Gender Reel, the annual event giving visibility to gender-nonconforming, gender-variant/queer and transgender people in film, is no longer just a Philadelphia event.
“We’re launching in four cities instead of one so it’s gone national,” Gender Reel organizer Tammyrae Barr said.
After launching in Philadelphia in 2011, Gender Reel will now run in three other cities across the country — Minneapolis, Minn.; Portland, Ore.; and Oakland, Calif. — this year showcasing short and feature-length films and performance art ranging from family-friendly fare and documentaries to adult-oriented fare (read: porn), which will be screened at a separate venue, the more appropriate confines of Passionale.
“Gender Reel has been a grassroots start-up,” Barr said. “Our executive founder, Joe Ippolito, recruited locally and has found opportunities elsewhere in the country and made contacts with places. People have embraced us and contributed to the film festival in past years. This year, one of our local organizers has moved to Portland. Joe has moved to Minneapolis. So that gave us three cities. The film festival also made a connection in Oakland. Once I started pushing the concept I thought, if we’re already separated, why don’t we just create more venues, and the concept of a national film festival became a reality. We went out and talked to the public in various places. There has been support in each of the communities and we decided to go ahead and go national. And there are opportunities for further expansion in years to come.”
When asked about the programming for the different cities, Barr said the same films featured in Philadelphia will be screened in the other cities as well.
“The films will be the same but not all venues will have all the films because they do not have the same amount of time available to them,” Barr said.
While Gender Reel draws a mostly LGBT audience, Barr said the event does bring in a significant non-LGBT crowd, which is expected to grow.
“It’s in the range of 15-20 percent,” Barr said about the ally audience. “But that is bound to change this year, as we’re in many different venues and now hitting a much broader audience and targeting on a national basis. I think we’re going to have a larger draw than we have had before.”
While the Gender Reel organizers plan to keep expanding the festival in years to come, Barr said ideally such an event would be unnecessary.
“I think the vision is to create a need to no longer have Gender Reel,” Barr said. “It’s going to take us a long time to get there. But if we can just normalize the way society looks at the trans community and the gender-nonconforming communities, life is going to be better. If we can get rid of the whole aspect of ‘LGBT’ and have people just be people, we will have accomplished our goals. But I don’t see it happening very quickly.”
Gender Reel runs Sept. 19-21 with screenings at The Rotunda, 4014 Walnut St., and Passionale, 317 South St. For more information about featured films and a screening schedule, visit www.genderreelfest.com.