Phoebe's Intersex Adventure

Phoebe Hart embarks on a journey of self-discovery as she unearths intersex stories in a captivating and personal documentary exploring her intersex identity.

It must be said that Phoebe Hart has succeeded where so many other filmmakers before her have failed. The well-regarded documentary maker and producer has managed to craft a deeply personal and intimate journey which nevertheless manages to transcend its setting and subject matter to provoke an almost universal reaction of understanding. It is no mean feat considering that the film, Orchids: My Intersex Adventure, delves into issues surrounding sex identity which continue to remain little understood by members of the wider public, or even within the queer community itself.

The feature-length documentary, set to be screened nationally on ABC1 this Sunday night, explores Hart’s own drawn out discovery of her own identity, which includes being told by her family upon reaching puberty that she would never menstruate or be able to conceive any children. The topic still remained taboo however until a few years later, when Hart, then aged 17, was finally told the family secret – she was intersex, a woman born with male chromosomes due to Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS). She would later have an orchidectomy to remove her undescended testes. Orchids follows the journey of Hart – inspired by French New Wave filmmaker Agnes Varda – as she hits the open road with her sister Bonnie in an attempt to piece together the imperfect matrix of biology, sex, gender and identity that make us who we all are.  

Speaking to SX last week, Hart explained that there was an overarching goal which kept her determined to complete the film despite the difficulty of completing a creative project which hits so close to home.

“One of the first things that I wanted to do when making the film was to communicate to other young people with an intersex condition that they’re not alone. Hopefully someone out there feels that way after seeing the film,” she tells SX.

Weaving in the stories of other intersex people, Orchids helps document the emotional scars carried by those who have been catalogued, categorized, operated on and discriminated against for a large part of their lives.

“I guess cataloguing comes about from medicos and doctors encountering people who are neither male or female, and there is a gender binary system whereby we need to belong to one or the other and there is nothing in between,” Hart explains.

“In a sense, the vision they have created is about erasure, it’s about erasure of difference via surgery, via hormonal treatment, or even psychological treatment in some cases.”

Having been screened to great acclaim at a swag of local and international film festivals since 2010 and nominated for an IF Award for Best Documentary last year, Hart tells SX that the audience reaction to Orchids has been heartening as well as gratifying.

“I was very frightened about what people may perceive about the film in the early stages, but people are very warm,” she says.

“I think people are coming from a perspective where I’m telling a story about what happened to me as a teenager ... and it seems that people connect with it in a kind of universal way. Mainly because it’s such an intimate, personal storytelling style and it’s based so much on myself and my family, and what we’ve been through.”

Gina Wilson, chairperson of Organisation Intersex International Australia (OII), the country’s leading intersex activist group, tells SX that the broadcasting of Orchids marks a milestone of sorts for the intersex community, coming on the back of last year’s historical election of Victorian human rights activist, Tony Briffa, as the world’s first intersex mayor.

“Orchids is without doubt the first full-length [feature] to put an aspect of intersex from an Australian perspective.

“So far as free-to-air television is concerned I think this is the longest and most serious put so far and the only one of all the intersex films that is made like a movie with a personal narrative ... A bit like Kerouac,” Wilson says.

“We especially salute Phoebe for doing this as a professional person, who is out and intersex and is prepared to be publicly identified as that. Phoebe offers hope to all intersex people that despite stigma, setbacks and the shadow of shame and secrecy a full and rewarding life is possible.”

It won’t be just Australian television audiences who will see Orchids, with the film also set to be seen by viewers in Spain, Finland, Switzerland, Israel, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden as well as Eastern Europe.

Hart, the principal at production house hartflicker, tells SX that the widespread success of Orchids has inspired her to continue making documentaries which tackle important topics as well as “touch the heart”.

“It’s been transformative for my own life, my family’s life and for lots of other people who’ve seen the film. One person told me they really enjoyed the film as it gave them permission for them to be themselves. I think that was a very special comment,” she says.

Orchids: My Intersex Adventure screens on Sunday, January 29, 10pm on ABC1.