful series of vignettes based on true stories collected for the STORIES OF OUR LIVES project.
STORIES OF OUR LIVES, Nairobi-based visual artist Jim Chuchu‘s first ever feature film, premiered at the 2014 Toronto Film Festival, and also screened at the 2015 Berlin Film Festival, where it won the Teddy Special Jury Award, and 2nd Place Panorama Audience Award, Fiction Film.
The stories in this extraordinary film anthology are united by a commitment to telling the truth about the lives and love of gay and lesbian people in Kenya. In Ask Me Nicely, a pair of schoolgirls, much to their own surprise, fall passionately in love. In Athman, two men working on a tea plantation address the fact that one man’s feelings for his friend have evolved. A young woman dreams of transforming genders, and living openly with her girlfriend. Filmed in chiaroscuro shades of black and white, each story unfolds with an honesty that is heartbreaking in its simplicity. Based on real life experiences that were collected by an artists’ collective in Kenya, the material proved so revelatory that a decision was made to adapt it to the screen. With little more than a couple of lights and a small camera, the crew of actors and technicians made this anthology over the course of eight months. Underneath every story depicted on camera is the reality that even to speak the truth out loud is a dangerous and subversive act. Members of the Collective are still forced to remain anonymous in order to protect themselves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaDs333V-vo The 2015 Harlem International Film Festival runs September 9-13, 2015.
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STONEWALL Official Trailer Faces Backlash From Some in LGBT Community
STONEWALL, a drama about a fictional young man caught up during the 1969 Stonewall Riots, considered the birthplace of the LGBT rights movement, which will World Premiere at the upcoming Toronto Film Festival, followed by a release in the theaters in the US on September 25th, just released its official trailer which is not going over well with some in the LGBT community.
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Indie Comedy GUIDANCE Directed by Pat Mills Sets Release Date of August 21 | TRAILER
GUIDANCE, a comedy film about the downward spiral of a man who has no limits, will open theatrically in New York on Friday, August 21 at The Village East Cinema with a national release to follow. GUIDANCE is the first feature for writer/director Pat Mills, a child actor on the hit kids show “You Can’t Do That On Television”, and stars Pat Mills, Zahra Bentham, Tracey Hoyt, Kevin Hanchard, Alex Ozerov, Eleanor Zichy.
David Gold, 36, a pathologically immature former child actor, has never been able to get over high school. Recently diagnosed with skin cancer, unemployed and with nothing left to lose, he fakes his resume and gets a job as a high school guidance counselor. Quickly winning over the students at Grusin High with his laidback attitude and similar interests, he befriends Jabrielle, a teenaged outcast and soon learns that sometimes you can go too far, especially when it comes to committing a ridiculous crime.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLm0d_3uj4I
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Cast & Crew of TANGERINE to Celebrate Trans Pride at NYC Pride March | TRAILER
TANGERINE director Sean Baker, cast members James Ransone (TV’s “The Wire”), Mya Taylor, Kitana Kiki Rodriguez, along with special surprise guests are all set to celebrate their hit film TANGERINE at the 45th Annual NYC Pride March on Sunday, April 28th. Later that evening, TANGERINE will make its New York debut as the closing night film of BAMcinemaFEST.
TANGERINE premiered at Sundance to critical acclaim and will hit theaters on July 10th
Shot on the iPhone 5s, the stars of the film, Taylor and Rodriguez, are trans actresses playing trans characters.
About the TANGERINE float, Baker says, “We’re excited, honored and ‘proud’ to be part of NYC Pride! Party time!”
At NYC Pride, the cast and crew of TANGERINE will celebrate trans pride, a movement that is getting its overdue public acknowledgment. Spinning on the float will be trans DJ Mursi Layne.
Jere Keys of NYC Pride says of TANGERINE’s participation, “We’re thrilled to have TANGERINE join with over 350 groups who will be marching in this historic year, especially as the film further highlights the amazing diversity of people and issues represented by NYC Pride.”
The first March was held in 1970 and has since become an annual civil rights demonstration. Over the years its purpose has broadened to include recognition of the fight against AIDS and to remember those we have lost to illness, violence and neglect. Magnolia Pictures and cast and crew of TANGERINE are proud to help this tradition endure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALSwWTb88ZU
Image: Actors Mya Taylor, James Ransone and Kitana Kiki Rodriguez; Photo Courtesy of OUT
