Welcome to the Inaugural Tampa Bay Transgender Film Festival!

We are happy to have you.

The Tampa Bay Transgender Film Festival is brought to you in partnership with Tampa International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival (TIGLFF) and St Pete Pride. These two organizations have been working together since 2018 to bring entertaining short films to TRANSTASTIC!, the opening night event for the historic Trans Pride March.

Nathan Bruemmer, founder of the Trans Pride March, and recently appointed President of St Pete Pride, has long aspired to do something bigger for the transgender community, while Kayden Rodriguez was brought onto the Board of Directors of TIGLFF to improve transgender inclusion. During the height of the George Floyd Movement, and with historic technological shifts (due to the 2020 COVID-19 Global Pandemic) in mind, Nathan and Kayden discussed bringing a large event, representative of the transgender community, to the Tampa Bay Area. Thus, this Festival was born.

The intention of this year’s Inaugural Festival is to highlight and elevate Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDoR). To its Co-Founders, this Festival is an echo to the Netflix Documentary titled Disclosure. Have you seen it? The historic documentary is a deep dive into the misrepresentation of transgender individuals in media. This Festival is an intentional, direct answer to that misrepresentation. As we know, it is well beyond time to honor the transgender lives that have been lost to incessant, unnecessary violence, and to use media as an educational tool to bring that same violence to an end.

We hope for this festival to help celebrate transgender lives & experiences, further creating a safe world for our transgender family to live in. Please join us virtually during the International Transgender Day of Remembrance, November 20th, through November 22nd to participate in this historic event.

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Co-Founders & Co-Chairs

Nathan Bruemmer

(he/him/his)

St Pete Pride, President

Kayden Rodriguez

(they/them or he/him)

TIGLFF Board of Directors, Member at Large

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Transgender Screening Committee

The vision for the Tampa Bay Transgender Film Festival was to create space grounded in and centered around the transgender community, support those in film who support our community, and to share these films with our allies. So Nathan and Kayden reached out to local community members across the Tampa Bay region to form a Transgender Screening Committee. The committee is comprised of local trans+ individuals whose valuable voices assisted in film selection, event planning, and marketing the Festival. We would like to thank the following individuals for their participation on the Committee. Some names of those involved are not listed for personal privacy. If you are in the Tampa Bay Area and looking to get involved, please email kayden@tiglff.com.

Andrea Montanez

(she/her/ella)

Casper Oliver

(they/them or he/him)

Elliott Kwan

(they/them/theirs)

Jake Racaniello

(she/her/hers)

Jayson James

(they/them/theirs)

Lucas Wehle

(he/him/his)

Naomi Ardjomand-Kermani, MPH

(they/them/Naomi)

Nate

(they/them or he/him)

Steph Ostrow

(they/them/theirs)