Only a fraction of trans-made films and web videos are being preserved in archives. While trans-made web series are easier to access, they too have minuscule publicity budgets. Some are distributed by artist-run distributors like VTAPE, THE CANADIAN FILMMAKERS DISTRIBUTION CENTRE, and WOMEN MAKE MOVIES most do not have distributors at all. With the exception of the Wachowskis’ films, most trans-made films are screened on the trans and queer film festival circuit and then disappear from public view. There are currently real barriers to knowledge about and access to trans-made films. Our tool, the Transgender Media Portal, will be a central hub for righting this misrepresentation. It also writes hundreds of important trans artists out of the history of cinema and media. (I use “trans” as an imperfect umbrella for transgender, transsexual, Two-Spirit, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming and “cis” to mean non-transgender.) A narrow focus on films by cis artists geared toward cis audiences misrepresents the possibilities of audiovisual media for trans self-exploration, political imagination, and community building. Film scholars, women’s and gender studies scholars, and the mainstream media have focused on a small number of well-known, predominantly cis-authored films like Boys Don’t Cry (1999) and The Danish Girl (2015) to stand for “trans cinema,” ignoring the huge amount of audiovisual work made by trans artists in the past three decades.
media, media created by trans people is often overlooked. Despite recent attention to representations of trans people in Canadian and U.S.
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