Southern Comfort

This has to be the best documentary I have ever seen. Just a matter of time when someone will do a movie about Robert Eads, the most extraordinary southern cowboy. This documentary could have been mediocre if it wasn't for him, his incredible wit, optimism and intelligence. A real man from head to toes who ironically died of a widespread ovarian cancer, primarily because no doctor wanted to treat a transsexual. It is a marvelous real life drama that doesn't preach, it simply delivers the story that deeply touches you, points out the stupidity of prejudices and inhumanity of American health system and rises questions about what gender really means.

This movie was captivating from the start. The trans-gendered people have almost always been a mystery and existed on the fringe of society, but this film put a human face on this issue. It showed how we all have a need to be together and share our hope and dreams with one another, and it also showed that the politics of friendship know no specific sexual preference barriers. My heart went out to most of these people shown in this project because they have been treated so poorly by society as a whole. Robert Eads died because there were no medical professionals willing to treat him. In the greatest democracy in the history of the world, we still view some citizens as sub-human. It was such an eye opening experience that is still haunts me to this day. Hopefully this film can lead us to a dialog and a dialog can lead us to real change.

This film won the Grand Jury Documentary prize at Sundance this year.

Against the narrative of Robert, a transgender female-to-male responding to the irony of ovarian cancer, the director creates a deeply moving portrayal of love and determination in the face of prejudice.

Robert lives in rural Georgia, which he describes as "Bubba country" and the "home of the KKK." Nonetheless most of Robert's encounters with the heterosexual community are recounted as upbeat examples of surprising tolerance. Without any pretense, artifice, or apology, he is magnetically compelling in speech and movement. His complete lack of bitterness sets aside the distractions of his cancer, enabling the viewer share his satisfaction in life as a man and his joy in his relationships.

In spite of challenging subject matter, this documentary of Robert's self-selected "family" of transgendered men and women (and one heterosexual partner) is unerring in its ability to humanize without condescension. By not politicizing or sensationalizing her subjects' gender issues, the director has achieved a profoundly affecting emotional depth.

The film is loving and in its clarity, refreshing. I recommend it highly.

Set in the verdant yet somehow stark landscape of rural Georgia this film opens with the female-to-male transgendered subject of the film, Robert Eades, stating: `This is Bubba country.' And he is SO accurate.

This powerful film profiles transgendered people in very poor and very rural Georgia. Most of them are faced with poor or non-existent medical care by `professionals' that are, more often than not, embarrassed by their patients. These are people that are just trying to find a little happiness for themselves and receive what should be basic human rights -- and time and again they are denied those rights.

While the name of the film is "Southern Comfort," that is also the name of the annual transgender conference/convention held in Georgia. The subjects of this film survive from one day to the next for the few days each year when they know that they are not alone. As Robert states: `For once we outnumber THEM.'

Robert is in the nearly unbelievable position of being a man dying of ovarian cancer. He was unable to receive proper medical care because of the ignorance and uncaring of the doctors that were available to him. They all seemed to feel that he would be an embarrassment to their ‘medical practices.'

There are horrific examples of surgical horror stories and botched operations -- with the ghastly scars to prove it.

The interviews with the families of the subjects of the films are especially revealing:

The son of Robert Eades (from when he was a woman) can't quite keep straight whether to refer to him as a man or as his `mom.' But it is clear that he loves him deeply.

The father of Robert says: `I had a dream that my daughter would marry a man that would be President of the United States.' Never imagining for a moment that his daughter could be president. Because in his narrow and limited mind women cannot be president just as women cannot be men. He refused to have his face shown when he was interviewed.

What shines out above all else in this transcendent film about a man's life is the wisdom, wit, humour and charm of a man who the system failed. Remarkably, a man that showed no overt bitterness right up to his death in a hospice.

Lola Cola -- Roberts partner and a male-to-female transgendered person -- closes the film by saying: `Nature delights in diversity ... why can't human beings?'

I've watched this film dozens of times. It's an extremely powerful work. The timing of the filming, the choices and direction, and the rural country aesthetic are worthy of the title. I'll be watching it again soon.