Gendernauts

Gendernauts

Gendernauts is a documentary film by Monika Treut which was lauded for humanizing transgender and intersex people in the late 1990s. It explored and educated the viewer on medical and surgical transition utilized by some of the cast of interviewed artists.

The film was shot on location in San Francisco and later went on to win the Audience Award at the São Paulo International Film Festival and the Best Documentary Film award at the Torino International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in 1999.

The film features interviews with Susan Stryker, trans woman, author and historian, Texas Tomboy, trans man and video artist, Max Wolf Valerio, trans man and poet, and Hida Viloria, intersex person, writer and activist, among many other individuals of gender and sexual minorities. The film features the subjects in their everyday natural settings which led to the heavy humanization and lack of sensationalism of the featured transgender and gender minority people which was a rarity among films shot about transgender people at the time.

A DVD copy of the film is still available for sale on Amazon in 2024.

Sources

Photo Credit: Film Affinity

Gendernauts. Hyena Films. https://www.hyenafilms.com/en/films/gendernauts/

First Run Features. A Journey through Shifting Identities. Gendernauts. https://firstrunfeatures.com/gendernautsdvd.html

Wikimedia Foundation. (2024, January 31). Gendernauts. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gendernauts