Thursday, March 28, 2019

POC Trans Docu-Series AMERICA IN TRANSITION Premieres on Revry on International Trans Day of Visibility



In honor of International Transgender Day of Visibility, global streaming network Revry will premiere the award-winning, Sundance-backed documentary series America in Transition (AIT), a Revry Original that explores the community, family, and social issues of trans people of color across in the United States - capturing real life for a veteran turned activist, an immigrant seeking home, a woman living with HIV healing from trauma, and a model navigating family life.  


Transgender Filmmaker, educator and community Organizer, André Pérez, founded the Trans Oral History Project in 2008 motivated by the isolation he felt growing up in a military family in Virginia.  Perez journeyed across the country to document the subjects of the series.  Each of the four episodes explores one person’s story in depth, tackling intersectional issues such as HIV criminalization, living as trans in the South, family acceptance, trans exclusion from the military, and immigrant detention. 

America in Transition is a compelling and powerful portrait of trans people surviving in a world built for their exclusion.  André Pérez tells these stories with the empathy and understanding that only another trans person can.”   
—Zachary Drucker, Producer of Transparent

"America In Transition (AIT) was initially inspired by my own experience coming of age in North Carolina and starting my transition as a youth in rural Vermont,” said creator André Pérez. "I had questions about everything from health care access to navigating relationships, but I had no one to ask. Without role models or institutional support, I felt like I had to come to the city to find myself. I went on to found the Trans Oral History Project. Over the past seven years, I’ve interviewed trans folks across the country who express parallel stories of being told trans didn’t fit with other aspects of our personhood. How can you be trans and Muslim or black or Mexican or Southern? We found ways to reconcile the seemingly disparate parts of who we are."
2015 was heralded as the “transgender tipping point,” but 2016 has brought some of the most regressive civil rights legislation in modern US history. Trans people have become the targets of radical social conservatives who are leveraging fear and ignorance to create a social climate of increasing and unrelenting hostility - a culture war, as Southern lawmakers fight the federal government in order to protect the supposed “right” for businesses (MS and NC), schools (TX), and even health professionals (TN and TX) to discriminate against transgender people. AIT uses character-driven storytelling in order to highlight issues of importance to trans people in marginalized communities.
At its heart, AIT is about how environments shape who we are. It will complicate notions of social change in underrepresented communities. This is a crucial moment to help people understand how trans realities differ based on identity, geography, and social context. The world is changing for the white, upper-middle class people we see on mainstream television, but trans people of color, immigrants, and working class families face a different world. AIT focuses on relationships as it explores where, when, and how change happens in a complex individual, a diverse community, and a divided nation.   


Along with the series premiere March 29th on Revry.tv just before the March 31st Trans Day of Visibility, America in Transition will be partnering with more than 20 institutions around the country to build community, amplify trans people of color’s voices, and activate accomplices.  Go to Revry.tv for additional information about this and other available LGBTQ+ content.