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She's a Boy I Knew
Using interviews, animation, old family footage, and voice mail, Vancouver filmmaker Gwen Haworth documents her gender transition partially through the voices of her anxious but loving family, best friend, and wife. Calling for a new era of DIY transgender self-representation, Haworth's feature debut is a comic, heartbreaking, and uplifting autobiography that breaks away from the marginalized depictions of trans people that populate mainstream media and focuses on the interpersonal relationships of a family who unexpectedly find their bonds strengthening as they overcome their preconceptions of gender and sexuality.
| Release : | 2007 |
| Rating : | 7.6 |
| Studio : | |
| Crew : | Director, |
| Cast : | |
| Genre : | Documentary |
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Reviews
Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant
It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.
All that we are seeing on the screen is happening with real people, real action sequences in the background, forcing the eye to watch as if we were there.
All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.
One of the best films I saw at an international film festival in Iceland was the documentary She's a Boy I Knew.There Gwen Haworth starts filming process sex reassignment surgery, from the moment she first had the idea. She has a girlfriend who is trying to accept the idea that her boyfriend is changing into a girl and wondering how she feels about it. Gwen Haworth however loves her girlfriend and wants the relationship to continue. We also get to see how her family reacts to these changes and not least how she is dealing with them. The hormonal treatments is making a mess out of her and she finds it hard to find the women she wants to be. We are witnessing a birth of an inner person and it's all filmed while it is happening.I met Gwen Haworth at the festival. Sincere, funny stunningly beautiful and smart as a whip. This is one of the best documentaries I have seen and is a must see for anyone interested in the subject.
This is one of three films, all documentaries, I've seen so far in this year's Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. And, while all three have been worthy, even moving, films, She's a Boy I Knew is by far the best and most powerful of them. The filmmaker takes on a very daunting double task here -- essaying an intensely personal record of what her transition meant to her, while also charting the various courses her family (parents, sisters, best friend, wife) takes thru the process as well. To find a strong balance between the two -- much less a perfect one -- is an incalculably delicate matter, but Haworth absolutely nails it. Perhaps it shouldn't be too surprising that a film school graduate could so movingly share her own experience on film this way, but arguably more startling is how rich a portrait of a whole family of rather diverse personalities and reactions she brings to the screen.A really terrific and memorable film.Matthew
