ANDY BYDALEK

ANDY BYDALEKANDY BYDALEKANDY BYDALEK

ANDY BYDALEK

ANDY BYDALEKANDY BYDALEKANDY BYDALEK
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    • Home
    • Films
      • The Number 12
      • Same Time, Next Year
      • Autodesk
      • Here Comes Helen
      • Passion of the Unicorn
      • Magnitude (Trailer)
      • El Canto Del Colibri
      • Love Is In The Air
      • SKINz
      • Skinnyfat
      • Haunted
      • The 911 Salon
      • daMNaged
    • Photography
    • Bio
    • Q&A
  • Home
  • Films
    • The Number 12
    • Same Time, Next Year
    • Autodesk
    • Here Comes Helen
    • Passion of the Unicorn
    • Magnitude (Trailer)
    • El Canto Del Colibri
    • Love Is In The Air
    • SKINz
    • Skinnyfat
    • Haunted
    • The 911 Salon
    • daMNaged
  • Photography
  • Bio
  • Q&A

The Number 12

Young Tom finds himself caught in a 1960s-style “future” world where everyone undergoes The Transformation...and he must decide to fight it or join.

Starring:  Marvel Rex and Lex Ryan.


Written, Produced & Directed – Jed Bell

Produced & Edited – Andy Bydalek

Filmed in January 2020.


The Number 12 is the graduate thesis project of filmmaker Jed Bell, who is a frequent collaborator with Andy. It was shot on the soundstages of SF State University. The film explores themes of gender identity within the trans-spectrum experience:  a scary future in which all trans people are pressured to take hormones and have surgery—transitioning entirely in one day—and to choose one of only a few “model” bodies for their new selves.


It raises a central question: must each of us choose to present ourselves as traditionally "male" or "female" in order to belong?

Director Statement:


The Number 12 takes its inspiration not only from the original 1960s Twilight Zone series in general, but from one episode in particular: “The Number 12 Looks Just Like You.” 


In this episode, we find a young woman restlessly sitting with her options in a future world where everyone, on turning 18, chooses to undergo The Transformation: an operation which gives an entirely new body to the patient, conferring not only lasting beauty but much longer life.


As an artist and a trans man, I have my share of “chronically unique” outsider syndrome. In my more paranoid moments, I sometimes feel that all my trans friends have deserted their more complicated, pre-transition identities and left me here, alone, struggling with the gender binary, patriarchy, and all the complexities of living a visibly trans life. 


I wanted to untangle some of the knots of my own obsessions: how can friendship and belonging curdle into menace, betrayal, abandonment? How do we act ethically in a world organized by inequality? How do our decisions as trans people affect our selves and each other? These questions coalesced into a film about a creeped-out, always-ambivalent trans guy who stumbles on a conspiracy to force us all into the ultimate cheerful capitulation.


– Jed Bell

www.jedbell.com

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