THE TRANS LIST

THE TRANS LIST is the best documentary film I've seen this year (you can view it on HBO on demand). It's only an hour long, but it's power is even more impactful as a result of it's brevity. And it's perfectly shot and edited, for my taste. I was moved, enlightened, impressed, totally engaged and inspired by what amounts to a relatively short list of trans people, most of whom I already knew about and yet felt I was discovering who they were and what their challenges have been and are.

Some might say it's too easy to focus on these more or less famous and mostly successful trans folk rather than those without the means and support to cope with the everyday discrimination and abuse and even violence and death many trans people face. But that's what made this so poignant to me, that even celebs like Caitlyn Jenner, who I was not interested in seeing yet another interview with, came across as much more sympathetic than I was expecting, and others are so great at expressing their truth that it felt almost revelatory in the biblical sense.

These people and the lives they live, and in some cases share publicly, are the pioneers of a new way of acknowledging the variety of human experience. I respect and admire them for their commitment to the truth and their courage in acting on it. Director Timothy Greenfield-Sanders deserves kudos, as does Janet Mock for conducting the interviews and allowing her questions to be edited out so that the interviewees's perspectives and realities aren't filtered through a third party but feel like they are being spoken directly to the viewer, making this one feel honored and humbled by what seemed like personal encounters.