Switch, A community in transition is a documentary about a progressive, multicultural community and the response of the community to a member’s changing gender expression. The basic premise of this film is that it is not the individual that transitions, but the community.
Many transgendered and transsexual people are not making a switch from ONE to ANOTHER ONE, but rather switching their position on a continuum for a different position. The switch, culturally, is for the people around them not necessarily for themselves. Not the binary “off” and “on” of a light switch, or the dualistic nature of the concepts of male and female, but switch as in the subtle substitution of one for another … switch this for that. Exchange.
A transgendered person could argue nothing is switching for them, only a curtain pulled back to reveal a different, more true self. They are not changing anything, but aligning for themselves what has always been true.
Switch: a Community in Transition provides a venue for main stream audiences to experience first-hand how one particular community responds to movement on the gender line, shifting notions of male and female, trans, transsexuals, gender-queer and gender-other. With a TRT of less than one hour it is designed to be a teaching tool and will have has a developed curriculum and discussion questions to accompany the DVD.
