TransNation Festival announces line-up featuring 'The Queen,' 'Free Cece' and 'Major!'

TransNation Festival announces line-up featuring ‘The Queen,’ ‘Free Cece’ and ‘Major!’

By Tre’vell Anderson

Sept. 15, 2016 8 AM PT

While transgender people are undoubtedly experiencing unprecedented visibility in Hollywood, they’ve always been mainstays on screens large and small. This is the takeaway from the TransNation Festival, which on Thursday announced the lineup for its four-day event in October. Meant to celebrate transgender artistic and cultural achievements, the festival will screen films including 1967’s “The Queen” and 1978’s “In a Year With 13 Moons” as well as the recently premiered documentaries “Free Cece” and “Major!”

Beginning Oct. 20, TransNation will feature more than 20 films representing an almost-50-year span of trans presence in Hollywood. The goal is to not only uplift trans people but also to educate and galvanize the general public to support an underserved population. It will include a film festival, art exhibition and beauty pageant.

The festival is slated to benefit Los Angeles-based organizations that provide services to transgender people, including St. John’s Well Child and Family Center, whose transgender health program staff created the event. St. John’s program is one of the largest in the country. Proceeds will also go to the Imperial Court of Los Angeles and Hollywood’s Nicole Murray Ramirez Scholarship Fund.

Zackary Drucker, an Emmy-nominated producer for the docu-series “This Is Me,” producer of Amazon’s award-winning “Transparent” and a cast member on “I Am Cait,” is serving as guest curator of the film portion, which will take place at the Cinefamily Cinematheque in Hollywood. She said the festival would “encapsulate a range of filmmaking” including “vintage films that have not been situated in the realm of trans representation in cinema as well as new content by trans folks.”

On the older side of films, the documentary “The Queen” and drama “In a Year With 13 Moons” represent rare and underseen repertory trans pictures. “The Queen,” by Frank Simon, is the precursor to “Paris Is Burning,” featuring the drag queens of the Miss All-American Camp Beauty Pageant in New York. It documents the pageant as well as contestant conversations about sexual identity and racism. “In a Year With 13 Moons,” written and directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, is about the last days of a fictional trans woman named Elvira.

Of the newer films, “Free Cece” — which premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival earlier this year -- is about the case of Cece McDonald, a black transgender woman who was sentenced to a male prison after, in defending herself against a physical attack, she killed a man. It’s directed by Jac Gares and executive produced by “Orange Is the New Black’s” Laverne Cox. And “Major!” is a documentary about transgender icon Miss Major Griffin-Gracy from co-director Annalise Ophelian. It won the Outfest Los Angeles audience documentary award as well as a special mention by the judges, who praised the film “for its depiction of undying activism.” Griffin-Gracy is a Stonewall riots veteran who has been advocating on behalf of the trans community for more than 40 years.

TransNation’s events include:

Oct. 20

“Major!,” followed by a Q&A with directors Annalise Ophelian and StormMiguel Florez

“The Contortionist,” directed by Greer Lankton

“Female Trouble,” directed by John Waters

Oct. 21

Industry panel featuring Geena Rocero and Allison Hoffman in conversation with Zackary Drucker

“La Visita,” directed by Mauricio López Fernández

“The Queen,” directed by Frank Simon

“Something Must Break,” directed by Ester Martin Bergsmark

Oct. 23

“In a Year With 13 Moons,” directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder