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Statement: Of course, we can imagine that screening a movie like JULIA might stir some controversy among Eastern European audiences.
All the more we would like to thank the Side by Side Festival, St. Petersburg for having our movie and screening it for the first time in Russia.
Julia, our protagonist, was born and brought up as a boy in Klaipeda, Lithuania, in the Eighties and Nineties, and he/she left her hometown because she wanted to be a girl, and because that was impossible at that time and in that city or country.
Actually, when we worked on the film we did not have any political intentions.
As a work of art, not of propaganda this film was not made to set up a political issue. We do not attack or offend anybody, neither do we mean to judge.
The film tells the story of our dear friend Julia who came to Berlin some twelve years ago with high hopes and a stunning beauty. It tells the story of a life "malgré tout", against all odds.
Never playing it safe, Julia lives a life full of passion and desire, of uprootedness and the longing for affiliation. - Julia's is a story that touched our hearts, and that we felt had to be told.
If we were to talk about politics here at all, we would do it the way Jackie Curtis, New York transsexual playwright and Andy Warhol Superstar in the 1960s, replied to a leaflet distributor who insulted her for being 'just a filthy drag queen': "Look honey," Jackie said, "I am doing more for the revolution by just walking down the street ..."
Johanna Jackie Baier was born in Kiel, MA in Literature / University of Essen, 1982.
Works as assistant director for film for, among others, Peter von Zahn, Michael Lentz, Adolf Winkelmann. Baier then directs documentaries, including the feature-length film “Die Mission – Film vom Frieden und seinem Krieg” (WP: 1983 Berlinale (Forum); writes and directs two full-length fiction films, “Die Splitter der Eisbombe” (1985) and “Frühstück für Feinde” (1988), for German TV station ZDF.Works as director for TV series since 1995.
Sex change in 1997. Johanna Jackie Baier is officially a woman.
Since 1999, she puts increased emphasis on her freelance photography and has since participated in both national and international exhibitions and art fair presentations.
In 2006/7, J. Jackie Baier presents a selection of photo works and a short film as part of the group exhibition “Sex Work” (NeueGesellschaft für bildende Kunst, Berlin).
2009 Artist in Residence at Warehouse9, Copenhagen, Denmark, invited by Danish Arts Council (The Portrait Project).
In 2011 Baier’s feature-length documentary “House of Shame” premieres at the 61st Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale).
2013: J. Jackie Baier has just completed her second feature-length documentary “Julia”, a long-term observation of a young Lithuanian transsexual walking the streets of Berlin (as a prostitute) to survive.
J. Jackie Baier lives in Berlin.
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