Trantasia

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Trantasia
Directed by	Jeremy Stanford
Produced by	Jeremy Stanford
Starring	Cassandra Cass Mimi Marks Maria Roman Jahna Steele Tamalah Taylor
Music by	Joey Newman
Editing by	Jeremy Stanford
Country	USA
Language	English
IMDb profile

Trantasia is a feature film documentary chronicling 6 contestants in the first ever 'World's Most Beautiful Transsexual Pageant'. The pageant was created by Las Vegas producer Norbert Aleman and hosted by former Las Vegas showgirl Jahna Steele, who created quite a stir in the 90's when she was outed as having been born a man. Trantasia features personal profiles of the pageant contestants including Mimi Marks [1],Cassandra Cass, Maria Roman, Erica Andrews, Tiara Russell and Dorae Saunders.

[edit] Credits

Norbert Aleman is the executive producer. He has produced numerous stage shows in Asia, Australia, Europe, and the United States. Born in poverty in Paris, Aleman immigrated to the U. S. in the late 1970’s, where he created two long-running Las Vegas stage shows: An Evening at La Cage and Crazy Girls.

Jeremy Stanford is Trantasia's director, producer, and editor. A graduate of Stanford University, Jeremy Stanford earned a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree from the USC School of Film and Television. He directed his first feature, Stepmonster, starring Alan Thicke, Ami Dolenz, Corey Feldman, Edie McClurg and John Astin for Roger Corman. Stanford's directing credits also include Watchers 3 starring Wings Hauser, the Fox TV television series, Fashion House, starring Bo Derek, Tippi Hedren, and Morgan Fairchild and Wicked, Wicked Games starring Tatum O'Neal. He has also written, directed and produced numerous live events including The Los Angeles Music Center's Distinguished Artists Awards starring Dustin Hoffman, Carol Burnett, Herbie Hancock, Mark Morris, Joey Grey, and Tommy Tune.

Executive producer Ted Smith is an Emmy-award winning Emmy-award winning TV producer who developed The Apprentice for Mark Burnett and is an executive producer for the AOL/Mark Burnett Production Gold Rush.

Chris Smith is Ted Smith’s brother and a film and television distribution executive who started his TV sales career at Lorimar-Telepictures and has since worked with Warner Bros., Universal TV and NBC, distributing Will & Grace, The Rosie O’Donnell Show, and Big Eden [2].

Other crew members include:

Stephen Brown, producer
Thomas Ethan Harris, co-producer
Joey Newman, original score
Sam Hamann, animated titles and graphics
David Woods, post-production supervisor [3]
Elizabeth Wendell, music supervisor

[edit] History

Trantasia is a behind-the-scenes documentary chronicling The World’s Most Beautiful Transsexual Pageant [4] which was created by legendary Las Vegas producer Norbert Aleman.

Ted Smith suggested to Norbert Aleman that the pageant would make great subject matter for a documentary. After filming the three-day pageant, director Jeremy Stanford travelled across the US interviewing six of the contestants and their families. These personal profiles create the heart of the documentary which was also edited by Stanford.

Entertainment Tonight and The Insider “have featured the making of the documentary and profiled the film’s transgendered stars in several separate stories” [5].]. Several other media outlets have covered the movie and pageant, including Maxim Magazine-Europe. The San Francisco Chronicle also featured an article, “Pretty Women” concerning the documentary [6] Daily Variety and the San Francisco Observer favorably reviewed the documentary [7]. The documentary has screened at several film festivals including Frameline in San Francisco, Outfest in Los Angeles, Neonfest in Las Vegas and the Palm Springs International Film Festival.