Sunday, June 28, 2009
Film Pride and Stealth
Posted by Ed M. Koziarski on Sun, Jun 28, 2009 at 3:16 PM
Alexandra Billings sits beside a politiian's corpse in a hotel room and phones her sister for help. So begins Stealth, the first starring film role for the Pride Parade grand marshal, transgender actress and activist. Stealth screens Tuesday at the Center on Halsted.
Born Scott Billings in Schaumburg in 1962, Billings spent her early childhood as an LA theatre brat, moving back to Chicago at age 10. She started her career with cabaret drag performance here.
She debuted her one woman show Before I Disappear here in 1993. In 2003 she was the first male-to-female transgender performer to play a transgender character on TV, in the ABC TV movie Romy and Michelle: In the Beginning.
Combining a potboiler plot with her own trasngender experience, director Marlo Bernier wrote the 20-miniute Stealth with co-producer Jennifer Fontaine, who co-stars along with Elizabeth J. Martin. Music is by transgender singer-songwriter Namoli Bennett.
$20 ticket proceeds will be split between the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame and the production of a feature-length version of the film.
Stealth screens Tuesday at 8 PM at the Center on Halsted Hoover-Leppen Theater, 3656 N. Halsted. $20 includes a post-screening reception with food and wine from Ann Sather. Billings, Bernier and Fontaine will attend.
Trailer contains graphic disturbing content.
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