The Norths may not be a typical Okotoks family, but their pride was evident on the big screen at the Calgary International Film Festival last weekend.
Nick and Katherine North’s 19-minute documentary, Just Another Beautiful Family, tells the story of living a normal life and how love is possible for transgender people like Nick, who struggled with his identity since childhood and, after being married to a man and having four children, came out as transgender, married Katherine and brought their families together.
Their story was a hit at the first showing of the festival’s Alberta Spirit: Alberta Made Shorts that played at Globe Cinema Sunday. It will play again Sept. 29 at 4:15 p.m. at Eau Claire5.
“It was just surreal to see our family on that big screen,” said Katherine. “Some people said they cried - that was really touching. There was more than one parent who has a transgender kid that said it just meant so much to them. That felt really gratifying.
“That was definitely one of our goals was to show parents what can be possible and to reassure them that their kids can be okay.”
Nick said several people thanked them for sharing their story.
“They’d say, ‘That’s so brave,’” he said. “We had a lot of people from the LGBTQ community come up and say, ‘Thank you so much for telling a story about people like us.’”
The Norths, who used to go by different last names, were selected by STORYHIVE last fall to produce a documentary about their family to air on TELUS Optik™ TV On Demand and storyhive.com.
They received $50,000 to create the documentary and got to work filming, with help from an Edmonton filmmaker friend. The couple also received help from some Calgary studios to create the film.
“We worked really hard to make sure the story was the story we wanted to tell,” said Nick. “If you look at what’s out there for trans people in the media you see them being murdered or living on the streets or marginalized, but you don’t see them happy and healthy and thriving with families and lives like everyone else. We got to show what is possible when the right support is in place — when people have a supporting and loving family behind them.”
The couple met in Pennsylvania in 2013 and hit it off. At the time, Nick identified as female, was married and pregnant. Over the years, the two became close. In the summer of 2016 after Nick and his husband divorced, Katherine moved to Okotoks with her daughter, the couple married and Nick came out as trans and underwent hormone replacement therapy.
Nick’s transformation received full support from the children, and it was a story he wanted to share with others.
“Our kids were all on board with the filming process,” he said. “They thought it was a pretty awesome thing that we’re doing. It became the thing we were all doing together for other people out there. It wasn’t this thing about us.”
Nick described the filming process as a whirlwind of activity.
“All of a sudden you have 300 hours of film to go through,” he said. “The editing process was grueling, just choosing what parts to show. How do you tell a full complex narrative in just 20 minutes?”
Just Another Beautiful Family will be released officially on Sept. 30 at beautifulfamiliesproject.com
