QFILMS REVIEW: 'I Stand Corrected' and the Jazz of Transgender
By Brian Addison
| Thursday, 13 September 2012 08:20
http://www.lbpost.com/lgbt/2000000998-the-jazz-of-transgenderAnd that is where the beauty of I Stand Corrected—the most impressive of the documentaries showing at this year's QFilms—lies.
There is a whimsical attitude to Andrea Meyerson's direction of the film that gives both a lightness to the transgender transformation and plays directly with the film's focus: the brilliant jazz bassist Jennifer Lietham, née John Leitham.
The way in which the film portrays the power of human consciousness and decision—that is, the ways in which we can achieve things we thought otherwise impossible, the ways in which we can supersede common conceptions of understanding—is beautifully simple and yet simultaneously complex, much like Jennifer's musical medium of jazz.
"I have four birthdays," she explained. Four different dates that all represent birth, in one form or another, for her: the day she was physically born; the day she officially chose to transition from a male to a female; the day she legally and socially altered her name; and the day she physically left behind her maleness.