The Tampa Bay Transgender Film Festival is a space grounded in and centered around the transgender community, support those in film who support our community, and share these films with our community and allies. The festival was founded as a collaboration between the Tampa Bay International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival (TIGLFF) and St. Pete Pride in 2020 and was tied to the Transgender Day of Remembrance.
In 2021, TIGLFF solely hosted the festival with the Transgender Day of Remembrance. For our 3rd Annual Edition TIGLFF decided to move the festival to March 2023 for the Transgender Day of Visibility.
The Tampa Bay Transgender Film Festival is brought to you in partnership with Tampa International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival (TIGLFF) and St Pete Pride. These two organizations have been working together since 2018 to bring entertaining short films to TRANSTASTIC!, the opening night event for the historic Trans Pride March.
Nathan Bruemmer, founder of the St Pete Pride Trans Pride March, and former President of St Pete Pride has long aspired to do something bigger for the transgender community, while Kayden Rodriguez was brought onto the Board of Directors of TIGLFF to improve transgender inclusion. During the height of the George Floyd Movement, and with historic technological shifts (due to the 2020 COVID-19 Global Pandemic) in mind, Nathan and Kayden discussed bringing a large event, representative of the transgender community, to the Tampa Bay Area. Thus, this Festival was born.
The Tampa Bay Transgender Film Festival is to highlight and elevate Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDoR). To its Co-Founders, this Festival is an echo to the Netflix Documentary titled Disclosure. Have you seen it? The historic documentary is a deep dive into the misrepresentation of transgender individuals in media. This Festival is an intentional, direct answer to that misrepresentation. As we know, it is well beyond time to honor the transgender lives that have been lost to incessant, unnecessary violence, and to use media as an educational tool to bring that same violence to an end.
We hope for this festival to help celebrate transgender lives & experiences, further creating a safe world for our transgender family to live in.
TBA