Program 2: Documentaries

Earth to KB is a documentary portrait of KB Brookins: a Black, queer, and trans writer and artist from Texas. The film explores the expansive worlds within KB’s poetry, as well as intimate moments shared with their wife, friends, and community in Austin. KB performs selected poems from their collections, Freedom House, and, How To Identify Yourself With a Wound, within the film.

Damon Beirne is a Brooklyn-based documentary director and editor from Richmond, Virginia. His latest short film, Lavender Outlaws, premiered at WickedQueer, and received an audience award from the TRANSlations festival and will screen at AmericanaFest in Nashville this fall. His upcoming feature documentary, Notes on N.O.P.E. is on track to be released in 2026 and is currently being workshopped around Brooklyn. He is an regular contributor at the Trans Film Collective and serves on the MIX NYC archival comittee.

While planning a birthday party for her late aunt Bianca “Exotica” Maldonado, María José Maldonado revisits the past in order to celebrate and correct Bianca’s legacy as a transgender woman.

This short student documentary is a crossed portrait of two transgender women working on their voice to make it sound more feminine and to match the new person they have become.

“ALQUIMIA TRANS” is a short documentary that delves into the unique experiences of trans masculine activists across Latin America. Through poignant narratives from individuals in Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Puerto Rico, the film offers a compelling testimony to the challenges and triumphs encountered by trans masculine individuals in the region.

Wes “Byeeeeee Yonic” Haack is a trans man and member of Bay Area Derby, aka BAD, a nonprofit roller derby league that has created a community rarely found in sports: Almost every one of the 20 skaters on BAD’s three teams is queer. Many are trans, an identity that laws being enacted across the country aim to push out of many sports.

Middle School students are assigned studying systematic bullying and then decide to make their own film.

www.themesafoundation.org