Research Guides: Free Streaming: Trans* Documentaries from New Day Films: Watch!

New Day Films: Streaming Titles until Nov. 11

The Year We Thought About Love
What happens when a diverse group of LGBTQ youth dares to be “out” on stage talking truthfully about their lives? As they create a play about love, a theater troupe of Queer youth celebrates the fullness of their lives as young artists and activists.
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Synopsis:

The Year We Thought About Love goes behind the scenes of the oldest queer youth theater in America. In a twist on the common image of LGBTQ youth as victims, the film reveals the troupe members as artists and activists, celebrating the fullness of their lives in both thoughtful and hilarious ways.

Our camera crew slips into rehearsal rooms, kitchens, classrooms, and subways capturing the wit, candor, and attitude of these young people. Together they explore love - romantic, familial, and religious - as they write scripts based on their lives. While the play takes shape, other challenges come hurtling at the cast. We learn more about the lives of several troupe members, highlighting both the unique and universal struggles of LGBTQ adolescence. A transgender teenager is kicked out of her house; a devout Christian wrestles with his church’s homophobia; and a girl dares to wear boys’ clothing at school even as she models dresses on the runway on weekends. When the Boston Marathon bombs explode outside their building, the troupe becomes even more determined to share their stories of love to help heal their city.

During the play’s tour, student audiences are surprised to hear such revealing stories shared in school settings. Audiences cheer, gasp, laugh, and grow silent as they value the courage and strength these young people must have to be out and true to themselves.

Out Run
Mobilizing working-class transgender hairdressers and beauty queens, the dynamic leaders of the world’s only LGBT political party wage a historic quest to elect a trans woman to the Philippine Congress.
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Synopsis:

As leader of the world’s only LGBT political party, Bemz Benedito dreams of being the first transgender woman in the Philippine Congress. But in a predominantly Catholic nation, rallying for LGBT representation in the halls of Congress is not an easy feat. Bemz and her eclectic team of queer political warriors must rethink traditional campaign strategies to amass support from unlikely places. Taking their equality campaign to small-town hair salons and regional beauty pageants, the activists mobilize working-class trans hairdressers and beauty queens to join the fight against their main political opponent, a homophobic evangelical preacher, and prove to the Filipino electorate that it’s time to take the rights of LGBT people seriously. But as outsiders trying to get inside the system, will they have to compromise their political ideals in order to win? Culminating on election day, OUT RUN provides a unique look into the challenges LGBT people face as they transition into the mainstream and fight for dignity, legitimacy, and acceptance across the globe.

Straightlaced: How Gender's Got Us All Tied Up
With a fearless look at a highly charged subject, Straightlaced unearths how pressures around gender and sexuality are confining American teens. These stories reflect a diversity of experiences, demonstrating how gender role expectations and homophobia are interwoven, and illustrating the different ways these expectations connect with culture, race and class.

From girls confronting media messages about body image to boys who are sexually active just to prove they aren’t gay, a fascinating array of students opens up with brave, intimate honesty about the toll that deeply held stereotypes and rigid gender policing have on all our lives.
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Synopsis:

Straightlaced includes the perspectives of teens who self-identify as straight, lesbian, gay, bisexual or questioning and represents all points of the gender spectrum. With courage and unexpected humor, these students open up their lives to the camera: choosing between “male” and “female” deodorant; deciding whether to go along with anti-gay taunts in the locker room; having the courage to take ballet; avoiding the restroom so they won’t get beaten up; or mourning the suicide of a classmate. It quickly becomes clear that just about everything teens do requires thinking about gender and sexuality.

Coming of age today has become increasingly complex and challenging; Straightlaced offers both teens and adults a way out of anxiety, fear and violence and points the way toward a more inclusive, empowering culture.

Trinidad: Transgender Froniter
Edifying and intimate, TRINIDAD acquaints viewers with three extraordinary transwomen whose paths cross in an unlikely setting—the unassuming town of Trinidad, Colorado. Against the backdrop of the town’s history of transgender surgery, TRINIDAD invokes the passions and gender politics of these three individuals as they search for a place of empowerment and belonging.
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Synopsis:

Part intimate observational documentary and part educational essay, Trinidad acquaints viewers with three extraordinary trans women whose paths cross in an unlikely setting—the unassuming small town of Trinidad, Colorado. Located on the Santa Fe Trail, where the Rockies fade into the Great Plains, this one-time mafia-run, coal mining town is the destination of more than 6,500 transsexuals, who travel from all across the country with the same bold dream: to align their external bodies with their internal gender identities.

Dr. Marci Bowers, a “rock star” in the world of genital reassignment surgery (GRS), relocated to Trinidad in 2003 to follow in the footsteps of legendary surgeon Dr. Stanley Biber. Sabrina Marcus, an engineer and founder of the Southern Comfort Transgender Conference, and Dr. Laura Ellis, a family practitioner, are two of Marci’s most fascinating patients. Sabrina and Laura have hopes of building a bed-and-breakfast recovery center for post-operative transgender patients in Trinidad, but face setback after logistical setback—and find themselves increasingly at philosophical odds with Marci. Against the backdrop of Trinidad’s remarkable history of transgender surgery,Trinidad invokes the passions and gender politics of these three women as they search for their place of empowerment and belonging in the “sex change capital of the world.”

Tales of the Waria
Indonesia is home to the world's largest Muslim population. It is also home to the "warias," a community of biological men who live openly as women. In this eye-opening PBS documentary, four warias search for romance and intimacy. They encounter a host of obstacles-- family pressures, economic burdens, aging-- but strive to stay true to themselves and to find lasting companionship. Shot over three years with the local queer community serving as story consultants and film crew members, the film provides an unprecedented look into topics rarely discussed in Western media: Indonesia, Islamic culture, and the daily life and struggles of transgender communities around the world.

No Dumb Questions
Uncle Bill is becoming a woman. This lighthearted and poignant documentary profiles three sisters, ages 6, 9 and 11, struggling to understand why and how their Uncle Bill is becoming their new Aunt Barbara.
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Synopsis:

NO DUMB QUESTIONS is a lighthearted and poignant documentary that profiles three sisters, ages 6, 9, and 11, struggling to understand why and how their Uncle Bill is becoming a woman.

These girls love their Uncle Bill, but will they feel the same way when he becomes their new Aunt Barbara?

With just weeks until Bill's first visit as Barbara, the sisters navigate the complex territories of anatomy, sexuality, personality, gender and fashion. Their reactions are funny, touching, and distinctly different.

This film offers a fresh perspective on a complex situation from a family that insists there are no dumb questions.

For more information, visit the No Dumb Questions web site at www.nodumbquestions.com.

No Dumb Questions (DVD)
Call Number: HQ77.9 .N6 2009 (Moore Library Video -Circulation Desk)
ISBN: 9781574482430
We also own the physical DVD.

New Day Logo: a rising sun in orange with "New Day Films" in orange text underneath

No Dumb Questions	https://rider.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.newday.com/streaming/index.php?film=DUM-01&license=T68N-PS5D-GMSD
Out Run	https://rider.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.newday.com/streaming/index.php?film=RUN-01&license=T68N-PS5D-GMSD
Straightlaced - How Gender's Got Us All Tied Up	https://rider.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.newday.com/streaming/index.php?film=STR-01&license=T68N-PS5D-GMSD
TRINIDAD: Transgender Frontier (Theatrical Version)	https://rider.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.newday.com/streaming/index.php?film=TRI-01&license=T68N-PS5D-GMSD
Tales of the Waria	https://rider.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.newday.com/streaming/index.php?film=TTW-01&license=T68N-PS5D-GMSD
The Year We Thought About Love	https://rider.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.newday.com/streaming/index.php?film=YWT-01&license=T68N-PS5D-GMSD

New Day Films is making a selection of its documentary films available for free to educate those on trans* people's lives and experience to counteract the attack on trans* people's civil and human rights, against scientific research to the contrary about the nature of sex and gender.

As the company states (October 26, 2018):

As you may know...the Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that it is considering an interpretation of Title IX, the federal civil rights law that bans sex discrimination in federally funded schools, that “would define sex as either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals that a person is born with.”

Without education, it may be difficult to understand how devastating this HHS interpretation is.

In solidarity with the transgender and non-binary communities, we will be streaming the following films for free on New Day's exclusive streaming platform until this Election Day (Nov. 6). Please join us in centering and celebrating trans voices and the voices of the people who live and work with them.

Rider University Libraries has access to the following films until Nov. 11, 2018. Please watch, enjoy, and learn!