Sam Participates in Pride of the Ocean
Posted by John Scagliotti on April 28, 2013
Pride of the Ocean Alumni
Other alums are making waves all over the independent film world. Sam Berliner joined the 2011 seminars with his film Genderbusters, and has continued his groundbreaking work in Trans New Wave filmmaking, that he described as "films [that] move past traditional coming out or transition nuts and bolts stories to films with characters that embody their sexual orientations and gender identities without calling attention to it, nodding to an audience who already understands the implied history and experience, and giving the film the freedom to focus on the story.” Genderbusters has gone around the world at international film festivals, and Sam is now working on getting it into schools, LGBTQ centers, and PFLAG chapters. Most exciting, this year he has the perfect place to work in this arena, as the newly named Festival Director of Translations: The Seattle Transgender Film Festvial! "As a trans filmmaker myself, I have a deep passion for and commitment to trans and queer cinema, and I am very excited to run this amazing festival with the folks from Three Dollar Bill Cinema.”
Just as Pride of the Ocean offers a safe space for filmmakers to explore the diversity of filmmaking in theme and style, Sam describes the importance of that space as emulated by festivals such as CineSLAM. Regarding Translations he states, "A transgender film festival offers a safe space to celebrate, honor, mourn, learn, grow, relate, cry, empathize, accept, laugh… It is a space that we can excitedly return to each year to keep tabs on this ever shifting and beautifully evolving community.” In addition to his work on the festival, he continues to make his own films, currently working on DATING SUCKS: A GENDERQUEER MISADVENTURE, an animated documentary webseries about the successes, failures and overall confusion of trying to date as a genderqueer/trans person.
