Today in Trans Awareness Week I have news of two film projects about trans women of color.

First up the film MAJOR!, about the life of Miss Major, premiered in San Francisco on Friday. I dropped a fair amount of cash on the Kickstarter for this one because having had the honor of meeting Miss Major I very much wanted to see it happen. Obviously I couldn’t go to the screening, though the production company did do a lovely thing of encouraging people to buy tickets and donate them to poor trans women of color, so Kevin and I did have tickets to the event. Someone who did go is Jules Vilmur, a woman whose trans daughter committed suicide at 17. Jules writes movingly about the experience here.

Also there is a fundraising campaign in progress for post-production on a film about Marsha P Johnson, one of the best known trans women at the Stonewall riot. Sylvia Rivera is also a character in the film. The trailer they have on the campaign page looks very good. As I saw someone say on Twitter, this is what the Stonewall film ought to have been like.

Finally there’s a great article about 19th and early 20th Century trans women over at Autostraddle. Some them are featured in the film, Paris in Burning, and if you are European Coccinelle is actually pretty well known, but the rest I had never heard of. It is a fascinating read.

The illustration for this post is from an art project featured here. The picture I have chosen to use is by B Parker of BreakOUT!.

271 Trans people have been killed as a result of transphobic hate crimes in the last 12 months. Almost all of them were women of color.