Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski are American film and television directors, writers and producers. The sisters are both trans women.
Candis Cayne is an American actress and performance artist. Cayne performed in New York City nightclubs in drag since the 1990s, and came out as transgender in 1996; Cayne came to national attention in 2007 for portraying transgender mistress Carmelita on ABC's prime time drama Dirty Sexy Money. The role makes Cayne the first transgender actress to play a recurring transgender character in primetime. She is perhaps best known for her recurring role as the Fairy Queen on the fantasy series The Magicians.
Jahmila Adderley, known professionally as Mila Jam, is an American transgender singer, songwriter, dancer, actress, and LGBTQ activist.
Laverne Cox is an American actress and LGBT advocate. She rose to prominence with her role as Sophia Burset on the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black, becoming the first transgender person to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award in an acting category, and the first to be nominated for an Emmy Award since composer Angela Morley in 1990. In 2015, she won a Daytime Emmy Award in Outstanding Special Class Special as executive producer for Laverne Cox Presents: The T Word, making her the first trans woman to win the award. In 2017, she became the first transgender person to play a transgender series regular on U.S. broadcast TV as Cameron Wirth on CBS's Doubt.
Transparent is an American comedy-drama television series created by Joey Soloway for Amazon Studios that debuted on February 6, 2014. The story revolves around a Los Angeles family, the Pfeffermans, and their lives after learning that their parent is a trans woman now going by the name Maura. Transparent tells the story of Maura's coming out, as well as her family's personal journeys in discovering their own identities and coming to terms with Maura's identity. Transparent moves away from a solely transition-centred narrative and represents Maura's story in her role as a trans parent, grandparent, professor, partner, ex-spouse, sibling, and as an older person transitioning. Transparent also includes other queer representation in the Pfefferman family. Sarah explores her sexuality and works through relationship dilemmas throughout season one while Ali explores their gender and sexuality. Transparent's first season premiered in full on September 26, 2014, and its second season on December 11, 2015, third season on September 23, 2016, and fourth season on September 21, 2017.
Zackary Drucker is an American multimedia artist, cultural producer, LGBT activist, actress, and television producer. She is an Emmy-nominated producer for the docu-series This Is Me, a consultant on the TV series Transparent, and is based out of Los Angeles. Drucker is an artist whose work explores themes of gender and sexuality and critiques predominant two-dimensional representations. Drucker has stated that she considers discovering, telling, and preserving trans history to be not only an artistic opportunity but a political responsibility. Drucker's work has been exhibited in galleries, museums, and film festivals including but not limited to the 2014 Whitney Biennial, MoMA PS1, Hammer Museum, Art Gallery of Ontario, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the Hammer Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Trace Lysette is an American actress whose most notable roles include Shea in the television series Transparent (2014–2019) and Tracey in the feature film Hustlers (2019). As a trans actress, she also featured in the Netflix documentary Disclosure as herself.
Brian Michael Smith is an American actor and LGBT advocate. He is known for playing Paul Strickland in 9-1-1: Lone Star.
Big Time Adolescence is a 2019 American coming-of-age comedy film written and directed by Jason Orley, in his directorial debut. It stars Pete Davidson, Griffin Gluck, Emily Arlook, Colson Baker, Sydney Sweeney and Jon Cryer.
Work in Progress is an American comedy-drama television series produced by Showtime that premiered on December 8, 2019. The series was created by Abby McEnany and Tim Mason, written and executive produced by McEnany, Mason, and Lilly Wachowski, and directed by Mason. Work in Progress stars McEnany in a semi-autobiographical role alongside Karin Anglin, Celeste Pechous, Julia Sweeney, and Theo Germaine. The entire series was written, filmed, and post-produced in Chicago.
Dick Johnson Is Dead is a 2020 American documentary film directed by Kirsten Johnson and co-written by Johnson and Nels Bangerter. The story focuses on Johnson's father Richard, who suffers from dementia, portraying different ways—some of them violent "accidents"—in which he could ultimately die. In each scenario, the elderly Johnson plays along with his daughter's black humor and imaginative fantasies. The film premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Special Jury Award for Innovation in Non-fiction Storytelling. It was released on Netflix on October 2, 2020.
Rhys Ernst is an American film producer and director. A trans man, his work explores transgender identity. He is best known for his work on transgender-related television shows, serving as an associate producer on Transparent and the director of its documentary spin-off This is Me. He is also known for his controversial debut feature film Adam.
Giving Voice is a 2020 American documentary film, directed and produced by James D. Stern and Fernando Villena. The film follows the 2018 edition of the annual August Wilson Monologue Competition entered by thousands of high school students for the opportunity to perform on Broadway. Viola Davis, John Legend, Constanza Romero and Nicholas Caprio serve as executive producers.
Rain Valdez is an American actress, writer, and producer who rose to prominence with her award-winning short film, Ryans. She stars in the web series Razor Tongue, which she created and which has earned her a Primetime Emmy nomination in Outstanding Actress in a Short Form Comedy or Drama Series.
The Lady and the Dale is an American documentary television miniseries revolving around Elizabeth Carmichael, who launched Twentieth Century Motor Car Corporation and created a car called "The Dale". It consists of four episodes and premiered on HBO on January 31, 2021.
Pride is an American documentary television miniseries revolving around LGBT rights in the United States decade-by-decade. It consists of 6 episodes and premiered on May 14, 2021, on FX.
Sam Feder is a transgender American filmmaker whose work is focused on the exploration of visibility regarding race, class, and gender. Feder is concerned with bringing visibility to trans peoples experiences, and prefers to be identified with gender-neutral pronouns. They are best known for the 2020 Documentary Disclosure. Their films have been nominated for and received multiple awards, including the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, the GLADD outstanding Documentary Award, and the Peabody awards.
Framing Agnes is a 2022 Canadian documentary film, directed by Chase Joynt. An examination of transgender histories, the film centres on Joynt and a cast of transgender actors reenacting various case studies from Harold Garfinkel's work with transgender clients at the University of California, Los Angeles.
The Stroll is a 2023 American documentary film, directed by Kristen Lovell and Zackary Drucker. The film documents trans history in New York City, from the perspective of Black and Latina trans women who had been sex workers in the Meatpacking District during the 1980s and 1990s, in an area known as The Stroll.
