WJFF Year-Round and GLOE present

As part of our Capital Pride Week celebrations

Film Screening

MELTING AWAY

Monday, June 4, 2012
7:00 pm | DCJCC

Followed by a discussion

Tickets
General: $11
Discounted: $10 (member/senior/student) 


Special award for Breakthrough Performance to Chen Yani, Tel Aviv International LGBT Film Festival

This heartfelt drama follows the a family drawn into crisis on a rainy night, after parents discover their child has been secretly wearing women’s clothes and kick "him" out of the house. Years later, instead of the son they remember, they find a beautiful woman who supports herself by performing in Tel Aviv’s queer cabarets. As the father is stricken with cancer, they all struggle with acceptance, forgiveness, and the ways we let ourselves be cared for.

This film is a deeply moving exploration of individuality, family ties, acceptance and forgiveness.

This is the first feature film in the history of Israeli cinema dealing with the parents' perspective on having a transgender child. Melting Away was conceived after the brutal attack and murders at the Tel Aviv LGBT Youth Center in 2009, and the deep shock felt by director Doron Eran, and his partner, screenwriter Bili Ben Moshe, after hearing of parents refusing to visit their injured kids at the hospital.

Followed by a discussion with Sharon Bracket, Board Chair at Gender Rights Maryland and founder of Trans Parents Day; as well as university trans advocate, Sarah McBride.  

Light refreshments served.

Sharon Brackett, Board Chair of Gender Rights Maryland, is a serial entrepreneur who was selected, in 2010, by Washington SmartCEO Magazine as one of Washington's Smart100 CEOs for 2010 and then again, after her transition, in 2011. She is a volunteer co-moderator of the Gender Identity support group of the Center (The Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center of Baltimore and Central Maryland). She is one of the two co-founders of TransParent Day, and is a board member of MoringaCommunity.org, a charity that is building a trade school and food preservation education program in Ghana, West Africa. In her spare time she works with youth groups with technical interests such as rocketry and robotics. She resides in Howard County with her two sons.

Sarah McBride is a rising senior at American University.  She is a native of Wilmington, DE, where she worked as staff on the campaigns of Governor Jack Markell and Attorney General Beau Biden, and founded the state's high school Democrats organization. In 2011, Sarah was elected to serve as student body President at American University where she established new scholarship funds, instituted gender neutral housing, and convinced the Board of Trustees to begin a Committee on Socially Responsible Investing. In April of 2012, near the end of her term, Sarah came out to the AU community as transgender. She now serves as in intern at the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund.

Israel, 2011, feature, 86 minutes, Hebrew with English subtitles.
Director: Doron Eran

Co-sponsored by the Embassy of Israel