Laverne Cox serves as executive
producer in the Netflix documentary Disclosure: Trans Lives on
Screen.
The documentary takes a look at
transgender representation in film.
According to Indiewire, the
film's creative team, cast, and crew were “almost exclusively
transgender.”
Cox, who is best known for playing
transgender inmate Sophia Burset on the Netflix dramedy Orange is
the New Black, said that she identified with Barbra Streisand in
Yentl.
“Here was Yentl, a woman, a girl, who
had to pretend to be a boy or a man to become a Rabbi, and falls in
love with this guy and wants him to see the woman that she is, but he
only sees the man that she is presenting,” said
Cox. “And that just felt like me, I was like – 'that’s me.’
I didn’t have words for it and I didn’t fully understand why, but
that’s what it was.”
Director Sam Feder added: “That’s
what’s so particular about a trans lens – when she told me that
story, that just so crystallized a trans way of seeing, right? That
we never look through. We never look through that lens as society.”
Disclosure premiered at the
Sundance Film Festival earlier this year.
In addition to Cox, the documentary
features Jen Richards, Marquise Vilson, Tre'vell Anderson, Angelica
Ross, Brian Michael Smith, Yance Ford, Zeke Smith, Lilly Wachowski,
Mj Rodriguez, Michael D Cohen, Chaz Bono, Jamie Clayton, Alexandra
Billings, Tiq Milan, Nick Adams, Trace Lysette, Rain Valdez, Zackary
Drucker, Chase Strangio, Sandra Caldwell, Candis Cayne, Susan
Stryker, Alexandra Grey, Jazzmun, Ser Anzoategui, Elliot Fletcher,
Bianca Leigh, Leo Sheng, Mickey R. Mahoney, and Hailie Sahar.
“The ways in which trans people have
been represented have suggested that we're mentally ill, that we
don't exist. Yet, here we are. And we've always been here,” Cox
said in the film's trailer.