Rhys Ernst is best known for his work on transgender-related television shows, serving as an associate producer on Transparent and the director of its documentary spin-off This is Me.
12 Facts About Rhys Ernst
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Rhys Ernst is known for his controversial debut feature film Adam.
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Rhys Ernst has explained that media was his way of discovering queer identities, particularly MTV in his childhood and New Queer Cinema as he got older; these films helped him "imagine a future" that seemed otherwise inaccessible from his hometown in North Carolina.
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Rhys Ernst graduated from Hampshire College in 2004, with a BA in film; his graduation film was "The Drive North", which won an award at the Chicago International Film Festival.
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Rhys Ernst then received an Master of Fine Arts from CalArts in 2011.
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In 2014, Drucker and Rhys Ernst exhibited "Relationship" at the Whitney Museum of American Art, as part of the Whitney Biennial, through a series of photos that chronicled the process and evolution of the couple's relationship and gender transitions.
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The couple began working on Transparent early in its production after Rhys Ernst met creator Joey Soloway at Sundance in 2012.
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Rhys Ernst was involved editing the title sequence and can be briefly seen in it.
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In 2015, Rhys Ernst directed This is Me, a series of short documentaries inspired by a line said when the main character in Transparent comes out and executive produced by Soloway.
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BuzzFeed News describes the film as a "boundary-pushing artwork by and about underrepresented communities", with a representative of its distributor Wolfe Releasing and Rhys Ernst both saying they want to open a space for queer artists to tell whatever stories they want, with Rhys Ernst saying he especially does not want to be restricted to positive trans stories.
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Rhys Ernst met Drucker when she had recently graduated from the School of Visual Arts in New York.
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Rhys Ernst had never dated a woman before, and Drucker had never dated a man.