tilde: Melbourne Trans & Gender Diverse Film Festival

2024 films...

The Beauty of Being Deaf

USA, 2021, 3 mins

Experimental Short

Dir. Chella Man

An underwater celebration of hearing loss. Artist, director, and author Chella Man presents a meditation on identity and language.  “Shooting this piece required both the cast and production’s full hearts as we waded into our vulnerabilities. This ease was translated into the final film. We carried that rawness with us. I am forever grateful and proud of the healing and connections that were created this day.”  – Chella Man 

The Alexander Ball

Australia, 2022, 30 mins

Dir. Jessica Magro

‘The Alexander Ball’ is an observational documentary extravaganza celebrating Samoan-Maori-Australian trans woman of colour, Ella Ganza, and the Meanjin (Brisbane) ballroom scene, as the community prepares for one of biggest ballroom events of the year: The Alexander Ball.

Ballroom is a queer subculture founded by Black and Latinx trans women in 1960’s – 1970’s New York1 after facing continuous discrimination from the LGBTQIA community. It’s a global movement, lifestyle and a cutthroat competition where competitors known as walkers compete in various categories for the grand prize. Community competes in family-like structures called Houses led by Mothers and Fathers who care for their children in Ballroom and life. ‘The Alexander Ball’ is Australia’s first look into the hypnotizing world of Ballroom through an observational documentary extravaganza, following the exhilarating journey of Samoan-Māori-Australian trans woman of Colour Ella Ganza, the Mother of House of Alexander, as she and her ballroom family prepare for one of the biggest events of the year: The Alexander Ball.

 

Aribada

Columbia, 2022, 30 mins

Dir. Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau, Natalia Escobar, 

Birthed in the lush Colombian forest, Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau & Natalia Escobar’s dreamy short has left its mark on the festival circuit, including Cannes. In a world where the real, the magical, and the spiritual entwine, the Indigenous trans women of the Emberá tribes fashion their own future.

 

Indigenous Luv (Hanky Code: The Movie)

USA, 2015, 5 mins

Experimental

Dir. Demian DineYazhi

 

A short film about cruising as an Indigenous Queer. Part of Hanky Code: The Movie, Indigenous Luv explores the different codes inherent in the hanky code & creates a crucial space for Indigenous Queer studies while critiquing Western homo/Queer culture. It asks the viewer to consider the romanticized body of non-Indigenous peoples in order to strive toward an imagined space where Queer phantasies of sexual orientation & gender identity/non-identity are either de/reconstructed, appropriated, or decolonized.

He Takatāpui Ahau

Aotearoa, 2021, 11 mins

Dir.  Alesha Ahdar 

When encouraged to return to their Marae, a gentle non-binary person decides to go back to their tūrangawaewae despite uncertainty that they’ll be accepted for who they are.

A takatāpui non-binary person has decided to go home to their marae for the first time since coming out to their everyday community. They have borne witness to homophobia and transphobia in the past from their family, and they’ve seen it on the whānau Facebook pages, so they don’t know how it’s gonna go.I think that the main character was right in being nervous to go home, because it was what they thought it was going to be. But then they find acceptance in an unexpected place.

TILDE MICRO-BUDGET COMMISSIONS PROGRAM:  

Two staunch artists have taken on this task. First is the stunning Thea Raveneau, and second, part of the Motherless Collective, the one and only Stone Motherless Cold.

 

Black Trans Miracle 

Australia, 2023, 18 mins 

Drama

Dir. Tinaye Nyathi

Lindani, a neurotic young trans man, embarks on a journey to collect a cake for his partner’s birthday after an encounter with a stranger forces him to wrestle with his own identity, putting him at odds with his own desire for connection.

More than this. EP1

Australia, 2022, 28 mins

TV Series Drama

Creators: Olivia Deeble & Luka Gracie

Explore the real lives of five 17-year-old teenage students and their teacher when their worlds join in a classroom.

 

HEDGEHOG

Australia, 2022, 15 mins

Drama

Dir. Jasper Caverly

Brig Huang, a headstrong trans teenager, is propelled into their hangover when a reckless decision to have sex without a condom triggers an urgent determination for the ‘morning after’ pill.

 

Behind Me is Black

Aotearoa, 1999, 12 mins 

Experimental Documentary 

Dir. Cushla Dillion and Kristy Cameron

This film hasn’t been seen for decades. In the 1970’s, Christchurch artist Paul Johns created an intimate portrait of the transgender community in Aotearoa/NZ, by capturing friends and acquaintances on 16mm. In 1999 Johns entrusted this footage to filmmakers Cameron and Dillon. They constructed a film that is an ode to Paul’s work, and an exploration of both the texture and internal qualities of the image. The subterranean soundtrack by sound artist Rachel Shearer adds to the evocation of memory, nostalgia and identity to weave together a dreamy trance-like journey. 

 

Man Into Woman: The Transsexual Experience 

Australia, 1983, 80 mins

Documentary 

Dir. John Ruane

Man into Woman is the first documentary made about Australian trans lives. Given only a limited release in 1983, this surprisingly intimate and rarely seen film features trans icons such as Carmen Rupe, Roberta Perkins, Chanelle St Laurent and Noelena Tame. Man Into Woman contains suicide themes. 

These Are My Hands

Scotland, 2018, 8 mins 

Experimental Documentary

Dir.  Evi Tsiligaridou

These Are My Hands is a short documentary film-poem written and performed by the radical British playwright Jo Clifford. It is a deeply moving, personal account of transgender embodiment in a lifetime, speaking of wounds, challenges, victories and the journey towards self empowerment. The poet’s voice is embraced by a lyrical, mesmerising soundtrack and together with the graceful and intimate visuals compose a profoundly tender piece.

 

Bros Before

USA, 2022, 19 mins 

Comedy

Dir.  Henry Hanson

Billy and Elijah are two trans bros who just happen to enjoy jerking off together – in a straight way. But when Billy starts dating a woman, Elijah must come to terms with his feelings for Billy and his own burgeoning homosexuality.

 

Gendertroublemakers

USA, 1993, 20 mins

Comedy

Dir. Mirha-Soleil Ross & Xanthra MacKay

What happens when two Transdykes get sick of non-transsexual’s uninformed representation of their sexualities and their lives? They grab their 8 millimetre home video camera, their last 200 bucks, and come up with an uncompromising in-your-face flick about their shitty relationships with gay men and their unabashed attraction to other transsexual women.

 

Dog Movie

USA, 2024, 55 mins

Comedy

Dir. Henry Hanson

A passive-aggressive tenderqueer couple sends their household into a quiet tailspin when they adopt an elderly dog with the same name as the unemployed couch surfer they just can’t seem to confront.

 

The Script

USA, 2023, 15 mins

Documentary

Dir. Brit Fryer Noah Schamus

VICTORIAN PREMIERE

Blending personal interviews with dramatised genre recreations, THE SCRIPT explores the complicated relationship between trans and nonbinary communities and medical providers regarding gender affirming care. With a playful approach toward experimentation, the film invites its participants and its audience to examine the limits of language and the nature of performance in building safe and affirming futures.

 

The Robbers

Austria, 2023, 15 mins

Dir. Isa Schieche

VICTORIAN PREMIERE

Three trans women meet in a country house to plan a robbery. The trick of the heist is that, in order to create a false trail, they disguise themselves as men. While they share everyday life as a well-established team and lovers, they practise speaking in a deep voice, walking manly and behaving in a masculine manner. In this process, they reach their emotional and physical limits and repeatedly fail to imitate male connoted behaviour.

Green Castles

USA, 2024, 35 mins

Drama

Dir. Anto(n) Astudillo & Kelley Van Dilla

Green Castles follows Polo in their day-to-day life while they navigate medically transitioning, looking for work, and living alone in a lonely city. Though they find caring for plants easier than caring for themselves, an elder wise woman, Tia Silvia, constantly checks in on them and helps them on their journey. Every night Polo has the same dream: that they’re slowly turning into a being made of plants. Green Castles, the first collaboration between Anto(n) Astudillo and Kelley Van Dilla, represents a deepening of friendship through exploration of shared synchronicities in their lived experiences as trans and queer filmmakers. Anto(n) and Kelley also collaborate in building trans+ community, and healing care-centred filmmaking environments.

 

Scaring Women at Night

USA, 2022, 11mins

Drama

Dir. Karimah Zakia Issa

wo strangers are scared on a late walk home. As they try to escape one another, their worlds collide at an intersection forcing them to question who they’re afraid of and why.

 

In their dreams all jellyfish are wet

Austria, 2023, 27 mins

Comedy

Dir. Marie Luise Lehner

AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE

This film is a manifesto for the fact that the rules by which we behave can be changed and transformed. The rules that determine the course of a sauna visit provide the structure. Orlando, who tries to master an inconspicuous visit to the sauna does not know the rules. After he has to leave the sauna during the infusion because his nipple piercings get too hot, he settles down hidden on a lounger and falls into a strange dream in which Laura’s beautiful cousin dances as a devilin an empty pool.

 

Dismantle Me

UK, 2023, 13 mins

Drama

Dir. Max Disgrace

A comical proposition turns into an arousing powerplay when a smoldering-hot trans woman helps a heartbroken trans man tidy his messy bedroom. Associate produced by Lilly Wachowski, Dismantle Me is a dark comedy-romance by trans people of colour, and created with a majority transgender and non-binary cast and crew. Made in collaboration with Trans+ On Screen.

 

Desire Lines

USA, 2024, 83 mins

Documentary

Dir: Jules Rosskam

Identity. Desire. History.

An Iranian-American transman, Ahmad, searching for his place in history, finds more than just a link to the past in the archives. Drawing from first-person accounts, as well as fictionalized segments, filmmaker Jules Rosskam explores the lines of desire as they intersect with identity for many transmen.

Directed by leading academic and scholar Jules Rosskam (Something to Cry About Tilde 2019) and winner of the Next Special Jury Award at Sundance. 

“Desire Lines is hypnotic and enduring, a remarkably incisive work that should be seen far and wide” – Cinema Daily US

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