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.