"I started out making a film about my adopted brother’s journey to discover his new lineage. It was undeniably a great story, a real-life fairy tale. I also felt guilty that life had been easy for me but not for Marc. I imagined that by celebrating his amazing tale I could ease his pain, and maybe heal our relationship. I thought I’d be making a film about the second chapter in our lives. Little did I know we weren’t done with the first.
"Anyone who has met Marc will tell you that you can’t tell his story without telling mine. Our rivalry growing up was the most important dynamic in his life, and remains so to this day. So I knew I’d end up in this film, but I had no idea it would become the personal journey it did. When you change your sex, you get tremendous pressure to bury your past, to let it disappear like the 'M' that used to be on your drivers license. If you pass well in your new gender, the pressure is even stronger, especially from other transgender people who see passing as the Holy Grail. Returning to your past, much less reveling in it, is unthinkable. Before making this film I shared that view."
That's filmmaker Kimberly Reed, whose documentary Prodigal Sons, about various family and identity conflicts, will be screened at Outfest on July 11 at 7:15pm (Fairfax 1) and July 18 at 1:00pm (REDCAT).
Prodigal Sons follows Reed as she returns to Helena, Montana, for her 20-year high-school reunion. The issues are:
a) Reed, formerly a basketball-playing guy, is now a female filmmaker.
b) It turns out that her adopted brother, Marc, may be the grandson of Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth.
c) Marc won't let Kimberly forget her male past.
"A rebuke to the overage of documentaries that hermetically reflect on gender identity," writes Ed Gonzalez in The Village Voice, "Kimberly Reed's exceptional Prodigal Sons sees the filmmaker grappling with her insecurities as a trans person outside her comfort zone. … This crisis of self-definition collides with that of her mentally ill adopted brother, who learns he's the biological grandson of cine legends Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth … You will never think of Rosebud the same way again."