San Francisco's Transgender Film Festival Explores Life Beyond the Gender Binary

Now in its 23rd year, the world’s first and longest-running transgender and gender non-conforming film festival is taking over the Roxie once more for four days this November.

The array of movies featured this year serve to challenge negative stereotypes, shine a light on the richness and diversity of the transgender community, and to ultimately “build community and engage audiences in cross-community dialogue.”

You can get a taste of what’s to come during this year’s schedule in the preview below:

Film highlights this year include: TRANSFINITE, a sci-fi collection of seven short stories in which a diverse array of queer heroes use their superpowers to thrive; Tender, the story of three black trans women surviving in the Tenderloin; and Denim, the story of a transgender girl being outed by a classmate after an encounter in the school bathroom.

The San Francisco Transgender Film Festival was co-founded in 1997 by Christopher Lee and Alex Austin, after Austin came across a movie about Lee’s gender transition—Christopher’s Chronicles—in the course of producing Oakland’s first LGBT film festival, Alternate Vision.

Lee, who passed away in 2012, is often remembered for being the first trans man to serve as the Grand Marshal at the San Francisco Pride Parade. He was honored earlier this year at the Stonewall National Monument, where he was inducted onto the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor, which remembers “pioneers, trailblazers and heroes” in the community.

Austin and Lee brought on musician, activist and filmmaker Shawna Virago as a co-director in 2003, and she remains artistic director of the Transgender Film Festival today. At the 20th anniversary of the festival, she noted that putting it together every year was an annual labor of love.  “We’ve survived on our trans smarts, sweat,” she said, “and love from our communities.”

The full San Francisco Transgender Film Festival schedule is as follows:
Program 1 (Nov. 7): Transfinite
Program 2 (Nov. 8): The Whistle, Denim
Program 3 (Nov. 9): Sweet and Tender Hooligan, I-57, Feeling Like An Orchid, Consonance, Unbecoming, Trans 128
Program 4 (Nov. 9): Eat Rich, Feminina, To Be With You, Get Off My Terf!, Across, Beyond and Over, This is For Us
Program 5 (Nov. 10): Mark, Tender, Turning, Boiler
Program 6 (Nov. 10):The Drum Tower, Run!, People Like Me, Carving Space, and Honor Black Trans Women!.

Note: Screenings on Nov. 7 and 8 will include closed captioning and ASL interpretations.