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Who we become is a documentary about building a trans family. The film focuses on a makeshift family bonded by the search for community. Jace, who was forced to leave his home, moved to NYC where he found refuge with a trans family and started a new life away from his rural Texas hometown. As soon as he arrived in New York, he started taking hormones for his transition from female to male. With few resources, Kim and Cris run a clinic in the Bronx that deals with trans care. They try tirelessly to create a family of transgender individuals who are isolated by friends and disowned by their families.
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Michael Kamber, founder of the Bronx Documentary Center (BDC), followed Kim and Cris for over a year, working on a promotional video for the Bronx Lebanon Hospital. Hendrik was working on the project while volunteering at the BDC. He soon realized there was a bigger story to be told. Soon after, Adam joined the team. We approached Mike with our desire to expand the video into a feature-length documentary.
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We understood the potential of the story: A black couple of trans experience running a trans care clinic in the Bronx “adopts” a white trans boy who was forced to leave his home. We realized that intertwined in this intimate story were larger implications. After weeks of reporting, we discovered the beginning of a passing of the torch within the transgender community from the older generation to the younger activists. Issues of race, class, education and inner-group politics set the backdrop for our story. For many individuals, transitioning is an isolating experience; yet, most search for any semblance of a family. We wanted to show a side of the trans community that is often overshadowed by stories centered on the surgical procedure of transitioning, white middle-aged trans women, or urban trans youth who work as prostitutes.
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Within the trans community there is a debate about whether one should live openly as trans or remain stealth, meaning not disclosing you are trans. There is a strong fear in the community that being trans could mean risking one’s life. This summer alone, five trans women were murdered in the U.S. The Human Rights Campaign reported that a transgender person has a 1 in 12 chance of being murdered. And for people of color, the probability is even higher.
In times of increasing hate crimes against members of the LGBTQ community in New York, the trans community struggles to find solidarity. There is a debate within the group about the goals of the trans community, collective identity and a changing of the guard. Other factors like race and income inequality compact this tension.
Past documentaries on trans people have focused on the medical transition, drag culture and trans women. We wanted to shift the focus and illustrate how for many trans people, community means family and family is essential to their survival. We also wanted to show the struggle of navigating life as a transgender person.
We hope that our documentary can contribute to more acceptance of transgender individuals and shed a light on the violence and struggles many of them face.
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Using our personal savings, working weekends and taking days off work to film, we’ve finished filming, built a website, designed the art and started editing.
What will $ 25,000 get us? An editor, pay Indiegogo fees, perks and shipping.
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3,000: A sound mixer
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40,000: Staff salaries
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50,000: Color correction, festival fees, equipment. If we reach $ 53,000, we’ll donate $ 3,000 to CK LIfe’s annual scholarship fund, which helps one member pay for their surgeries. If you would like to donate to them, visit their site here.
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Adam Perez (Director/Producer/Designer) is a visual journalist working for TIME magazine. He's worked as an adjunct professor and digital media associate at Columbia Journalism School. Adam graduated from Columbia's J-school in 2013 with honors, focusing on long-form writing and documentary photography and video. In addition, Adam has worked as a field producer, shooter and editor for NBC News, NBC LA and NPR. He graduated summa cum laude from the University of Southern California in 2011. He's a proud member of NAHJ and ONA.
Jan Hendrik Hinzel (Director/Producer) is a journalist based in New York. He studied Political Science and Middle Eastern studies at University of Freiburg in Germany and Cairo University in Egypt. He holds a Masters degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, where he specialized in investigative reporting and documentary film-making.
His reporting trips brought him to Brazil, Syria, Lebanon, Bahrain, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and to Saudi Arabia. He's a winner of the Axel Springer Award and the Grimme Online Award. German "Medium-Magazin" listed him as one of the top 30 under 30 journalists in Germany and as one of the top ten newcomer journalists in 2010.
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Made by Rocky Cruz
