Deconstructing Zoe

Director: Rosa Fong
Release Year: 2016

When Deconstructing Zoe had its world premiere at Translations: Seattle Transgender Film Festival in 2016, it offered something that felt both revolutionary and deeply personal: a rich, unfiltered portrait of gender and racial identity through the lens of a singularly magnetic subject. Chowee Lee, known on stage and screen as Zoe, is a London-based Malayan Chinese actor and producer who proudly identifies as a gender-illusionist. Directed by Rosa Fong, this intimate documentary explores the beautifully complex intersections of gender, race, and sexuality in Zoe's life, and challenges the audience to reflect on their own assumptions about identity. At first glance, interviews with Zoe and her close friends might feel disorienting, as pronouns shift between "he" and "she" with little consistency. But the inconsistency is intentional and illuminating. Zoe identifies as genderqueer and openly embraces both her male and trans female identities without shame or confusion. She exists somewhere in the middle, fluid and adaptable, equally at home in the skin of Chowee or Zoe.

My Trans American Road Trip

Director: David Batty
Release Year: 2016

In the 2016 Channel 4 documentary My Trans American Road Trip, directed by David Batty, former Parachute Regiment officer and current affairs foreign correspondent Abigail Austen embarks on a deeply personal journey across a sharply divided United States. As the first British Army officer to undergo gender reassignment surgery, Austen is no stranger to struggle or controversy. But even she admits to being shaken by what she encountered while filming in the U.S., a nation she deeply admires.

Change Itself: An Art Apart - Genesis Breyer P-Orridge

Director: Carl Abrahamsson
Release Year: 2016

Summarizing the life and work of Genesis Breyer P-Orridge is a formidable challenge. This British artist’s career spans over five decades, from the mid-1960s to the present, and unfolds across an extraordinary range of artistic disciplines. Yet what truly sets P-Orridge apart is not simply the volume or variety of creative output, but the radical nature of their vision, a persistent drive to reshape culture, identity, and consciousness itself. Carl Abrahamsson’s documentary Change Itself: An Art Apart invites viewers into this expansive universe, revealing the man who was as much a living artwork as a creator of art. Genesis Breyer P-Orridge’s journey began in Manchester in 1950. From early on, P-Orridge resisted simple categorization, rejecting the limitations imposed by traditional art forms, gender norms, and societal expectations. Their work traversed music, performance art, collage, sculpture, occult philosophy, spoken word, and more, creating a multifaceted legacy that few artists can rival.

Miss Transgender: Britain's New Beauty Queens

Director: Jasleen Kaur Sethi
Release Year: 2016

"Miss Transgender: Britain's New Beauty Queens" (2016), directed by Jasleen Kaur Sethi, is a powerful observational documentary that immerses viewers in the intimate, joyful, and painful realities of being transgender in modern-day Britain. Against the backdrop of the country's first national transgender beauty pageant, the film follows three trans women, Fay, Courtney, and Jai, each with deeply personal motivations for entering the competition. Their journeys reveal the intersections of beauty, identity, survival, and hope, and they underscore just how multi-layered the transgender experience is.

Mandy: A Documentary

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