the queer birth project
feature documentary film & multimedia installation, in post production
director, Editor
The Queer Birth Project is a multimedia journey through a queer experience of conception, gestation, birth, and parenting. Through film, installation, and community engagement, this project seeks to bring awareness to the challenges and possibilities of creatively and intentionally forging a path to building a family whilst navigating the cisheteronormative systems of the state that shape birth and caregiving.
The feature documentary primarily traces my own journey of family building as a queer, nonbinary, solo person. This story follows me through the joys and griefs of fertility tracking, intrauterine and intracervical conception attempts, pregnancy, a changing body, building a care team, and a transformative home birth experience while navigating a shifting partnership and the complexity of connection, rupture, repair and trying to shape a queer family that sustains and cares for all. Throughout my journey, I call on the wisdom of other queer and trans parents, create ceremonies to explore in community, and craft rituals of transformation for myself.
The installation component of this project includes physical artifacts of the queer family building journey – fertility tracking charts, pregnancy tests, sperm vials, insemination syringes, and my placenta, as well as conception and birth altars with objects offered in ceremonies shown in the film such as dried flowers, poems, candles, seeds, stones, and shells. Viewers are invited to participate in further creation of the altar.
The community engagement component of this project offers facilitated workshops, ceremonies, and gatherings such as a birth storytelling event, cycle tracking workshop, grief circle, and queer family potluck. These are opportunities for collective reflection on bodies as portals for life, kin building as a necessary act of resistance, and nurturance as a practice of liberation.
Fiscally sponsored by the Utah Film Center
Recipient of the Assemblage Art Fund. With this grant, we are producing an exhibition of the project that will take place Fall 2026.
We are currently in post-production and need money for a composer, sound designer, colorist, and festival submission costs. Additionally, we are developing opportunities to produce future installations of the project which will include shooting more footage of queer and trans conceiving, pregnant, and parenting folks and birth workers across the country.
For donations over $1K, please reach out about a tax-deductible option.
TEAm
director of photography
Justis Aderibigbe is a Black filmmaker from the commonwealth of Dominica. For five years he has worked as a Director of Photography and Chief Lighting Technician, across many narrative, documentary, and commercial projects with experience across shows like “Wardriver”, “The High School Musical” TV show, and “The Last of Us”. His passion in filmmaking is in the cross section of humanity and the environment, which can be seen in his projects, “From The Marrow”, “Mushroom God”, and “Void Formula”. Justis aims to tell stories that help people understand their own world better, and hopefully themselves.
Cinematographer
Kelsie Moore is an Emmy-award winning Australian-American filmmaker based in Utah. In her process as a documentarian, Kelsie facilitates conditions of safety and openness to allow for trusted, authentic expression with those in front and behind the lens. She values leading with soft, collaborative intentions while emphasizing communal care, non-violent communication and spiritual approaches that are rooted in an awareness of body and land. She has been awarded numerous Public Media Journalists Association awards for her films documenting human interest stories in the American West and in 2022 she received a regional Emmy for her directorial debut with PBS, The Gerda That Remains. Working in both commercial and documentary spaces, Kelsie believes her strongest work comes from prioritizing vulnerability, connection and the space to dream.
PRODUCTION & Story Consultant
Jade Swayne is a Black trans/non-binary artist and activist who finds their focus in the healing arts. Utilizing an array of mediums (ranging from poetry, public speaking, guided meditations, writers’ workshops, and beyond), Jade seeks to provide self-knowing experiences for others based on their own internal journeys. Whether it’s self-published zines, handmade chap books, co-facilitated gathers for queer + trans community in Salt Lake city, speeches given on the capitol steps during protest, adapting and performing works of poetry for environmental activism films, or hosting a robustly attended poetry night, Jade’s work is focused on collective healing geared toward a collective return to decolonized emotion-based living.
Producer
Sam Heim has worked as an in-house producer for the outdoor industry for five years and is now committed to telling raw, intimate, and vulnerable stories of the complex human condition. Sam has produced two non-fiction shorts: “Meet Me Where I Am” and “Winding Path” and directed and produced the festival-accepted dance film, “September”. Finding joy and calm in the chaotic moments, Sam has a quiet fire to share the truth and beauty of this fragile existence. She is currently associate producer for the feature-length documentary, We Arrive With Fire, about cultural burning on ancestral lands.
Consulting Birth Worker
Beth Hardy has been a doula for 15 years and has grown Heart Tones Birth Services into one of the best known and most trusted doula businesses in Salt Lake City. Beth and her team of 15 birth + postpartum doulas specialize in serving the LGBTQ+ community, and also offer scholarships and sliding scale options to clients who want a doula but can't afford one. At Heart Tones Birth Services, we hold space for every birth + every body, providing unbiased, inclusive care to the full spectrum of families.
Consulting PRODUCER
Kamee is a queer SWANA mama, interdisciplinary artist, storyteller, producer, community organizer, caregiver, waitress, and witch whose work summons ancestral reclamation, diasporic futurism, and justice. They’re a Pushcart nominated writer, a Lambda-awarded playwright, and an alumni resident at VONA, Banff Center for Arts, and DocX (Duke University). Documentaries they’ve worked on have been supported by Sundance, HotDocs, and Catapult. Kamee received the 2025 Creative Capital Award, published a children's book, and organized a multi-day arts program for a gathering of 4000 global-south feminist activists in Bangkok as part of their role as the arts programmer for AWID.