Audrey’s Beard

“Audrey’s Beard” was shot on my beloved Bolex camera. The film was conceived as a time-lapse documentary film experiment with shots of this once butch dyke filmmaker’s beard growing in over a 21-day period in the early 1990’s. At the time it felt like it was a very transgressive act as an artist, transitioning gender, to grow the beard I had felt ashamed of for so many years, using my body to tell a story, coming to terms with the shame of being born Intersex in a creative and empowering way. Ten years later, in 2001, a potent voice over written and performed by the filmmaker after my transition from female to male was added; the film is an experimental documentary account of a butch dyke’s journey to trans man, succinctly summing up the complexity of this journey in under 2 minutes. “Audrey’s Beard” was named one of the ten best trans films by Curve magazine.

Film Maker
Butler, Alec
Year
2001
Country
Canada
Length
2
Language
English
Category
Abstraction, Activism + Protest, Aging, art & artists, body, Gender, history, Identity, Indigenous, LGBTQ, Mental Health, Oral Histories, Performance, Portraits, sexuality, Society, Trans*
Genre
documentary, experimental, queer, short

Stills From Video

  • Still 1