Alilunas, PeterRobbins, Andrew2021-09-132021-09-132021-09-13https://hdl.handle.net/1794/26640This dissertation is an historical cultural analysis of the San Francisco Transgender Film Festival (SFTFF). Founded in 1997, this exhibition culture is the world’s longest-running documented trans film festival. Although content made by trans filmmakers or films with trans themes have been programmed at queer film festivals, trans-specific film festivals are an important and steadily growing phenomenon since the late 1990s. This dissertation seeks to address the limited scholarship that acknowledges the robust history of trans exhibition cultures, and by using ethnographic and historical methods, examines cultural and economic frameworks within which SFTFF emerged and persisted, illuminating tensions that cannot be disentangled. By tracing the festival’s interconnected queer, punk, and trans subcultural lineages, this dissertation outlines several of the festival’s counter-hegemonic practices. SFTFF’s enactment of punk as a sensibility translates to four key areas explored in this dissertation: identity, exhibition, spatiality, and economics.en-USAll Rights Reserved.cultural studiesfilm festivalidentityqueerSan FranciscotransgenderElectronic Thesis or Dissertation