Transgressions

A "trans-gression" film brings controversy to QFest.

by Molly Eichel

TOTWK, a grindhouse-inspired satire, is about a group of five transÂsexual women (played by three trans­ women and two transÂvestites, like Belli) who are violently and graphically beaten by a Southern psycho and his cronies. The surviving women take on their brutalizers, visiting similar fates upon them.

Luna, a gay, non-transgendered man, came up with the idea after reading a series of articles about violence against trans women. "The gay community didn't get upset. Their slogan was 'Let's fight hate with love,'" says Luna, "and I was pissed off by that."

When Luna's film was scheduled for the Tribeca Film Festival, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) released a call to action, demanding that the film not be screened. They voiced similar concerns to other trans activists: that the title is pejorative, that trans women are presented as "ridiculous caricatures of 'real women'" and that it glorifies violence against the trans community.

Luna understands that his movie is charged, but the idea that GLAAD didn't even want his film seen concerns him. "I'm OK with someone not liking my movie or not liking me," he says, "but to decide what people can and can't see is 100 percent un-American."

But Ashley Love, trans advocate and an organizer for Media Advocates Giving National Equality to Trans­sexual & Trans­gender People (MAGNET), who wrote a piece about the film for The Huffington Post, doesn't see it that way. "This isn't 'censorship,' yet was falsely concocted as such by the gay male press to drown out the real plight of trans­sexual women, which seeks accountability from exploitative gay producers who cast transsexual women in trans­phobic, 'drag-queeny' and dehumanizing lights, adding to the epidemic of fear and violence directed at them," Love wrote in a statement via e-mail. "The festivals rejecting this film responsibly show social consciousness."

Tribeca screened TOTWK, as will QFest, and the fracas has become free advertising for the film. "I had to send GLAAD flowers," says Luna.

(molly.eichel@citypaper.net)