Phoebe Hart
| Phoebe Hart | |
|---|---|
| Born | Queensland, Australia |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Occupation | Filmmaker and lecturer |
| Known for | Filmmaker |
| Website | www |
Phoebe Hart is a film maker, lecturer and intersex rights activist, born with Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. Hart lectures in film, television and digital media at the Queensland University of Technology, and is principal of Hartflicker, a video and film production company. She is known particularly for her autobiographical road trip movie, Orchids, My Intersex Adventure.
Hart describes how she was told she would never menstruate nor have children, but the reasons were not discussed and the topic was taboo. When Hart was 17 years of age, her mother told her the family secret, that Hart had testes in her abdomen. Hart was pressured into a gonadectomy (sterilization), and in the documentary she faces the traumatic emotional scars from that operation and the secrecy associated with it. During the shooting of her auto-biography, her parents initially refused to be filmed.
Hart completed her film studies at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in 1995. She has been involved in the children’s programme Totally Wild, Network Ten’s documentary unit, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Race Around the World and Fly TV.
In 2009, Hart was awarded her doctorate from Queensland University of Technology, of which Orchids was a central element of her doctoral studies. This documentary took six years for the principal documenters (sisters Phoebe and Bonnie Hart) to film, using a variety of cameras including semi-professional digital cameras, domestic VHS camcorders, and Super 8. She describes the work as a means of helping young intersex people to come to terms with their bodies:
One of the goals I had in telling my own story in a documentary and publically [sic] revealing me as intersex to a global audience was to change minds and show how our lives are not so unlike anyone else. In particular, I wanted to create a positive frame for young people with intersex variations, who I hoped would not have to go through what I experienced. I had to hide who I was from others, and was constantly terrified of being excluded for the monster and freak I had come to believe I was.
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