Coming to NYC’s Stranger Than Fiction series tomorrow night, Tuesday, March 1: SOUTHERN COMFORT
Kate Davis’ profile of a transgender man contending with love and mortality had its world premiere at Sundance in 2001, where it won the Documentary Grand Jury Prize. The film’s festival circuit included Berlin, Hot Docs, San Francisco, Seattle, Karlovy Vary, Yamagata Doc, Athens, and several LGBT events. STF re-presents the film – which has been adapted into a musical at the Public Theater – on the occasion of its 15th anniversary.
While transgender lives and characters are increasingly becoming more commonplace in mainstream media, that certainly hasn’t always been the case. Davis’ acclaimed film serves as a reminder that even as relatively recently as 2001, the general public was not used to seeing the stories of transgender subjects. Davis introduced mainstream audiences to Robert, a 52-year-old cowboy in the backwoods of Georgia, as he faces the end of his life due to ovarian cancer – a diagnosis that is followed by rejection after rejection from doctors unwilling to take a trans man as a patient. He draws strength through his intense, new relationship with Lola, a transgender woman, and hopes to accompany her to the Southern Comfort Conference, the country’s largest gathering of trans people. Davis constructs an intimate portrait of indelible individuals, who, already having risked everything to live their truth, face the greatest challenge of them all.
what (not) to doc 