Twelve strangers walked into a room in Memphis and found their voices.
In January of 2016, a dozen members of the Memphis transgender community began meeting for a weekly story circle facilitated by Elaine Blanchard. The program, based on the format of her award winning Prison Stories series, was a time for sharing, healing and enlightenment. Thanks to the generosity of The California Institute for the Contemporary Arts, filmmaker Shelby Fuller Elwood documented their journey. All people have a story to tell, and all people long to be heard, respected and valued for who they are, and what they have experienced in life.
Direction
Elwood disappears completely—just voices and faces, no intrusion.
Production
Prison Stories DNA means radical trust, not exploitation.
Director
Shelby F. Elwood
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Memphis sits at the intersection of Civil Rights history and contemporary LGBTQ+ struggle—this film claims both legacies without flattening either.
Elaine Blanchard's 'story circle' method comes from her work with incarcerated women; the trans participants here are treated with the same dignity as that original cohort, which is rarer in documentary than it should be.
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