While we continue to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community during Pride Month, it should come as no surprise that their representation matters. However, transgender persons are being killed at a disproportionate rate and those with large social media platforms, continue to preach transphobic comments regularly.
As we all continue dedicating moments to self-educate on social injustice issues, what better time to continue said education on the transgender experience?
Thankfully, Netflix’s new documentary Disclosure offers a lesson in the power of storytelling through the LGBTQ+ community.
Directed by Sam Feder, Disclosure primarily focuses on how transgender representation has evolved across both film and television, and the ways their lack of accurate representation continues to painfully impact the community. From Sean Baker’s Tangerine to HBO’s Euphoria, the documentary covers the dismissive and intrusive ways that their stories have been and continue to be told.
“Disclosure comes out at a moment that both feels familiar and unprecedented as we reckon with the global health crisis and the legacy of settler colonialism and white supremacy we continue to be sickened by the ongoing violence against cis and trans Black people,” explained Feder and producer Amy Scholder in a statement via Twitter.
“Many whose names we will never know, and we say those we do know.”
Putting transgender voices at the forefront, the documentary includes footage and interviews with Matrix co-director Lily Wachowski, Pose star MJ Rodriguez, and Orange Is The New Black star Laverne Cox, who is also an executive producer on the film.
“I think, for a very long time, the ways in which trans people have been represented on screen have suggested that we’re not real, have suggested that we’re mentally ill, that we don’t exist,” Cox mentions in the trailer. “And yet here I am, yet here we are, and we’ve always been here.”
Disclosure is available to stream June 19 on Netflix. Intrigued? Watch the eye-opening trailer below.
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