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May 1, 2006

Documenting Their Lives: LGBTIQ Identities

This program featured compelling and thought-provoking clips from two documentaries about LGBTIQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, intersexed, and questioning) teens and families.

The first was a trailer for a forthcoming documentary by Chas Bennett called The Sakia Gunn Project, about a Newark teen who was stalked and murdered in 2003 for being an out African-American lesbian. In spite of the unusual circumstances surrounding her death, Sakia's murder received a tiny fraction of the media coverage accorded to Matthew Shepard's murder in 1998.

Although The Sakia Gunn Project is about Sakia, her family and friends, it also encompasses issues such as segregation within the gay community, poverty, gender bias, race and ethnicity, all of which Bennett and several of his subjects view as contributing factors to the lack of media coverage of Sakia's murder.

The second film showcased was No Dumb Questions, about the responses and reactions three girls have when their Uncle Bill comes out to the family as a transgendered person on the cusp of sexual-reassignment surgery. Each of the girls, ages 11, 8, and 5, responded differently, and were full of wonderful questions about their soon-to-be Aunt Barbara: How would they feel when she came to their house? Would they still feel the same about her as they had about Uncle Bill? Would they be "freaked out", as the oldest girl put it? How would Uncle Bill get rid of his beard and all the hair on his arms, one of them wondered.

The parents handled all questions with aplomb and truly admirable skill. They provided a space for their children to ask any question, and they answered them honestly and openly.

The Sakia Gunn Project is still in editing, but Mr. Bennett hopes to release it by May 2007. You can track his progress at The Sakia Gunn Film Project online. No Dumb Questions is available on VHS from NoDumbQuestions.com.

The LGBTI Roundtable prepared many excellent handouts, included a transgender filmography, a webliography of transgender-related websites, a booklist of transgender nonfiction, and perhaps most useful of all on a daily basis, a glossary of LGBTI terms. I'll post again when they are available at njla.org.

Posted by at May 1, 2006 9:41 AM

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