Historical Moment!

As you have probably heard by now, Daniela Vega made history this weekend at the Oscars:

The star of Oscar-nominated film Una Mujer Fantástica (A Fantastic Woman), Daniela Vega, made Academy Award history Sunday night, when she became the frist transgender actress to take to the stage as a presenter at the ceremony. The Chilean introduced Sufjan Steven’s performance of “Mystery of Love,” which features on the soundtrack of Call Me by Your Name. “I want to invite you to open your hearts and your feelings to feel the reality,” she told the audience. “To feel love. Can you feel it?”

From El Pais:
The triumphant moment could not have been further from how things were when, as a 14-year-old, her life split in two, and she began her transition from a man to a woman. Once in her new female body, Vega did not know what path to follow – acting or singing – nor whether the artistic world would accept her.

"You learn and grow from pain,” she told EL PAÍS in February, hours before A Fantastic Woman took the Best Film award at the Goyas, Spain’s answer to the Oscars. “Transgender people are marginalized. You suffer a lot in the transition. And this pain makes us strong, hard, and can even make us bad tempered,” she explained, while Juan de Dio Larraín, the co-producer of the film, brought her a beer. With the support of her family, Daniela broke with social convention and assumed her identity as a trans-woman. “I have a lot of hope in the future generations in Chile, [society] is opening a great deal.

For more, go here.

Daniela Vega to Make History

From Remezcla comes a good news - bad news story:
The upcoming Oscar presenters list included familiar faces like last year’s winners, Viola Davis, Mahersala Ali and Emma Stone,  Marvel’s newest heroes Chadwick Boseman (Black Panther) and Tom Holland (The Amazing Spider-Man), and awards season staples like Laura Dern, Jennifer Garner and Margot Robbie. But one name had us giddy with excitement: Daniela Vega. The star of Chile’s Oscar-nominated film A Fantastic Woman, unfortunately did not make history by becoming the first trans performer to earn a Best Actress nod as many predicted, but she’ll get to grace the Oscar stage regardless. In a year when Sebastian Lelio‘s film celebrates the strength and stamina of a trans woman and trans director Yance Ford earned a Best Documentary nomination for Strong Island, Vega’s presence on the Dolby Theater will feel all the more historic — a sign, one hopes, that Hollywood is ready to embrace and tell more authentic stories about the “T” in LGBT. 


And, a strong sign transgender women are beginning to gain acceptance as women too!

A Fantastic "Trans Woman"

Here is another look from Cyrsti's Condo at the Chilean film "A Fantastic Woman" starring Daniela Vega from the "Los Angeles Blade": 

"For the first few minutes of Chilean director Sebastián Lelio’s “A Fantastic Woman” (Una mujer fantástica), life seems to be pretty sweet for its transgender heroine, Marina.

An aspiring singer who earns her living working as a waitress, she is involved with Orlando, a successful older businessman. They adore each other and are deeply committed to building a future together.
This blissful existence is turned upside down in an instant when Orlando dies from a sudden aneurysm.

Instead of being treated with compassion, Marina is mistrusted by hospital staff, suspected of wrongdoing by legal authorities investigating the death, and viewed as an embarrassment and an interloper by Orlando’s family – who consider her an “aberration” and immediately begin pressuring her to move out of the apartment she shared with him.

It’s a stark reality with which Lelio’s film confronts us. The notion of unexpectedly losing a partner is dreadful enough, but to be faced with hostility and prejudice in the wake of such tragedy, to be denied the right to grieve the loss – even actively prevented from doing so – is a nightmare most of us are loath to imagine.

For more, follow the link above."

In many aspects, this film contains some of the same paranoia's older transgender women face as they age. An example is myself who wonders what will become of me in a nursing home and will all of a sudden I will lose all the hard earned LGBT gender equality I worked for.

At my age, I am closer to the fact than farther. 

A Fantastic Trans Woman!

More on the Oscar nominated movie we posted about here in Cyrsti's Condo from Laurel:

"I agree - it is great film and Daniela Vega is impressive in the role. The character she plays shows great forebearance in the face of monumental intolerance. I went to see it twice with different friends from the cisgender community. They say that they came away with a better understanding of the problems faced by the transgender person.

The large general audience sat in silence through the film and cheered just once when Marina finally reacts to the bigotry. Daniela Vega does her own singing and the final scene is hauntingly beautiful.

Do go and see it and take some friends!"

Will do!!! Thanks Laurel :)

Oscar Time?

Daniela Vega, 28, stars in Sebastian Lelio's A Fantastic Woman. She plays Marina, a transgender woman whose partner (Francisco Reyes) dies, after which Marina is subjected to harsh treatment by the family of her deceased lover and by police investing the death.

Chile has selected the film as its Academy Awards submission this year and Variety called her performance "a multi-layered, emotionally polymorphous feat of acting," that deserves "so much more than political praise." While several transgender musicians have been nominated for awards, Vega is the first trans actress to be nominated.

But the bigger spotlight may be on whether Vega's breakout performance — one of stirring strength and compassion — could make Oscar history.