Gendernauts

Gendernauts explores the phenomena of transgenderism at the end of the second millennium in California – a film about gender benders and sexual cyborgs, people who alter their bodies and minds with new technologies and chemistry and thus question male and female identities. Asked if they are a man or a woman, the gendernauts answer “yes.” Like cosmonauts in space and cybernauts in the internet, the gendernauts travel through the diverse worlds of sexuality. New German Cinema alumnus Monika Treut journeys through late 1990s San Francisco, meeting trans and intersex artists who live, love, and work at the cutting edge of gender and digital technologies. Counting more than two decades from its original release, this screening offers an opportunity to experience its vision of gender fluidity and self-determination. With a sharp and curious eye, honed by a long career observing and participating in sexual subcultures in Berlin, Treut explores the Bay Area, where new gender formations met more utopian ideas of technology, before the tech giants became omnipresent. Featuring legendary trans thinkers and activists Susan Stryker and Sandy Stone, along with trans and intersex artists and their partners, Gendernauts is living history on film.