OUT LOUD Will Screen at Skirball Cultural Center Next Week

World renown Skirball Cultural Center will screen OUT LOUD documentary about historic transgender chorus. The one-hour film will be available to stream worldwide for four days: Friday, June 11 through Monday, June 14, 2021. After the online screening, the Skirball will host a live virtual conversation and Q&A with filmmakers Gail Willumsen and Jill Shinefield, chorus founders Lindsey Deaton and Lisa Marchbanks, and film composer Alana Balagot on Tuesday, June 15, 2021 at 7pm (pacific time). To reserve free tickets, go to: https://www.skirball.org/programs/film/out-loud

OUT LOUD chronicles the ups and downs of the first season of the Trans Chorus of Los Angeles - the largest group of transgender and gender non-conforming people anywhere in the world who regularly sing together. Led by Lindsey Deaton, who co-founded the chorus and served as its first artistic director, these choristers, many of whom have no musical training, come together to hone their craft and find their voices individually and in harmony with each other. Singing out against the ongoing assaults on transgender rights and freedoms, the choristers profiled in OUT LOUD present portraits of courage. "We're here to sing so that we can change hearts and minds everywhere" as Deaton explains in the film.

OUT LOUD was produced by Jill Shinefield and Gail Willumsen, Los Angeles-based documentary filmmakers with three decades experience creating non-fiction programming for PBS, Discovery, National Geographic and other outlets -work that has garnered them four Emmys, a Peabody Award, and many other accolades. "OUT LOUD is our first independent production, and it was a labor of love for us," says Shinefield. "We were 'embedded' with the Trans Chorus for nearly a year, and that allowed us to capture the beautiful arc of their development as singers and performers." Shinefield and Willumsen, who are cisgender, were inspired by the mission of the chorus: to give voice to a community too long silenced. "We knew this would be history in the making, and that it needed to be documented," says Willumsen, who also directed and shot the film.

OUT LOUD has an original score written by a trans woman, Los Angeles-based composer Alana Jordan Balagot (who is also a member of the Trans Chorus.) Her original song "Genderfreak" is performed by the chorus in the documentary.

OUT LOUD has screened at over 20 film festivals worldwide. The award-winning film was honored with a proclamation from the City of West Hollywood in September 2020.

For more information about the Skirball's online programs, go to: https://www.skirball.org/programs

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