They’re people. Gender, race, sexuality are only parts of who people are. We can love people for everything that they are. This is one of the main themes of Still Black: A Portrait of Black Transmen, along with loving yourself and being yourself. This documentary looks into the lives of six African American people that have undergone female to male transitions or identify as transmales.
The film introduces people one at a time in an interview format, only it is artistically rendered by leaving out all questions and responses of the interviewer, leaving only the voice of experience. We hear people’s life stories from the comfort of their own homes.
Kylar Broadus from Columbia, MO used to be a corporate attorney, but after being fired by his company for announcing and beginning his transition he has become an activist for transgender and gender queer people. He tells the story of how hard it is to be something that you’re not and how he struggled every day to dress in “hose and makeup” to comply with his company’s conservative views on image. Now he is an activist and he is finally happy with himself.
Ethan Young of Toledo, OH tells us the story of his transition and the journey he took to find his own identity. After originally believing himself to be a lesbian, he realized that he was a transsexual gay man. Ethan shows us how hard it is to find ourselves in a world that is so set on its views and how one must be brave enough to be oneself, no matter what. Ethan also tells us the story of how dating has changed and how he asks people if they are attracted to him or not. His results are interesting, since many men and women, both gay and straight, still find him attractive.
Jay Welch from Evanston, IL is a poet (a man out for my own heart). He lives and breathes for poetry. He discovered his trans identity while in a relationship with a woman. He says that he just woke up one day and knew that he was meant to be someone else, something he had always known, but never actually understood. Family reactions are always hard to take, but Jay’s father was incredibly supportive, and even happy to have a son. Though Jay is still in the beginning stages of transitioning, his father is happy to help him find a job in construction, help him dress appropritately, and is ‘showing him the ropes,’ so to say, of being a man. Jay’s mother, on the other hand, is taking it badly and feels as if she is losing a daughter. It’s an interesting continuity of opposites, the way people are treated before and after such a huge stage in their lives.
Nicholas Rashad of Chicago, IL is a proud transman that tells us how his journey has affected his life and the lives of his family. His brothers are happy to have a new man in the family and teach him how to date women as a man. His younger sister, however, is not so happy with the transition and is having a hard time with the entire idea.
Louis Mitchell, of Springfield, MO, expresses his feelings about the new stereotypes he must face as a black man as opposed to those of a black woman. The media conveys that black men are either obnoxious rap artists, or street thugs and thieves. Louis says that people are afraid of him now that he is a big black man, and that the media makes it harder for him to be who he is. Another obstacle Louis faced was that of his lesbian partner. Even though they love each other dearly, they were unsure whether his partner would still be attracted to him after the transition. They are still together and they are very open with communication. Louis’ new identity also makes his partner feel as if she is losing her identity as a lesbian. These sorts of issues and stories are the reasons that this documentary is so interesting. It asks questions that one may not think of when considering the hardships and joys of being black transmen in different geographies of the country.
Carl Madgett, also of Chicago, IL, is a preacher at the church “Pillar of Love.” He met his wife through the church and found an incredible amount of support from its loving membership. Carl and his wife were lucky enough to go through the process of artificial insemination, using Carl’s eggs, a sperm donor, and his wife’s uterus. They were given a 0.7% chance of actually conceiving a child and lo and behold they had twin baby girls. The family is now living happily, but like any family they have disagreements every now and then.
Each of these brave men agreed to tell their life stories to an entire generation and provided us with a new view on identity. What we see on people isn’t important, it’s what we see inside them that matters.
After finishing the movie, Gabe and Lauren from the Spectrum Center, facilitated a conversation with the audience. We talked about the different artistic values of the movie, such as it being filmed without any color, unique screen shots, and strange angles. We discussed how the movie made us feel about having an identity that others may not understand or that is different than the “normal” way of doing things. And we talked about what we thought the film was missing, what questions we still had for the men on the screen, and what sorts of experiences we didn’t hear about. I believe that there were only about two people, out of at least thirty, that didn’t say anything during this talk, which was great. Everyone participated and enjoyed themselves.
As if to give us another mission, Jim Toy (founder of the Spectrum Center almost forty years ago and current GLBT activist) asked if anyone knew of any films about people that identify as gender queer (outside the gender binary male-female system). None of us had heard of one, but I’m sure someone will be making such a film in the near future.
The documentary was great. The interviews and characters themselves were amazing, and they were only improved by the unique style of the director. Many different effects, such as splitting the screen, inverting the picture, and having multiple views at once, helped the movie create its own style and mood. The lack of bad commentators and random experts provided us with a closeness that normal documentaries do not have. Instead of hearing what doctors thought of Transmen, we actually heard the men tell their own stories. And that’s what’s important when it comes to issues of identity. It is not who others label you as, but who you are and how you express yourself.
For more information about the film visit
http://stillblackfilm.org/
As always
This is Danny Fob: Artist and Art Reviewer
P.S. sorry for all of the heartwarming lessons talk, but it is MLK week.
