WHAT is the Transgender Tuesdays movie's look and feel?
Viewers hear about the lives of twelve of the patients who came to the clinic starting in 1993, in their own words. Their stories reach back to some of the "bad old days" of the 1950s, recalling the sexual freedom movement of the 1960s, drug ravages of the '70s, Women's and GLB (and finally T) Liberation in the '80s, the HIV epidemic and queer activism of the '90s.
These
true tales reveal what TG life was like over those decades on the streets of San Francisco and around the country -- and make it clear that it is still no bed of roses today. Clinic staff and stars of the community make cameo appearances. But it is the lives of these TG heroes (often unknown even by younger trans folk today) that
provide pride in the present and hope for the future.
Archival photos and amazing film clips provide background to their stories, from the 1950s through the 1990s and on into the clinic's nearly twenty years. The soundtrack includes an early Jazz Age song, the sultry singing of our narrator
Veronica Klaus, original acoustic guitar music by trans artist
Tamera Chance, period instrumentals by
Peter Fogel of the Whoa Nellies, the very now music by both writer
David Seipel and by the hot UK band
Furiku.
Throughout, a graphic theme is faces: close-ups that let the viewer in; now-and-then portraits; and finally a gallery of snapshots of people along the entire gender spectrum, showing the greater possibilities for all of us today, due in part to the brave (even brazen) stands taken by those in the past.