LGBTQ Film Series Screening of Contralto

Filmmaker Sarah Hennies will introduce her new film "Contralto," a film and sound work that exists in between the spaces of experimental music and documentary. The piece features a cast of transgender women speaking, singing, and performing vocal exercises accompanied by a dense and varied musical score that includes a variety of conventional and "non-musical" approaches to sound-making, using instruments such as paper, bowls of grains, office equipment, etc.

The cast of the film includes several former and current students of the Ithaca College Voice and Communication Modification Program for People in the Transgender Community course, offered to aid transgender people in finding a speaking voice that is more suited to their identity. It is not widely known that when a transgender man takes testosterone his vocal cords thicken, causing the pitch of his voice to drop into a so-called “masculine” range. The same, however, is not true for trans women whose voices are unaffected by higher levels of estrogen. “Contralto” - defined in musical terms as “the lowest female singing voice” - uses the sound of trans women’s voices to explore trans identity from the inside and expose a profound and queer relationship between gender and experimental sound studies.

Being a woman with a “male voice” creates a variety of difficult situations for trans women including prolonged and intensified dysphoria and higher risk of harassment and violence due to possibly exposing someone as trans unintentionally. This creates a situation where transgender women’s identities are betrayed by their bodies. The film was made possible by Community Arts Partnership of Tompkins County, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant, and New York Foundation for the Arts Shelley Pinz Professional Development Grant.

Part of the Out of the Closet and Onto the Screen LGBTQ Film Series.

Tuesday, April 10, 2018 at 6:00pm

Handwerker Gallery

Individuals who would like to request accessibility accommodations should contact lmaurer@ithaca.edu . We ask that requests be made as soon as possible to ensure they can be met.

Event Type

Screening

Departments/Offices

LGBT Center

Website

http://ithaca.edu/lgbt

Contact Email:

lmaurer@ithaca.edu

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