PRODUCERS’ FORUM screening and discussion series Live post-screening discussion with filmmakers

$7.50 each screening, $5 Students/Seniors, $4 Scribe Members

Friday, September 29, 7:00 PM

Born To Be with Tania Cypriano (USA, 2019, 92 min)

Born to Be is Tania Cypriano’s remarkably moving documentary about New York’s Mount Sinai Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery. Soon after New York state passed a 2015 law that health insurance should cover transgender-related care and services, director Tania Cypriano and producer Michelle Hayashi began bringing their cameras behind the scenes at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital. With extraordinary access, the film follows the work of Dr. Jess Ting, offering an intimate look at how one doctor’s work impacts the lives of his patients as they undergo the physical and emotional journey of surgical transitioning. Born to Be intimately and boldly details the importance of transgender and gender non-binary people receiving access to quality gender-affirming care.

Tania Cypriano has been working between the United States and her native Brazil for over thirty years. Her films and videos have won international awards including Best Documentary at the Joseph Papp’s Festival Latino in New York, the Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles, and Fespaco in Burkina Faso. They have also been shown around the world in places such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Hong Kong Arts Center, the Jerusalem Film Festival, the Amsterdam Documentary Film Festival, and the Berlin International Film Festival. Her television credits include working on documentaries for PBS, the History Channel, NHK in Japan, GNT in Brazil and Channel 4 in England. Tania Cypriano has also been a grant recipient of the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Soros Documentary Fund, the Jerome Foundation, Experimental Television, and the National Latino Communication Center. She has served in productions for Bill Moyers, Martin Scorsese, Kent Jones and Nelson Pereira dos Santos. She has also co-organized film series with MoMA, the Anthology Film Archives, Exit Art, the Museum of Image and Sound in São Paulo, and the Grazer Kunstverein in Austria.

PRODUCERS’ FORUM SCREENINGS ARE SUPPORTED BY THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS, THE PENNSYLVANIA COUNCIL ON THE ARTS AND THE PHILADELPHIA CULTURAL FUND.