[News/Film] [USA] Janet Jackson to produce film on transgender lives, struggles for equality

[Stephanie Stevens]

LGBTQ Nation, USA


Filed: Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Film

Janet Jackson to produce film on transgender lives, struggles for equality

Staff Reports


NEW YORK — Grammy award winning artist Janet Jackson has signed on to
be executive producer of a documentary covering the lives and
struggles of transgender people around the world.

New York’s Brainchild Films announced that Jackson, 46, agreed to
executive produce the documentary entitled “Truth,” as well as work
behind-the-scenes.

[Photo: Janet Jackson]

Jackson is expected to sit for some on-camera interviews when the
filming starts later this summer.

“All people are very important to me. I’ve been fortunate to make
friends and learn about very different lives. ‘Truth’ is our small
chance to ask that you try and understand someone who lives their life
in a way that is a little bit different from yours, even though all of
our hearts are the same. We want to stop the hate and find
understanding,” Jackson said in a statement
<http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1686560/janet-jackson-transgender-documentary.jhtml>
.

Director Robert Jason, a former staff producer for MTV Networks whose
previous Style Network documentary “Style Exposed: Born Male, Living
Female,” about four transgender New Yorkers, promised that Jackson
will play a prominent part in the finished product.

“Janet Jackson will take us on a visually innovative, cerebral journey
through the turbulent lives of transgendered people of all ages around
the world and their epic struggle for equality,” Jason said in a
statement <http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1686560/janet-jackson-transgender-documentary.jhtml>
announcing the project.

In this new project, Jason has turned his attention to stories from
around the globe featuring people from Europe, North America,
Australia and Latin America. He claims his new film will highlight
landmark stories in the LGBT community and change the gender landscape
of the world in the future.

“This film will highlight landmark mainstream stories and provide a
glimpse at others that will change the gender landscape of the world
forever. Just as it is hard to believe that there ever was a time when
different components of society were required to use separate drinking
fountains, it is as incredible that one’s gender expression remains
just such a target for discrimination,” Jason said
<http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1686560/janet-jackson-transgender-documentary.jhtml>
.

The project solidifies Jackson’s place as a firm ally of the LGBTQ community.

Jackson received the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Music Album for
her Grammy Award-winning sixth studio album The Velvet Rope (1997),
which spoke out against homophobia and embraced same-sex love.

In 2005, she received the Humanitarian Award from the Human Rights
Campaign and AIDS Project Los Angeles in recognition of her
involvement in raising funds for AIDS Charities.

In 2008, Jackson received the Vanguard Award at the 19th Annual GLAAD
Media Awards. Two years later Jackson lent her support to the It Gets
Better Project and The Trevor Project, a non-profit organization
providing crisis and suicide prevention for LGBT youth, in light of
the high profile suicides committed in Fall, 2010.

“(I was) one of those kids… holding everything inside… internalizing
everything,” Jackson said.

“And that really can affect you, and feeling helpless and hopeless,
and finding that person that you can trust, that adult, like I did
later on in life, that I felt comfortable and safe to tell my issues,
my worries, my pains, my aches too.”


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