Only in recent decades have transgender people - i.e. those who experience an incongruity between their biological sex and their gender identity - found realistic, honest and respectful representation on the screen. For much of the history of cinema, the more superficial image of the "transvestite" prevailed, especially in comedies and, to some extent, in horror films. Only recently has space been given to the psychological, social and cultural problems that the condition of "transgender" often implies, with all-round portraits of personalities, in films that often give voice to the experiences that accompany the often painful and demanding journey of those who intend to change their sexual identity and, together, their place in the world. Part 2 is also available at Academia.edu and at www.cinemafocus.eu

Most writing on transgender cinema focuses on representations of trans people, rather than works made by trans people. This article surveys the history of trans and gender variant people creating audiovisual media from the beginning of cinema through today. From the professional gender impersonators of the stage who crossed into film during the medium’s first decades to self-identified transvestite and transsexual filmmakers, like Ed Wood and Christine Jorgensen of the mid-twentieth century, to the enormous upsurge in trans filmmaking of the 1990s, this article explores the rich and complex history of trans and gender variant filmmaking. It also considers the untraceable gender variant filmmakers who worked in film and television without their gender history becoming known and those who made home movies that have been lost to history.

Examines the portrayals of female-to-male (FTM) and male-to-female (MTF) cross-dressing and transsexuality in Iranian cinema.

Scope, October 2011

People with intersex variations were born with atypical sex characteristics - chromosomes, hormones or anatomy - which challenge the binary sex model. This talk will address the usefulness and problems of applying a Queer Theory lens to understand people with intersex variations. It draws on statistical and narrative data from 272 Australians with intersex variations. It outlines this diverse groups’ experiences of identities, bodies, sexuality, medical treatment and activism. It compares and contrasts some of these experiences to other LGBT groups’ experiences, and argues that it is possible to see both pros and cons to thinking about intersex variations within a Queer lens.

A thesis on transgender in malaysian flims

Judith Butler in the essay Performative Acts and Gender Constitution, observes " Gender is an identity through repeated bodily acts. Therefore, gender is performative, not a fixed identity" Butler (2002). This understanding of gender as performative challenges the traditional view that gender is determined by biology and opens up possibilities for individuals to express their gender in ways that are not necessarily tied to their sex assigned at birth. Among these gender identities, India has always stereotyped minority groups, including queer communities. Transgender people find their gender identity different from the sex determined at birth. The patriarchal systems of society are to blame for the struggle and humiliation, regardless of whether it is social, personal, or financial. Media can represent a limited array of images and ideas that could form unique versions which might differ from reality. In order to reflect the variety of people in a changing society, queer people have indeed been presented differently in popular culture. Movies can influence minds to a large extent, so representations and portrayals become crucial. Many films have failed to portray real trans lives, often drawing them as sexual objects, social outcastes, and minorities. This paper focuses on the portrayal of love and affection in Indian trans movies and how they have elevated with time.

This thesis consists of 3 main chapters, in the first part, I examined how queer characters were represented in the storytelling with their costumes in the 1980s movies. The movies I reviewed in the first chapter; Victor/Victoria, Blake Edwards (1982),Kiss of the Spider Woman Movie,1985 My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), Desert Hearts, Donna Deitch, 1997, and Law of Desire (Pablo Almodovar, 1987). These examples, which I selected from European, Argentinean, and American cinema, focused on how LGBTIQ+ characters were represented in 1980, how they were viewed with a "gaze", how they were perceived in society, and through which costumes the characters were represented in the cinema. In this section, I focused on the state, politics, social rules, (norms), and exclusion themes. The year 1980 was a period when cinema culture reached its peak, but gender representations and the principle of "inclusiveness" did not yet take a large place in media culture. Secondly, I examined how queer characters were reflected in cinema culture over 10 years in the 1990 period. The films I chose for this analysis are; Happy Together (Kar-Wai Wong,1997) , The Watermelon Woman Cheryl Dunye, 1996 Paris is Burning, Jennie Livingston, 1990, All About My Mother, Almodovar, 1999, The Birdcage (1996) - Mike Nichols. These films are selected from different genres such as documentary fiction, comedy, and drama. This selection, which consists of South Asian arthouse cinema, Hollywood comedy films, and two documentaries-fiction, includes 4 different understandings and complement each other. In my review from Happy Together to The Birdscage, while themes such as "inclusiveness", civil rights, the rebellion of the LGBTI+ committee, and black civil rights came to the fore in 1990, especially in America and England, as the year 1990 approached the present, many rights-seeking have come to the fore. It came to the fore as a period when queer characters began to find a place for themselves in the mainstream. Finally, during the 2000s, I examined how queer characters were conveyed in storytelling with their costumes. Especially since 2018, I have examined popular series and TV shows in which LGBTIQ+ characters, which have experienced a great proliferation in the mainstream, are transferred. In this section, I reviewed productions such as Queer Eye, David Collins,2018, Killing Eve, Phoebe Waller-Bridge,2018 Pose, Bill Murray,2018 in the last part of my thesis. I have observed that companies such as Netflix, Amazon, and HBO Max, which are proliferating today and can distribute without censorship and television rules thanks to internet streaming services, are more effective than local television channels in the principle of "inclusiveness". In my analysis, I looked at the main genre of drama, Killing Eve and Pose, as the protagonist of the story, as well as the costumes of queer characters, contributing to the issues it addresses and the new kind of queer storytelling that replaces the male gaze in society. While I was talking about the Queer Eye reality show, which had great ratings in reality shows, I also mentioned RuPaul’s Drag Race. In that chapter, which I examined as a reality show and a popular TV series, I observed that the inclusive stories, especially in the teenager series featuring queer characters, and in which the queer black community could find a place, began to be told. The productions I examined in the last period were very different from the story pattern conveyed in the 90s and 80s. The boom in the TV series industry in the 2000s offered the opportunity to produce and watch different sub-genres such as excess production, queer reality shows, crime, comedy, teenage drama, and thriller. The TV series, which increase the opportunity for young audiences to identify with themselves, were different from the queer productions I studied in the 80s and 90s, as they were produced with the concerns of being consumed quickly and popularized.