Review about “Binding Words / L’Ordre des mots” by Karine Espineira (author of La transidentité. Paris : L’Harmattan, 2009) in the publication of the subject in the city (le sujet dans la cité) – May 09

A black screen. A voice. The expression “whore of trans !” to conclude these few seconds of total absence of images. Seconds that seem so long, if short. First, let’s look at the words of the trans’ before we look at their image. The will is displayed, claimed. We will listen before watching.

Binding Words of Cynthia Arra and Melissa Arra is a self production of 75 minutes, and date of 2007. The film gives voice to six persons trans’  and intersexe which are expressed not only on their suffering but before any on their positioning in relation to the normation. Sometimes in agreement, sometimes in disagreement, because such is the condition of the trans’, not to say the human condition simply face to the arbitrary of the symbolic, of our societies binaries, bipolar, making the difference an inequality.

It is form a story combining the known stories trans’ such as popularized by forty years of media coverage, and the unknown of their thoughts, those that we do not hear, including the public knows so little, if anything. A floor that is requested, without making a irony free, if it is to express themselves in the followed by therapeutic, because it is surprising that it has taken so long to reach us, whereas the trans’ have refined their words and their thoughts of dramatically over the past fifteen years.

From Maud Thomas to Vincent He-Say , there is a generation according to the tic-tac of the biological clock, and a few years of militances, theorizing, of thoughts condensed, worked, appropriate, rendered, developed and translated. A theorising which are not excluded from the other players. Tom Reucher or Carine Beef mix just as subtly personal anecdotes and critical eyes on a situation of exception permitting the exercise of the singularity to the trans’. With Vincent Avrons and Vincent Guillot, a cry quiet, almost calm, on the difficulty and the happiness to be itself in the feeling of love, in the intimate relationship to the body pleasure, to the emotional body, the body pain, that are also the body and the soul intersexe to regard one of them.

Binding Words is made of rare stories, a valuable floor trying to help fill the empty and too-full of words for the A(e)s and other. His party took aesthetics is an opportunity for the words in relation to these images shaping our interpretations, sometimes misused, because sometimes we forget to hear to default to listen to. We have had to wait until two decades for the documentary to make a place to this floor, an objective that the television has not yet been able to achieve.