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March 31, 2016
The Danish Girl Attracts Controversy on Several Fronts OUT North Queer Film Festival presents The Danish Girl on April 16 by Debbie Thomas
A
t some point, perhaps, acting credentials and not gender identity, will dictate who gets what role. Until then, high profile films like The Danish Girl and Dallas Buyers Club will continue to raise hackles in the transgender community for having cisgender (a term coined in the 1990s to denote a person whose self-identity matches their biological sex) actors play transgender characters.
And yet, amidst the backlash over Eddie Redmayne’s casting as Einar Wegener/Lili Elbe in The Danish Girl dwells a little known irony that one of his co-stars is a trans actress portraying a cis-female nurse. Her name is Rebecca Root, and her appearance in the film is a victory of sorts for those who choose not to live in or identify with the bodies they were born with. Such was the case with Einar
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PHOTO: courtesy of YQFA
Alicia Vikaander (left) as Gerta and Eddie Redmayne (last year’s Theory of Everything Oscar winner) as Einar/Lile Wegener in a scene from The Danish Girl Wegener. The film The Danish Girl is loosely based on the real life experience of Wegener , who underwent sex reassignment surgery in 1930 s. He and wife Gerda (played by Alicia Vikaander, who won an Academy Award for this role) were both accomplished painters in 1920’s Copenhagen, although Einar’s brooding landscapes were better received than Gerda’s portraits. One day, hurrying to finish a canvas of a young woman, Gerda asks Einar to fill in for the model. He laughingly pulls on silk stockings and dainty slippers while cautioning her not to tell anyone. Neither expects that they have just crossed a bridge of no return. For Einar, the experience awakens buried feelings and he continues to pose for his wife in portraits that become the talk of the town and bring her new commercial success. Loosely inspired by the year 2000 novel of the same name by
American author David Ebershoff, The Danish Girl is director Tom Hooper’s tender biopic of how the couple’s lives and marriage evolve and dissolve as they navigate Einar’s ground-breaking journey towards becoming Lili. At first, seeing her husband in women’s clothes is a bit of a shared joke for Gerda. There is also the suggestion that she finds it titillating. But as Lili’s personae increasingly overshadows Einar’s, Gerda demands a return to the man she married; something that is no longer possible. Although Lili Elbe charted courageous territory during a time of overt homophobia and repressive sexual politics, history had mostly forgotten her until Ebershoff came across her story in a book on gender theory. Even then, Ebershoff, who is the former vicepresident and executive editor at Random House Publishing, was faced with such a lack of historical material that he chose to fiction-
alize her life. English writer Lucinda Coxon adapted Ebershoff’s novel into a screenplay in 2004. Since then, she has been the only constant with a script that had been attached to at least three other directors before Hooper (Les Misérables, The King’s Speech). Studios were reluctant to fund a film about a subject that is poorly understood and still controversial in some circles. Indeed, The Danish Girl opened in Qatar it was banned from further screenings due to its “depravity.” And so it is a measure of how society is at a fundamental crossroads, that Hooper’s glorious, gentle, classically-styled film has also been labelled too genteel and that he has been criticized for giving Redmayne the role of Lili Elbe. The Danish Girl is not a radical piece of filmmaking history, but it does offer a nuanced glimpse into the complexities of the transgender experience. The OUT North Queer Film Festival presents The Danish Girl on Saturday, April 16 at the Beringia Interpretive Centre. Doors open at 5:30 p.m. and the film begins at 6 p.m.
The
The 2016 Spring Sitting of the Yukon Legislative Assembly will convene at 1:00 p.m. on Thursday, April 7, 2016. The Assembly sits Monday to Thursday 1:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Live and archived audio, and archived video of the legislative proceedings are available through the Legislative Assembly’s website: http://www.legassembly.gov.yk.ca/coverage.html The first hour of the proceedings of the Yukon Legislative Assembly is telecast at 11 a.m. and at 6:00 p.m. on the day following the proceedings, on Northwestel Cable, Channel 9 in Whitehorse. Live radio coverage is available at 93.5 FM. The Order Paper, the Hansard transcript, and audio and video for
La séance du printemps 2016 de l’Assemblée législative du Yukon est convoquée à 13 h, jeudi 7 avril 2016. L’Assemblée siège du lundi au jeudi de 13 h à 17 h 30. Les archives et la couverture audio en direct, de même que les archives du signal vidéo des travaux législatifs, sont disponibles sur le site web de l’Assemblée législative à : http://www.legassembly.gov.yk.ca/fr/coverage.html La première heure des travaux de l’Assemblée législative du Yukon est télédiffusée à 11 h et 18 h le jour suivant les travaux, sur le service de télévision par câble de Northwestel, chaîne 9, à Whitehorse. Diffusion audio en direct au 93,5 FM.
each sitting day can be accessed through the Calendar at: http://www.legassembly.gov.yk.ca/33_leg.html#cal Closed captioning is available. For more information: Website : http://www.legassembly.gov.yk.ca
Le feuilleton, la transcription du Hansard et la couverture audio et télévisuelle de chaque jour de séance peuvent être consultés à partir du calendrier à : http://www.legassembly.gov.yk.ca/fr/33_leg.html Le sous-titrage codé est disponible. Pour de plus amples renseignements : Site web : http://www.legassembly.gov.yk.ca/fr/
OUT North Queer Film Festival
...features six films on the program, which runs
April 15 to 17 at the Beringia Interpretive Centre. For complete information and trailers go to
YukonQueerFilmAlliance.com Debbie Thomas is the coordinator for the Yukon Queer Film Alliance.