Working: A New Way to Tell Trans Stories

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4.2 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 12 February 2023

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, host June Thomas talks to Chase Joynt and Morgan M. Page, co-writers of the new documentary Framing Agnes, which Chase also directed and appears in. The film depicts, through reenactments, conversations with trans patients who were part of a UCLA gender study in the 1950’s. It also features interviews with trans actors who portray the patients and multiple conversations between Chase, Morgan, and others about how to tell trans stories farily. In their interview with June, Chase and Morgan describe the many modes of the film and explain why they felt the need to venture so far outside the usual documentary conventions. After the interview, June and co-host Karen Han talk more about Framing Agnes and documentary filmmaking. They also discuss best practices for conducting respectful interviews. In the exclusive Slate Plus segment, Chase and Morgan talk about some of the people they collaborated with to make Framing Agnes. Works referenced in this episode include: Errol Morris’ documentary series WORMWOOD. The Handler, an edition of the BBC’s Assume Nothing series. The Teacher’s Trial podcast Send your questions about creativity and any other feedback to working@slate.com or give us a call at (304) 933-9675. Podcast production by Cameron Drews. -- Make an impact this Black History Month by helping Macy’s on their mission to fund UNCF scholarships for HBCU students. Go to macys.com/purpose to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	How much of any of this can you take is truth, how much of documentary inherently reduces
0:15.2	people to spectacle?
0:17.6	There's several moments in our film where our own subjects kind of speak back to us
0:22.6	about the way we're framing things, you know?
0:30.4	Welcome back to Working, I'm your host, Karen Han.
0:33.4	And I'm your other host, June Thomas.
0:36.1	Hello, June!
0:37.8	So judging from the clip that we just heard, it sounds like we'll be talking about documentary
0:42.2	filmmaking this week.
0:43.6	Hey, Karen, you are 100% correct.
0:47.7	The voice we heard belongs to Morgan M. Page who co-wrote the documentary Framing Agnes.
0:54.3	We will also hear from Chase joint, her co-author who also directed and appears in the film.
1:03.6	So Framing Agnes, it's a really genuinely fascinating and beautiful film, which as we'll
1:10.8	discuss in the interview is hard to describe, but it's not at all difficult to watch and
1:18.6	to enjoy.
1:20.6	It's a film about trans history, it's starting point is a series of interviews that happened
1:26.4	at the UCLA gender clinic in the 1950s, but it asks a lot of really interesting questions
1:34.0	about whether it's even possible to tell societies a whole, the story of a subsection
1:41.4	of the population who are themselves, of course, very diverse, with honesty, accuracy, integrity.
1:49.5	One of the many ways in which it's a little different is that some of the participants
1:53.8	in the 1950s study are embodied by contemporary trans performers who also talk about their
2:01.7	own lives and their own experiences.
	...

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