I Am Just Anneke
With the support of family and friends, a 12-year-old experiences the onset of puberty in the fluid space between genders.
From filmmaker Jonathan Skurnik:
I'm Just Anneke is the first film in a four-part series of short films called The Youth and Gender Media Project designed to educate school communities about transgender and gender nonconforming youth. The completed films are being used in schools and conferences throughout the U.S. to train administrators, teachers and students about the importance of protecting all children from harassment due to gender identity and expression.
Transgender and gender fluid youth are the most courageous people I have ever met. Despite overwhelming pressure to conform to an oppressive gender binary paradigm, they refuse to do it in order to be true to themselves. I wanted to pay tribute to these courageous young people and to inspire all of us to reconsider our own decisions about gender identity and expression.
Anneke is going into eighth grade in the fall of 2010 and I plan to film her over the course of her first year in high school. This footage will become a feature length documentary about Anneke's life as she starts to take testosterone and begins a slow and thoughtful transition to fully embody her own unique gender identity.
