An experimental documentary about the journey from butch dyke to trans man, visual time lapse photography of the filmmaker's beard growing in over a 21 day period in the 1992 when the filmmaker was a butch dyke with a beard, catches up with a poetic v.o. and text ten years later, in 2002, recorded and added to the film as the filmmaker was transitioning to male.

 was shot on my beloved Bolex camera. The film was conceived as a time-lapse documentary film experiment with shots of this once butch dyke filmmaker's beard growing in over a 21-day period in the early 1990's.


At the time it felt like it was a very transgressive act as an artist, transitioning gender, to grow the beard I had felt ashamed of for so many years, using my body to tell a story, coming to terms with the shame of being born Intersex in a creative and empowering way. Ten years later, in 2001, a potent voice over written and performed by the filmmaker after my transition from female to male was added; the film is an experimental documentary account of a butch dyke's journey to trans man, succinctly summing up the complexity of this journey in under 2 minutes. 

 was named one of the ten best trans films by Curve magazine.

Audrey’s Beard

Tien is the first Asian trans man to publicly come out in the Vancouver, then, gay and lesbian community of 2001. In this profound and inspiring film, Tien shares his story as a trailblazing, racialised, transgender immigrant and his journey to discovering his true purpose in life — cultivating and becoming joy.

Becoming Queer Joy

 is a portrait of trans activists Leslie Feinberg and Riki Anne Wilchins who lead a movement to end a trans-exclusionary women's music festival.

 (created by Rhys Ernst, produced by Christine Bebe and presented by Focus Features), 

Frameline Film Festival, San Francisco, CA

Mezipatra Queer Film Festival, Czech Republic

Camp Trans 

Transgender teen, Jazz Jennings, narrates this documentary where young people interview a host of LGBTQ elders who came out in different historical eras from the 1950s through today.

Coming Out: A 50 Year History

In the mid-1990s, the first openly lesbian bar in South Korea, LesBos, opened its doors in Sinchon, Seoul. This documentary follows one of the bar’s proprietors, Myong-woo, whose witty commentary prompts a broader reflection on Seoul’s lesbian scene, and the evolution of the city’s queer spaces over the past five decades. In her feature debut, Kwon Aram documents generational change as she makes connections between past and present: from the 1976 police raid on Chanel, a women-only café that existed in Myeong-dong in the 1970s, to the more recent threat posed by Covid-19 to community solidarity. This is a film about a shared sense of belonging, and shared environments of kinship. Offering a rare insight into Seoul’s often-hidden lesbian history, Home Ground reveals the vibrancy and endurance of South Korea’s queer culture.

Home Ground

In this film I turn my body inside out to create a portal for inner listening. A heart monitor connects my pulse to animate a spotlight that illuminates my body. A contact microphone turns the sound of my breath into a sonic landscape. Exploring entrainment – the phenomenon by which biological rhythms like the heartbeat and breath gradually fall into sync – I invite viewers to tune into their bodies with me.

Inner Dawn

Leslie Feinberg—a long-time, internationally-known activist and award-winning author—came of age as a young butch lesbian in the factories and gay bars of Buffalo, NY in the 1960s. Hir works include Stone Butch Blues, Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman and Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue.

Leslie Feinberg in Buffalo, June 2, 2006

 is a community history project documenting twenty transmasculine people sharing their experiences playing, watching, loving, and building football spaces. From grassroots teams to playing for Manchester United, these vital, underrepresented stories were shared at Centre For Live Art Yorkshire in Leeds in July 2023, accompanied by a panel about the future of trans representation in sports.



 Marlowe is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work focuses on trans and queer historical and community research, writing, and film-making. The basis for their art is to create cases for inclusion, to preserve, uncover, and challenge histories and culture, and to build connections between the community through time and space.

The Offside Project originated when Marlowe was trying to find a football community that shared their experience, and discovering a dearth of transmasculine people. After two years of finalising, Marlowe got to chat with other transmasc people, building connections between our stories and what our futures can look like. During the interview stage of the project, the all-transmasculine football match on Trans Day of Visibility was played, changing the nature of transmasculine invisibility in sport spaces.


Most of the interviews took place over the course of two months, after which fourteen of them were edited into 15-20min audio-visual pieces shown in a gallery space on five different screens. Alongside the exhibition there was a sports-themed drag show featuring the artist and musician Ding Frisby, as well as the films Lotus Sports Club (dir. Vanna Hem)* and Who I Am Now (dir. Jack Goessens), both of which offer international perspectives on transness and sports.


The highlight of the event was a panel about transmasculine futures in football.** Each of the panellists gave a unique perspective on grassroots, professional, and spectator-based challenges in football spaces.** In addition there are interviews with Natalie Washington (Football v Transphobia) and Lucy Clarke (TRUK) about the work they do for the future of trans inclusive football.

*Learn more about Lotus Sports Club in Cambodia and to donate to its continued running


Project Managing, Interviews, Editing/Subtitling/Transcription, Event planning and hosting: Marlowe Mitchell
Interview production (London): Rico Jacob Chase
Creative Producer: Kit Miles
Social media: Robyn Leadbeater
Panel filming and editing/subtitling: SABLE (Leeds)
Event managing: Jessica Sweet (Centre for Live Art Yorkshire)
Oral histories training: Laura Mitchison, On The Record
Archiving: Otherness Archive, Bishopsgate Institute, West Yorkshire Archive
Panelists: Frank Lamb, Caz Fields, Ingrid Banerjee Marvin
Thank you to: On The Record, REED, Laura Mitchison, Kate Holland, Mimi Kimmling, Orlen Crawford, Frank Lamb, Caz Fields, Ding Frisby, Tommaso Colognese, Jack Goessens, Emma, You Can Play, Team Out And Proud, SABLE, The Arts Council, Kit Heyam, Adam Kashmiry, CLAY, Sweatmother, Robyn Leadbeater

Offside Project 

 travels the Plains, gathering and sharing stories. Featuring archival images and dramatized re-enactments, this film shares a Cuthand family oral story, honouring and respecting Woman Dress without imposing colonial binaries on them.


TJ Cuthand is a filmmaker and performance artist, writer and curator of Plains Cree as well as Scottish and Irish descent. He is credited with coining the term Indigiqueer, for modern Indigenous LGBTQ people. 

Woman Dress

An illustrated film, based on the oral histories of Zander Keig. 

shows the transitional wisdom that Zander has learned while paralyzed, in a mental hospital, a gang, in the military, transitioning from female-to-male and as a social worker.

Categories

Oral History