Counting Past 2

COUNTING PAST 2, Toronto's Transsexual, Intersex and Transgender Film/Video/Arts Festival, ran for four very successful years, up until 2002 when Executive Director Boyd Kodak and Director of Development Cat Grant became seriously ill, due to what has now been identified as a toxic mold infestation in their home.

Since that time, Cat and Boyd's energy, time and resources have been taken up in trying to stay alive, get healthy, and pursue justice, through an ongoing legal and medical battle.

I decided to put together Counting Past 2 in 1997 after almost a decade of struggling with the big wigs at queer film festivals either not showing any interest in my work (which is concerned mainly with transsexual sexual representation) or telling me that my films were not "transgender" enough to fit in their queer programs. I thought it was time to create an event that would feature work produced by transsexual and transgendered artists and especially work by those of us who don't have the resources or the desire to live up to the aesthetic and thematic standards of both mainstream and queer film festivals.
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Every decade has its own wave of fascination, exoticization, sensationalization, economic exploitation, and misrepresentation of transsexuals. The 90's are no exception with more and more academics, writers, film makers, and activists making a hobby or a lucrative project out of deconstructing, reconstructing, redeconstructing, and re-reconstructing gender or of attacking "old fashioned" and "deluded" transsexuals under the guise of "dismantling the binary gender system..."
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With this in mind, it is no surprise that Counting Past 2 is more relevant than ever. I look at queer, transgender, and other alternative film festivals and notice that there is an abundance of work by and about drag, butch, and a spectrum of genderfucking, but I am baffled by the absence of work produced by transsexuals and frustrated by the total absence of discussion about it. It is one thing not to have the privilege to represent ourselves but it is another one not to address (or to silence any attempt at addressing) the social/political/economic circumstances that make us so reluctant or unable to create films on our own terms. Can you imagine women going to a women film festival where over 95% of the films would be made (or curated) by men or going to a Queer film festival where over 95% of the films would be made (or curated) by straights? I don't think it would fly.
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Making a commitment to maintaining a festival that is not thematic (ie: showing work made by TS/TG/intersex people as opposed to showing work about TS\/TG\/intersex lives) and one that includes TG/intersex artists while focusing on TS work poses some challenges:
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One: There is very little circulating annually and most of it comes from the same (albeit talented!!) handful of queer-identified TS/TG film makers who have made it in Queer Film Fest circuits.
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Two: A large percentage of transsexual & transgendered people live way, way below the poverty line and making films is just not a realistic project for them.
https://web.archive.org/web/20010331145159im_/http://www.countingpast2.com/othergrfx/dot.gif" Therefore, right from the beginning, a multi-disciplinary festival which was going to validate dance, music, spoken word, and embrace artists who do not have the resources or the connections for making movies became imperative. A cabaret was born and with it the opportunity for a larger diversity of marginalized TS/TG people to express themselves, speak their truth, and share their talent. Three years later Counting Past 2's original objectives remain unchanged:
- To generate a space where we can present our work safely without the thematic/aesthetic/stylistic/artsy constraints that non-transsexual curators (whether they be queer or straight) exert on us.
- To show audiences that transsexual people are creative and that it is through our own work they can best start to grasp what our lives, sexuality, and political struggles are all about.
- To encourage the current wave of creativity raging through transsexual communities.
Kissous Kissous,
Mirha-Soleil Ross