Documentary Makers Seek Burou SRS Patients
Manon van der Sluijs a researcher for a Dutch Film production company called de Familie (the Family in Dutch)
located in Amsterdam, the Netherlands contacted Phyllis Frye, she sent it on to us and we are passing the message on to you.
De Familie produces art documentaries and feature films and they are currently working on a historical documentary which will produce a portrait of the period in which Dr. Georges Burou performed the first transsexual operations, the ’50s and ’60s in Casablanca. These were times when getting sex reassignment surgery was very difficult, hardly possible, and most male-to-female transsexuals sought solace with doctor Burou in Casablanca. The women that came to him often heard of him from other transexxuals and knew they could come to him without any questions being asked. You had to know through the right contacts were his clinic was and how you could get into contact with him.
de Familie’s background research has them looking for male-to-female transsexuals from all over the world, who have were operated on by Dr. Burou in Casablanca, or people who might know them. In the last couple of months the company has been able to find and talk to women in the UK, France, Germany and Spain.
In the documentary the film makers would like to give more insight into how the lives of the women who visited Burou changed after the operation, how they felt at that time, how their lives developed afterwards.
de Familie has learned that some of the women who got their surgery from Dr. Burou have been living in stealth mode for many years, and feel that it is time now to share their story. As the transgender community in Europe is quite close and the countries are small the company has been able to find European women that went to Casablanca. They are in close contact with the transgender teams of several University’s that have been helping them to search in Europe.
They now hope to find former patients in the US to make their story as international as possible.
Researcher van der Sluijs stated:
“I cannot emphasize enough that I am aware of the sensitiveness of the topic and the privacy involved; I would like to stress that my search is meant for background research only. When we make the final plan for the documentary I would like it to be based on as much oral history as possible. We will not start filming until spring 2011 and the women that we do speak to can decide for themselves whether they’d feel comfortable sharing their story with us.”
If you know of anyone, or have yourself been a patient of Dr. Burou contact:
Manon van der Sluijs
Research de Familie film producties
Schollenbrugstraat 4 huis
1091 EX Amsterdam
the Netherlands
[email protected]
0031-6-52667414
Category: Transgender Community News
About the Author (Author Profile)
Angela Gardner is a founding member of The Renaissance Transgender Assoc., Inc., former editor of its newsletter and magazine, Transgender Community News. She was the Diva of Dish for TGF in the late 1990s and Editor of LadyLike magazine until its untimely demise. She has appeared in film and television shows portraying TG characters, as well as representing Renaissance on numerous talk shows.Subscribe
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