Catherine Crouch

Last updated
Catherine Crouch
Born13 August 1960
Fort Benning, Georgia
Occupation(s) Film director, screenwriter

Catherine Crouch is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer, and actor. She has been active in independent film-making for over two decades. Most of her work explores gender, race, and class in lesbian and queer lives. She is known for Stranger Inside (2001), Stray Dogs (2002), and The Gendercator (2007).

Contents

The Gendercator controversy

The Gendercator is a 2007 short film described as "a satirical take on surgical body modification and gender. The story uses the 'Rip Van Winkle' model to extrapolate from the feminist 1970s to a frightening 2048 where politics and technology have conspired to mandate two gender 'choices': Macho male or Barbie babe. In this dystopian future, those whose gender presentation does not comply will be GENDERCATED." [1] It is set in a future dystopic world where gender non-conformance is intolerable and genderqueerness is resolved with sex-change operations that align gender attributes with outer appearance; wherein masculinity is conformed with a male body and femininity with a female body.

It was scheduled to screen in the OUTer Limits section of the 2007 Frameline Film Festival, along with other futuristic and experimental films, [2] but it was pulled from the program after several members and supporters of the transgender community criticized it as "transphobic" and took issue with its being included in the festival. [3] [4] Frameline yielded to an online petition published by the website Left on SF that described The Gendercator as a "hateful movie". [5] Protesters complained about the use of the word "tranny" in the dialogue;[ citation needed ] they also objected to the director's statement in which Crouch spoke against body modification as a solution for all gender dissonance.[ citation needed ]

Crouch was invited to screen her film in San Francisco in the fall of 2007 by Ondine Kilker, co-chair of community initiative Center Women Present (CWP). [3] [6] In a 2008 interview for Sinister Wisdom , Crouch stated that her film spoke to an intracommunity queer issue where an over-reliance on gender norms was fast becoming a popular and too narrow way to interpret the vast diversity of queer gender and sex expressions. [7]

The Gendercator is the first film pulled by Frameline from its festival due to controversy. [4] [8] Crouch maintains that gender pluralism was the core gender message, and that she was representing a lesbian and queer perspective about binary gender roles rather than a phobic response to the lived experiences of transgender and transsexual people.[ citation needed ] Aside from The Gendercator, other films by Crouch have been shown at the Frameline Film Festival.

Filmography

Director

Screenplays

Cinematography and Sound

Acting

See also

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References

  1. ↑ "The Gendercator". catherinecrouch.com. Retrieved 22 September 2015.
  2. ↑ OUTer Limits (2007). "Frameline31: San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival – Program Guide". Frameline Film Festival. p. 62. Retrieved 16 May 2019. (via issuu)
  3. 1 2 Sullivan, Moira (June 17, 2007). "Frameline31 San Francisco Pulls Lesbian Film from Lineup". CinéFemme–Annakarinaland. Retrieved 16 May 2019.
  4. 1 2 Rich, B. Ruby (2013). New Queer Cinema: The Director's Cut (1st ed.). Duke University Press. pp. 277–278. ISBN   978-0822354116.
  5. ↑ Robert (May 21, 2007). "Sign the Petition To Stop a Transphobic film in Frameline LGBT Film Festival". Left in SF. Archived from the original on September 5, 2007. Retrieved 16 May 2019.
  6. ↑ Laird, Cynthia (October 17, 2007). "News in brief: Controversial trans film coming to SF". Bay Area Reporter . Retrieved 16 May 2019.
  7. ↑ Epstein, Robyn (2008). "Canary in a Coal Mine: Catherine Crouch interview". Sinister Wisdom (75): 10–22. ISSN   0196-1853. OCLC   3451636.
  8. ↑ White, Edward (September 1, 2007). "Let The Gendercator Be Shown". The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide . Retrieved 16 May 2019.
  9. ↑ "IMDb". IMDb . Retrieved 6 December 2013.
  10. ↑ "Queer Film Review". QFR Interviews Yvonne Welbon. Archived from the original on 6 March 2014. Retrieved 6 September 2008.
  11. ↑ "IMDb". IMDb . Retrieved 10 November 2013.
  12. ↑ Stranger Inside#cite note-1
  13. ↑ "The Bravenew Theaters". Archived from the original on 2011-12-23.
  14. ↑ "Ruth Ellis, "Oldest Known Lesbian Activist"". Queers in History. 23 July 2011. Retrieved 30 July 2011.
  15. ↑ "IMDb". IMDb .
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