Filmmaker Seeks to Shift Focus of Trans Stories in Documentary Film

For filmmaker and storyteller Petra Totten, the formula for telling trans stories is overdone. And such stories are rarely told for a trans audience. That’s somthing she’s hoping to change.

An award-winning filmmaker with works appearing at festivals across Europe, Asia and North America, Totten is now a PhD candidate with the Faculty of arts & science’s Cinema Studies Institute.

“My specific interest is in the portrayal of trans people in non-fiction and documentary media,” she says. “I want to infuse more care and artistry into how trans people are thought about and framed within non-fiction films and documentaries.”

Totten believes that films that have featured the trans lived experience are frequently enough repetitive.

“The stories are oftentimes confessional,” she says. “It’s always, ‘Look at the plight of this trans person.’ There are plenty of examples of the heartache, the difficulty, the violence and all the things trans people – especially trans femmes and trans femmes of colour – experience daily.But those films have already been made.”

The story of grinding through tough phases of transitioning – demonstrating tremendous resilience and courage along the way – is designed primarily to make a general audience feel good about themselves, believes Totten.

“Audiences respond with, ‘Oh look, I understand what trans people go through,'” she says. “We’re making films so that people can be sympathetic to trans people and the specific embodiments we experience on a daily basis. So I understand that,but I’m not interested in that.

“I’m more interested in telling non-fiction stories about trans people, but for a trans audience. That’s my focus for my dissertation. In my research, I argue that shifting the focus changes both the modes you can work in and the output. The finished product is different when you have that shift in focus.”

Totten is exploring trans narratives in a variety of film forms, such as autotheory film – which blends personal experience and theory, using embodied knowledge – insights from lived bodily experience – to express ideas.

Another form is the essay film – a hybrid cinematic form that blurs the lines between documentary and fiction, exploring themes and ideas rather than focusing on a linear narrative.

And there’s expository documentary that Totten calls a ‘Voice of God’ documentary that informs and educates an audience by presenting data in a clear, structured and persuasive manner.

Totten also recently completed a short film in the autotheory genre – a personal story called Visitations.