My short film, Call and Response, screened at the San Francisco Transgender Film Festival last weekend! Here’s a description of the film, and an excerpt from the spotlight interview the SFTFF folks were gracious enough to conduct.
Description:
This film is a dialogue between multiple threads in the filmmaker’s life — family and friends, old world and new, brown and white, super straight and super queer. The film presents voices from interviews 5 transgender men alongside a voicemail from a grandmother discovered after she passed away. Positioning the interviews as a reply to the bewilderment of the voicemail, Call and Response challenges trans men to carry old-school integrity through a brave new world.
Interview:
SFTFF: What was the inspiration for your film?
AK: After my grandmother passed away earlier this year, I found a voicemail she left me while I was driving cross-country to move back to California in 2012. She mistakenly thought she’d hung up after saying goodbye, but the recording went on to reveal her explaining to a friend of hers who I am and that I’m trans– all in Hindi. All my life, she challenged me to commit myself to a path of nonviolence and service, but she never quite saw my work in the trans community as falling under that umbrella. Call and Response pairs her challenge with the voices of five trans men, who reflect on the meaning and purpose of privilege and community responsibility.
SFTFF: Describe your film in 3 words.
AK: meditative, pastoral, borderlands
Read the rest of the interview here!
