Directed by G. Chesler • Documentary • 2024 • 85 minutes
In an airborne pandemic when separation, isolation, and self-sufficiency became the punishing norm, many trans people faced the COVID-19 era differently. Connection | Isolation presents eight portraits of trans and post-gender people who cultivate community in this pandemic. The film also highlights how the pandemic gave some trans people more space to explore and understand their identities, community, and bodies.
Between portraits, we depict elegiac (re)enactments performed by trans people revisiting their core COVID-era memories: washing masks, wiping down groceries with disinfectant, and traveling alone to work at the hospital in an empty city. Archival moments flow into these scenes - news reports, memes that made us laugh, and web seminars on community care. Trans and queer people - a community most impacted by pandemics like HIV/AIDS- have built a culture undergirded by mutual aid. This became a model for resilience and care in the pandemic for those who listened. This film follows in that legacy.
Up Next in Trans Stories
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Tales of the Waria
Directed by Kathy Huang • Documentary • 2011 • 57 minutes
Indonesia is home to the world’s largest Muslim population. It is also home to a transgender community known as warias, biological men who live openly as women. TALES OF THE WARIA follows four characters from this little-known community a...
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Dressed in Blue (Vestida de Azul)
Directed by Antonio Giménez Rico • Documentary • 1983 • 98 minutes
One of the best trans films you’ve likely never heard of, Antonio Giménez-Rico’s landmark 1983 documentary Dressed in Blue (Vestida de Azul) explores the lives and loves of a group of six transgender women living in Madrid in the...
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P.S. Burn This Letter Please
Directed by Michael Seligman & Jennifer Tiexiera • Documentary • With Michael Alogna, Henry Arango • 2022 • 101 minutes
A demi-monde that would have been lost to time were it not for the chance find of a treasure trove of letters in a storage bin in LA. Written by drag queens all using aliases t...
