Mission
The San Francisco Transgender Film Festival (SFTFF) is North America’s first and longest-running transgender film festival. SFTFF organizes an annual film festival in San Francisco; awards commissioning grants to filmmakers; advocates for movement-building with other film festivals and organizations; and co-sponsors other grassroots trans and queer arts events throughout the year. SFTFF’s work is rooted in values and practices of transgender and queer cultural leadership, trans and racial and disability justice, accessibility, equity, and community care.
History
Founded in 1997 by Christopher Lee and Alex Austin, and originally named Tranny Fest, SFTFF was North America’s first transgender film festival. We are the world’s longest running transgender film festival. We organized our first festival for the same reason so many other marginalized communities have organized film festivals: the absence of authentic representations of our lives and experiences in the mainstream commercial media. Originally a biennial event, SFTFF screened films and videos by transgender and gender variant media artists whose work challenged stereotypes. We primarily served filmmakers with extremely limited access to venues. After five biennual festivals, overwhelming audience demand led our organizers to begin staging the Festival as an annual event in 2005.