is a DIY film exploring embodiment, sexuality, gender, disability and how these intersect in relation to self-organised queer sports spaces. 

The film informally chats about social norms, accessibility, inclusion/exclusion and creating spaces for queer joy. Thank you to the interviewees and to Bender Defenders: a Queer Muay Thai and Boxing class.

Flex

A look at the tough world in which Japan's Gaea Girls pursue a career in the wrestling and the training regime that all must pass before becoming professional.

Gaea Girls

 gives a rare and intimate glimpse into the trials and tribulations faced by trans folk on a daily basis. The ﬁlm's all-trans cast includes activist and model Munroe Bergdorf, model, singer, and star of US reality show 'Strut', Laith Ashley, Youtuber, and ﬁtness model Kieran Moloney, Captain Hannah Winterbourne of the British Army, and writer and director Jake Graf. 

oﬀers an as-yet-unseen insight into the everyday transgender
experience, and will hopefully promote much-needed acceptance and understanding.

Headspace

explores mental health and trauma, gender, access to healthcare and the intergenerational impacts of racism, colonialism and other socioeconomic inequalities.

The film includes a dance collaboration with French artist Jule Lanoix, interviews with psychiatrist/film-maker Khaldoon Ahmed, musician and writer Blue Maignien, and artist, DJ, teacher and musician Chooc Ly Tan.

Hyperacusis (Part 2)

Anneke is 12. She loves ice hockey and has a loving, close-knit family. She’s also a hardcore tomboy. Everybody who meets her assumes she’s a boy. That makes puberty even harder for her than most girls.


Anneke’s not sure if she wants to be a girl, a boy, or something in-between when she grows up. To give her more time to decide, her doctor has put her on a medication that will suppress the hormones that are causing her body to change before she’s ready. Even though she’s been rejected by her friends and struggles with depression and suicidal thoughts, Anneke is determined to be her true self. To do that she’s decided to maintain a fluid gender identity—she wants to make sure her insides matches her outsides. 

 looks into the heart of a new generation of children who don't always fit into a binary conception of gender.

I’m Just Anneke

Filmed in Cambodia over the course of five years, 

, is an inspiring coming-of-age story that centers around Leak, a teenage trans man who plays football in the under-21s women's team of Kampong Chhnang, and Pa Vann, the coach and father-figure to Leak and other LGBTQ+ players on the team.

61-year-old Pa Vann established the football team in 2009 to encourage solidarity among straight, lesbian and gender-diverse players. Opening also his home to the more vulnerable, outcasted teenagers on the team, Pa Vann creates a safe place for them to be themselves. After living with Pa Vann for many years, Leak, driven by the pressure to make more money for his family and forced off the football team because of his age, must take a decision that could mean leaving behind the one person he loves the most.

Support the Lotus Sports Club to reach their goals and build a better future 

Lotus Sports Club

is a film about a group of girls who make an attempt to enter the football stadium in order to watch a World Cup qualifying match in Tehran. Since women are not allowed in the stadium, they dress up as boys to pass through security. However many of them are unsuccessful and detained. This film is a heartwarming comedy, which does not make light of the issue of gender segregation.

"It is not specifically an LGBTQ film, however to me personally, it can be claimed as one. I remember the first time I watched this film, as a 10/11 year old, seeing Iranian girls dressing and acting like boys, was completely shocking to me, and perhaps a ‘keychain’ moment as Alison Bechdel would call it. Seeing some representation of non-conformity, and public cross dressing, which is extremely forbidden, was a defiant moment for a pre-teen queer child such as myself, and I’m sure for many others too. Two of the actors in particular, including Shayesteh Irani from Facing Mirrors, have a stone butch quality, which was extremely exciting and terrifying to me as a child." 

- Katayoun Jalilipour, written on behalf of Otherness Archive for #TransLifeFreedom: A list of 5 Iranian films that center trans identities, gender non-conformity and queerness, with a focus on trans masculinity

Offside

 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 

This is a 20 minute documentary based on interviews with the organizers of a queer wrestling circuit in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Each event features a different substance that attendees wrestle in— Jello, mud, oil, snow, etc. 

This film explores the ideas of consensual violence, the necessity of an event-centered community based on performance, aggression and sexuality. The film encapsulates this scene as it was during the year of 2023, with interviews conducted in the winter of 2024.

Rough Practice: Queer Wrestling in Minneapolis

, a simple office exchange becomes a highly dramatized metaphor for exclusionary male culture, offering a sardonic critique for this ubiquitous but often invisible brotherhood.

Secret Men's Club - Moment #133

Dale Michael is a successful business man with great friends. Dale is a trans man, living stealth, until a game of pickup basketball changes his life.
Starring Tajir S. Hawkins (MECCA from 

 is the story of an ordinary man... living an ordinary life... and THAT'S what makes him extraordinary.

Shirts vs Skins

TALL IN THE SADDLE: COWGIRLS, RANCH WOMEN & RODEO GALS 

is a Hi-8 video documentary short on cowgirls. 

- Cowgirl Museum & Hall of Fame, Hereford, TX, WPRA 

– Women’s Professional Rodeo Association, Colorado Springs

- CO & International Gay Rodeo Association, Denver, CO. 

- Hi–8 video documentary Human Rights Campaign concert & LGBT march. 

Won Best of Festival - Documentary 2004 EQUALITY ROCKS-MILLENNIUM MARCH. 

Tall in the Saddle: Cowgirls, Ranch Women & Rodeo Gals

The Baseball Project visualizes my immersion as a 26-year-old into a baseball clinic for 8-12 year old boys. The narration by my mother alters the gaze of the piece, directing the audience to examine my validity. An additional layer involves the redoing of the performance with gender-ambiguous adults. I contemporarily embody an adult role as a trans-masculine queer and as a 12 year old.

The Baseball Project

Lino trains day and night under the cunning supervision of Loana, a renowned boxing champion. Muscled flirting or sporty bromance? Between coups de fonte and satin bed sheets, their common horizon is the ultimate simultaneous knockout.

The Sports X-trem

” is a film told through Alexa’s journey as a trans woman navigating the toxic culture that encompasses skateboarding and what it means to transcend fear through community.

Transenders

 was a track athlete, who won a gold medal and a world record in the 800 m run in 1934 at Women’s World Games in London, representing Czechoslovakia. A few months after that, 

 had a sex change. All of his sport achievements were revoked as a result. To this day, it is unclear whether Koubek was trans or an intersex person, however, his own descriptions of this experiences are very closely related to the contemporary view of transness. The life of 

 is discussed in more detail in the book from 2017 by P. Kovář, Příběh české rekordwoman: Zákulisí největšího sportovního skandálu první republiky (The Story of Czech Record Holder: Behind the scenes of the biggest sports scandal of the First Republic).

"I'm a world record holder, that's how they write about me in the newspapers. At the 1934 World Women's Games in London, I win the eight hundred meters and break the world record for the second time. The newspapers are full of articles about me. Sports fans I don't know stop me on the streets and ask for an autograph. Me, a twenty-two-year-old, ordinary girl from Brno, unknown until recently,"

"There were not thousands of fans, only hundreds. But it was a beauty, an unforgettable joy. But we are only athletes, we are far from the fame of football players. I know that joy sometimes ends in sadness. For example, it has been bothering me for a long time that I beat girls in athletic competitions, but I feel less and less like a girl myself. That's why I fall asleep and read with the question: Is it fair of me?!"

“I fulfill the role of a woman, but it costs me more and more strength. I'm probably trapped in a male body.”

Categories

Sports