A Girl Named Kai

Official selection of the Fifth Annual Festival

Homecoming

Official selection of the Fifth Annual Festival

I’m Not a Boy

Official selection of the Seventh Annual Festival

I’m Just Anneke

Filmmaker Jonathan Skurnik

I’m Just Anneke is the first film in a four-part series of short films called The Youth and Gender Media Project designed to educate school communities about transgender and gender nonconforming youth. The first two films in the series are finished and the second two are in production. The completed films are already being used in schools and conferences throughout the U.S. to train administrators, teachers and students about the importance of protecting all children from harassment due to gender identity and expression.

Transgender and gender fluid youth are the most courageous people I have ever met. Despite overwhelming pressure to conform to an oppressive gender binary paradigm, they refuse to do it in order to be true to themselves. I wanted to pay tribute to these courageous young people and to inspire all of us to reconsider our own decisions about gender identity and expression.

Anneke is going into eighth grade in the fall of 2010 and I plan to film her over the course of her first year in high school. This footage will become a feature length documentary about Anneke’s life as she starts to take testosterone and begins a slow and thoughtful transition to fully embody her own unique gender identity.

It’s Their Life: LGBT Teens in Chicago

Free Spirit Media

LGBT TEENS IN CHICAGO was created by five youth working with Free Spirit Media in partnership with the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting. Free Spirit Media is a non-profit organization that provides access and opportunity in media production to under-served urban youth through hands-on in school and after-school educational programs. The youth filmmakers wanted to explore the topic of homosexuality in high schools in Chicago, exposing various youth perspectives and seeking to promote understanding and respect. At the beginning of the filming process, these youth filmmakers were not aware of the daily harassment LGBT youth in Chicago face. Throughout the process of creating this documentary, the youth filmmakers experienced a transformation; they were not only revealing these injustices to their audience but they were becoming fully aware for themselves of the harsh reality many LGBT youth experience.

Luv Me Latex

Official selection of the Third Annual Festival

Novela, Novela

Official selection of the Fourth Annual Festival

Permission

Official selection of the Sixth Annual Festival