Our good friends Dan Sickles and Antonio Santini have spent the last few months exploring the world of the Puerto Rican trans and drag communities, Joseph Pedro reports in Passport Blogs.

Their film, titled MALA MALA, documents the struggle, the dreams, and the successes of these brave individuals. Since the project’s inception, it has  galvanized thousands of supporters through social media and online outlets, with many viewers suggesting that the film will blossom into a contemporary Latin documentary in the vein of the 1990 Paris is Burning.

“Transsexualism and drag performance defy the binary most accept as their standard, while acting as a channel to express (and inhabit) one’s individuality. Conventions are broken when men apply lashes, wigs, and dresses. Prevailing ideas of gender are turned on their head during the transitional process of a transgendered person. And yet as ‘other’ as transsexualism seems to some, it’s reflective of the universal human desire to explore and fulfill. To live life as a trans individual is to embody a lifestyle of possibility and endless creation,” the filmmakers wrote on their Kickstarter page.

Find out more after the jump…

“There have been too many times in all of these girls’ lives where they have been told that they’re ugly, or that because they break convention, they’re less than perfect, or going to hell, or some crazy lie devised to instill fear in those that choose to be bold. I just want to make a movie every single one of them can point to and think, ‘I am beautiful. I am bold. I am absolutely perfect the way that I am, and no bully, or ideology, or law can tell me otherwise.’ This film could be proof of that,” Sickles states.

For the original report go to http://www.passportmagazine.com/blog/archives/8961-transgender-women-in-puerto-rico-featured-in-new-documentary.html