Today I headed down to Brighton for their annual Trans Pride. The trains, thankfully, more or less behaved themselves, and I got a good chunk of Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon read. I’m loving it thus far.
The only event today was the film festival, which took place at the Duke of York’s Picturehouse. It is a fabulous old building, and claims to be the oldest continually operating, purpose-built cinema in the UK — it opened in 1910.
For those who don’t know, Brighton has a long and honorable history in the movie business. William Friese-Green had a studio here in addition to the one in Bristol. His sometime partner, Alfred Esmé Collings, went on to shoot a number of short films in Brighton in 1896. That includes one with the fabulously Brighton name of Train Arriving at Dyke Station, though sadly that actually refers to a local beauty-spot called Devil’s Dyke, not to any actual dykes.
There is a full history of Brighton’s involvement in films available here.
But enough digression. Back to the evening’s entertainment. The first hour was mainly material from Fox & Lewis’s My Genderation series, much of which was being screened for the first time. The star of the show was undoubtedly a 9-year-old trans boy called Kai who is totally lovable. There were a lot of really moving scenes of trans folk with supportive friends, families and partners. Fox and Lewis have also shot films interviewing their own families. My mum would totally relate to what Fox’s mum says.
The rest of the program was a diverse range of films from around the world, plus some comedy shorts featuring Claire Parker (and at one point guest-staring Lewis as a sexist laborer).
My favorite of the additional material was a Scottish film called James Dean. It is shot entirely in a car as a family — parents plus two teenage children — is about to set off to visit an aunt. One of the children is trying to get her parents to admit that the aunt is a lesbian, but the parents insist that the kids are too young to know what that means. Meanwhile the other child is trying to come out as trans. It is very funny, and brilliantly acted.
It all went very well, and then many of us headed down to the Marlborough. Part of the celebrations this weekend is the launch of Brighton Transformed, a local history of trans people in Brighton. You’ll hear a lot more about that from me on Twitter tomorrow. But as a taster here is a montage of images posted on one of the outside walls of the Marlborough.
