Vera

Admission is free. No advance reservations. Your seat will be assigned to you when you pick up your ticket at the box office. Seats are assigned on a first come, first served basis. The box office opens one hour before the event.

Vera

Brazil, 1986

Based on the life of Brazilian poet Anderson Bigode Herzer, who died by suicide at the age of 20, this intense drama tells the story of Bauer (Ana Beatriz Nogueira), a trans man who navigates a difficult life in an orphanage before finding love with a young librarian, Clara (Aida Leiner). A sympathetic professor sees his talent as a poet, but Bauer (the film’s title is his deadname) is mostly alone and misunderstood, — proclaiming: “I’m not what everyone thinks I am. You hear me? I’m different. I’m something else.” One of the earliest portrayals in cinema of a transmasculine character.

Vera was originally scheduled as part of the 2023 Masc series, which was co-curated by Caden Mark Gardner and Jenni Olson and inspired by Gardner's new book, Corpses, Fools and Monsters: The History and Future of Transness in Cinema (Penguin Random House).

Digital video, color, 88 min. Director: Sergio Toledo. Screenwriter: Sandra Mara Herzer, Sergio Toledo. With: Ana Beatriz Nogueira, Raul Cortez, Aida Leiner.

Special thanks to our community partners: Butch Monthly LA, UCI Department of Film and Media Studies, UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, UCLA Department of Gender Studies, UCLA LGBTQ Campus Resource Center.