The TRANSlations: Seattle Trans Film Festival which starts this week centered around in-person screenings at Capitol Hill’s Northwest Film Forum, organizers have set out to create a festival for everyone and an event to help connect the trans community across the neighborhood, the city, and around the world. Taking place May 5th through 8th, the 2022 Seattle Trans Film Festival offers events and films that showcase transgender films by and for trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming people.

TRANSlations lead programmer and filmmaker StormMiguel Florez said the whole point is to explore trans film, of course, but also for people outside the community to come along.

“We don’t have a lot of spaces where we get to celebrate ourselves this way and see ourselves this way and it is a festival that is welcoming to everyone, but it is our space to see and be seen and connect. Just to have that kind of reflection that we so rarely get,” Florez said.

Going on its 17th year and one of only two transgender film festivals in the country, Capitol Hill-headquartered Three Dollar Bill Cinema is ready for the event to also reconnect in person. In the past 2 years, the pandemic made the film festival entirely virtual. Now people can again attend the festival in person, offering a moment of relief from the pandemic, Florez said.

“This year feels different in that it’s more accessible than ever for people to be able to go in-person and to be able to watch online and connect. We are still making sure people get to stay connected, even those who are attending virtually,” Florez said.

The latest Seattle film events comes in a year of reawakening for in-person festival screenings. The the Seattle International Film Festival returned last month in a smaller, more compact format that included screenings at Capitol Hill’s Egyptian Theatre. Events like last week’s Seattle Black Film Festival in the Central District have helped make up for the smaller SIFF. Now it is time for the Seattle Trans Film Festival.

For the Seattle trans film festival, it is about representing members of the community as mainstream media falls short of doing so, he said. “It’s really important for us to get to see ourselves, but not only that, create films that show ourselves, tell our own stories, and the many nuances that make us up.”

“We need more of our stories,” he said.

Representation from the community is the most important as tropes about communities of margins generally come from people not part of them, Florez said. The filmmaker believes more representation would lead more trans people to explore the art.

Part of the problem is funding, he said. Narrative stories by CIS people are more likely to be funded than trans filmmakers who generally focus on shorts and documentaries because of low budgets, Florez said.

“We make a lot of shorts, we make a lot of documentaries. Those are on the lower end of the budget scale but those are the avenues that we find we can do because we are gonna make our art, one way or another,” he said.

Florez said that seeing other people get inspired is what this festival is all about.

“It is a place where we can say ‘hey, I can do that, I want to tell my story.’ I really hope that people get inspired to come and tell stories of their own,” Florez said. “Stories that are interesting, especially people who are on the intersections of being BIPOC, disabled, undocumented, and of course trans and non binary.”

The TRANSlations: Seattle Trans Film Festival runs May 5th through 8th with screenings online and at Northwest Film Forum. Visit threedollarbillcinema.org/translations-2022 to buy tickets and learn more.

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