FILM BACKGROUND AND OUTREACH MISSION
The Background
As a feature documentary film, Tal Como Somos (Just as we are) examines the impact of stigma on gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals trying to live and identify differently than others in a traditional culture that values religion, machismo, and family. The Tal Como Somos outreach project conceptually emerged as a result of more than ten years of research by Dr. Jesus Ramirez-Valles, University of Illinois at Chicago scholar and executive producer, on HIV-AIDS and stigmatization among Latino gay men and transgender persons across North and South America. From the beginning, Valles, Producer/Director Judith McCray, and their creative team determined that Tal Como Somos needed to venture beyond easy compartmentalization as a “gay” or “coming out” film. Instead, they focused on crafting an authentic portrait of seldom heard voices and unknown faces, introducing individuals whose lives and identities are normal and worthy of respect and acceptance. Intending to reach a primary audience of heterosexual adults and youth (with a priority placed on U.S. and worldwide Latino audiences), the team embarked on a year long search for individual stories that would evocatively reveal how stigma and homophobia shatters and shapes one’s self-acceptance and behavior.
Team on a Mission
The mission was clear: expose the realities of living within a culture where machismo, faith, and family loyalties often dictate strict rules about sexuality or gender identity – and stricter consequences for breaking those rules. With this mission, Valles and McCray convened meetings and interviews with gay and transgender Latino men and women in demographically diverse U.S. cities to select people with important stories to share and who were visually charismatic. To showcase the universal effects of misunderstanding, rejection, forgiveness and survival from several distinct points of view, the team ultimately selected seven individuals of different ages, from different walks of life, all immigrants or children of immigrants from different Latin countries.
The Results
Tal Como Somos’ presents five concise stories about people coming to terms with being gay, bisexual, and transgender, while encountering condemnation and exclusion for having the audacity to live outside traditional boundaries. Respective segments focus on snapshot portraits of each character’s life as he or she grapples today with the effects of the past: their families, their religious beliefs, their educational upbringing and how these occurrences and relationships have shaped – and continue to shape – who they are and what they do now. The subjects themselves propel the storytelling, transitioning from their early rejections to self-acceptance via natural links in their experiences. Parents and family members are included, providing rare insights regarding their struggles to support and embrace their loved one’s differences.
Challenges
Anchored by the film, the means to achieve Tal Como Somos’ evolving dual missions as both a documentary and wider outreach campaign was also clear—but full of challenges. How would the film be received? Would Latino families, or any families, respond positively? How could the companion educational video and discussion guide be best disseminated in schools and communities?
From the outset, Valles’ UIC research presented a number of blunt realities facing the team, including the disquieting facts that Latinos represent about 14% of the U.S. population, but account for 20% of the total number of new AIDS cases. And despite declining negative societal attitudes towards homosexuality, a majority of gay, lesbian, and bisexual people in America still report experiences of stigma. Valles’ findings laid a framework that demanded a project dedicated to change attitudes, decrease risk-based behavior, and foster an ongoing dialog that could translate both nationally and internationally. Further, early development searches revealed pitifully sparse commercial or educational media attention to these issues.
The most difficult and persistent challenge was being aware of and addressing internalized homophobia. The subjects of the film, the makers of the film and the viewers of the film all have biases and prejudices which may prevent them from seeing gay, bisexual, and transgender people, and those living with HIV/AIDS, as “normal” human beings. Everyone on the project struggled with this as they attempted to provide a balanced portrayal of these subjects’ lives. For example, questions like: Is he too feminine to appear in camera?; What about sex and sexual abuse?; Is a woman less “real” because she does not have a vagina?; How can male roles be explored without falling into stereotypes such as machismo?
were raised and pondered when discussing the creative treatment of the film.
Ideas about race and racism presented parallel challenges. The creative team struggled to present “Latinos” in a manner that did not fuel existing negative stereotypes, nor to present gay, bisexual and transgender Latinos as the “exotic other.”
New challenges emerged when parents, partners, and families had second thoughts or refused outright to participate in the film after initially giving consent. Only two parents were comfortable enough to voice important but seldom heard perspectives in the Tal Como Somos documentary. In addition, two Catholic churches in Chicago readily granted permission for filming on their premises but then rescinded their permission after further consideration of the subject matter of homosexuality. One of the churches even approved the filming of a parishioner praying in the sanctuary but later demanded that the footage not be used.
Visually, the film was shot in high definition digital video with JVC 24-frame cameras. McCray’s Juneteenth Productions culled from a nationwide talent pool to form a production team experienced in working with this high quality medium. Diverse in terms of race, sex, sexual orientation, culture, and attitude, each contributor was challenged to face his or her own internalized stereotypes or biases. As Valles summed up: “The most difficult and persistent challenge has been the homophobia we all carry inside ourselves.”