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
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