VLAFF's "Mia" an Argentine triumph for transgender rights
Pamela Grcic
Posted: Sep 6th, 2012
http://www.vancouverobserver.com/culture/art/vlaffs-mia-argentine-triumph-transgender-rightsDirector and scriptwriter Javier van de Couter presented his opera prima at the Vancouver Latin American Film Festival (VLAFF) last Saturday.
Mia had been screened twice a week earlier at the Vancouver Queer Film Festival, and also was the recipient of the People's Choice Award and the Best Unpublished Script Award at the Habana International New Film Festival.
The film is the story of Ale, a transsexual woman who lives by a river in the Villa Rosa area of Buenos Aires, a place of refuge for LGBT people - transgendered men and women who are on the verge of eviction.
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Villa Rosa was founded in 1995, in the outskirts of Buenos Aires and was mostly inhabited by transsexual women and ->-bleeped-<-s. The Villa was a reaction to the controversial, homophobic statements on Argentine national TV by archbishop Antonio Quarracino, who suggested all gay and lesbians should live in a ghetto because "in that way a stain would be cleaned up from the face of society."
"I lived many years next door to a boarding house where trans girls were living illegally there and I saw girls that had come from the north [of Argentina] -- as when someone arrives in the city with a goal -- and for many of them, the goal was to become a woman. So to see that transformation, how they started rebuilding their identities, because they feel in a very particular way, so it was something that touched me, and [finally] I could understand how it was," explained Van de Couter.
