Taking the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature was “Becoming a Man in 127 EASY Steps,” a film of transgender icon Scott Turner Schofield’s long-running performance art piece embodying the experience of becoming a man, taken from 127 total stories and over 15 years of material. Directed by Andrea James and Puppett, “Becoming a Man” had its early roots in Atlanta.
Read the rest
https://www.edgemedianetwork.com/story/336099
My friend and mentor Lynn Conway died on June 9. This is a tremendous loss for me personally, for the transgender community, for science, and for humanity.
Lynn overcame profound anti-transgender discrimination to become one of history’s greatest scientists. After being fired in 1968 for making a gender transition, Lynn started a revolution in computer chip design that was instrumental in developing the device on which you are reading this.
In keeping with her passion for innovation, Lynn was also a pioneer in online transgender resources. Among her most valuable early contributions were lists of successful trans people that inspired many in their own transitions.
For over 20 years, Lynn and I worked closely to share information and wisdom that made gender transition easier for younger generations. We also worked hard to push back against unscientific and unethical academics engaged in anti-transgender activism.
Lynn and her husband Charlie traveled the world having adventures together after their storybook wedding in 2002. Please keep him in your thoughts.
I encourage you to reflect on Lynn’s remarkable life and find inspiration in her brilliance, her restless curiosity, her deep love of people, and her visionary accomplishments.
I will write a longer reflection at a future date.
Feel free to contact me at aj@andreajames.com to share your own memories or for additional information.
Chicago 2003, working to end academic pathologization of transgender people. Andrea James, Lynn Conway, Calpernia Addams.
Los Angeles 2004, at our first all-transgender production of The Vagina Monologues with playwright Eve Ensler
San Francisco 2018, where Lynn was honored with one of many major scientific awards.
Michigan, 2018
Join me for a special Trans Day of Visibility event at Wabash College. We are screening Whirlybird Thursday, March 31 at 7pm in Baxter 101. See you there!
November 17, 2021 at 5:00 PM Pacific
DEADLINE FOR THE LOVE OF DOCS
A VIRTUAL DOCUMENTARY FILM SCREENING SERIES
Presented by NatGeo
Soaring above the chaotic spectacle of ’80s and ’90s Los Angeles, a young couple revolutionized breaking news with their brazen helicopter reporting. Zoey Tur and Marika Gerrard’s live coverage of events such as the 1992 riots and the O.J. Simpson pursuit shaped the recorded history of a city while deeply impacting their personal lives. Through the meticulous digitization and restoration of their sprawling video archive, this documentary brings to life the candid memories and reflections of a family, creating an immersive L.A. epic told through the intimate story of a relationship.
#FORTHELOVEOFDOCS
-https://whirlybird.splashthat.com/
The 2021 Tribeca Film Festival is having a special encore screening of the episodic version of our experimental media project Becoming a Man in 127 EASY Steps.
2020: PILOT SEASON
Playing in this program:
Unemployable
Magic Hour
Pretty People
Deceased Ones
Becoming a Man in 127 EASY Steps
Tickets:
https://tribecafilm.com/films/becoming-a-man-in-127-easy-steps-2021
In 2021, the United States Library of Congress selected my life’s work for inclusion in their collection.
Via the Library of Congress:
The United States Library of Congress has selected your website for inclusion in the Library’s historic collection of Internet materials related to the LGBTQ+ Studies Web Archive. We consider your website to be an important part of this collection and the historical record.
The Library of Congress preserves important cultural artifacts and provides enduring access to them. The Library’s traditional functions, acquiring, cataloging, preserving and serving collection materials of historical importance to foster education and scholarship, extend to digital materials, including websites. Our web archives are important because they contribute to the historical record, capturing information that could otherwise be lost. With the growing role of the web as an influential medium, records of historic events could be considered incomplete without materials that were “born digital” and never printed on paper.
The following URL has been selected:
Euan Ferguson
Sun 21 Feb 2021 04.30 EST
As a simple tale of adrenaline, Whirlybird: Live Above LA made a fascinating enough Storyville: breaking news in its infancy, with fast-to-screen video a major new player, and he and wife Marika in the air, literally ambulance-chasing, and snatching exclusive footage of so much, including that OJ Simpson pursuit (80 million viewers: wow). Then came the twist.
Read the rest
-https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/feb/21/devils-review-storyville-whirlybird-behind-her-eyes-torn-celebrity-best-home-cook-interior-design-masters-alan-carr
By STEPHANIE LINNING
PUBLISHED: 08:50 EST, 16 February 2021
Storyville documentary Whirlybird: Live Above LA, which aired on BBC Four last night, reveals how Tur and Gerrard became a two-man helicopter news team in the 1980s, finding success with live coverage of police raids, fires and car chases.
-https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-9265267/Whirlybird-Live-LA-tells-story-Zoey-Tur-ex-wife.html
February 16, 2021 6:42am
By Tom Grater
International Film Reporter
Greenwich Entertainment has acquired U.S. rights to Whirlybird from A&E IndieFilms. The doc, which premiered at last year’s Sundance, is the feature debut of Matt Yoka. It follows a husband-and-wife news helicopter team who covered some of Los Angeles’ most historic events.
-https://deadline.com/2021/02/greenwich-sundance-doc-whirlybird-la-news-helicopter-couple-1234694443/
Lucy Mangan @LucyMangan
Mon 15 Feb 2021 17.30 EST
Whirlybird: Live Above LA (BBC Four) sets out to be many things. It is a documentary about the evolution – brought about largely by one married couple, Bob Tur and Marika Gerrard-Tur – in live broadcast news in the US since the early 80s. It is an intimate, bittersweet portrait of the breakup of a family under pressure. It is the story of a man’s transition to life as a woman, as Bob came out publicly in 2013 as a trans woman and now lives as Zoey Tur. (I am using the names and pronouns the film and family use when talking about the past, on the assumption that Zoey, a strong, articulate presence who seems unlikely not to have made any feelings on the matter clear, signed off on the decision.) And it is an oblique study in what it takes to get things done, whether it is to revolutionise an industry, remake a body or remove yourself from a toxic relationship when, as it was for Marika, not only your domestic life and your children but also your professional existence are bound up in it.
-https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/feb/15/whirlybird-live-above-la-review-intimate-portrayal-of-how-they-got-the-eye-in-the-sky
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