I was meant to be famous by age 40. At least, that’s what a psychic told me when I was still a teenager. And who wouldn’t want to be famous, right? So I enrolled in film school and began my career as a filmmaker. A decade after I visited that fortuneteller, I was working for a major Australian network as a documentary researcher and writer on a weekly salary. I loved making documentaries, but I felt at this rate, it’d be years before I’d get a real break to make a name for myself.

I’m not sure why I felt such a need to succeed. What could possibly be the explanation? I had modeled myself upon my father’s rugged individualism, perhaps? He was a classic “self-made man” with only a high school education who had made his own company from the ground up in the seafood industry in the far north of Australia. Maybe I had delusions of grandeur? A desperate desire to prove myself? Whatever the reason, I decided to quit my job and start making a documentary that I’d been thinking about making for many years. It was a project that terrified me more than any other creative project I’d attempted before or since.

I was born with a congenital intersex variation called Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS). There is a vast range of variations defined as intersex or a disorder of sex development, and it is estimated that one in every 200 people are intersex. AIS is quite rare, however (about one in every 20,000 to 50,000), and it can occur spontaneously at conception, or is passed down the generations via the matriarchal line. People with AIS have 46,XY chromosomes (the typical male pattern) but develop atypical reproductive organs as a result of our bodies being insensitive to androgens (male hormones which include testosterone). The insensitivity to androgen can vary from “complete” insensitivity (CAIS) to “partial” insensitivity (PAIS). Consequently, physical appearance at birth can vary across the spectrum of female to male, and people with AIS can identify as being male, female, or intersex. However, individuals with CAIS most often identify as female, as I do. In fact, if you met me in the street, you wouldn’t have any idea that I was anything other than a woman.

But I am intersex—and proud of it.

That said, I’d really had a hard time growing up with AIS. I didn’t have a normal female puberty—I never started having periods and I can’t fall pregnant—and my family kept my condition a secret from me. My parents just told me that I didn’t have a uterus, but I sensed there was much more to it. As an adolescent, I often felt very confused, frightened, and deeply alone. I thought I was the only person on the planet like me: an alien in my own skin. I had to have surgery to make me more like a girl, and I found that really affected my self-esteem terribly. Eventually, I found out why I was different and even met others like me. I began to realize that I was not alone, and that many other people had experienced what I had—the secrecy, shame, and stigma of having a body that doesn’t neatly fit the binary sexes of either male or female.

While this is not our fault because we are “born this way” and intersex is a part of the natural range of human diversity, I quickly saw that so many of us feel worthless about ourselves and our bodies. The rate of self-harm and suicide in our community is alarmingly high as a result. And worst of all, I learned that many babies born with intersex and ambiguous genitalia were being surgically assigned a gender for purely cosmetic reasons before they could have any say over their own bodies.

This made me angry. Why should we suffer because society fears what it does not comprehend? It seemed to me that doctors, while they may think they are helping by “fixing” us, are effectively trying to erase us from the face of the earth. I have always been fit and healthy, and I don’t believe our bodies are broken. So after thinking about it for a really long time, I decided that I wanted to make a courageous, inspiring, and even humorous documentary that might help people generally understand what intersex is—and help young people with intersex understand themselves. First and foremost, I really didn’t want other people with intersex variations to go through what I went through.

Phoebe Hart in a publicity still from Orchids: My Intersex Adventure

Copyright Hartflicker Moving Pictures

So I cast myself adrift from the safety net of my job in network television, not really knowing anyone in the independent film world and with no real project to go to, other than a Masters degree I’d started at the Queensland University of Technology. All I knew was that I wanted to make my own film and call the project Orchids.

The etymology of the word orchid derives from Latin orchis and from Greek orkhis, which mean “testicle.” Certainly the protuberances within the orchid’s flowering structure are reminiscent of the male gonads. Many people with AIS undergo an orchidectomy, or the removal of internal testes, to reduce the risk of cancer. And as such, they often refer to themselves as orchids. So the title seemed appropriate.

At the beginning, I was fairly certain I wouldn’t actually be a part of the onscreen talent of this documentary about intersex. My plan was to find some chump who would put his or her neck on the chopping block and leave me safely ensconced behind the camera. But finding participants to do this was much harder than I initially envisioned. One thing to note about making documentary films: Not everyone wants to be on TV. Especially when it comes to showing their private lives or “real” selves. There are a lot of trust and power issues involved. I began to think about having a camera as being a lot like toting a semi-automatic machine gun about. People tend to react in the same way when they see someone with either object: They panic. Even people who are used to cameras being around start to behave in a heightened manner—a bit more themselves than normal. So getting natural behavior and statements on camera is very difficult unless you’re filming extremely extroverted people whose on-camera persona is exactly the same as their normal persona—off the planet.

It may seem like documentary filmmakers are vampires that feed off the vulnerable and the incorrigible cases. Well, that could be true. But I usually approach every new person I want to interview with a great deal of fear, desperately hoping they’ll like me and agree to reveal some clandestine, inner part of themselves to me and my lens. This doesn’t always work out, and I’ve been told to clear off plenty of times. At university, my teachers always impressed upon me the importance of being utterly ethical and sensitive to those we were interviewing and documenting. But ethics and sensitivity don’t often make for great television. You really want to capture big emotional scenes of people breaking down crying or making some huge mistake or getting into a terrible fight, but usually the people you film having these highly vulnerable moments don’t want to be exposed, don’t want to have other people see the footage. So as a director, you’re often subtly manipulating the subject (that is, the person whose story you’re following) into divulging or exposing something extraordinary, or just getting those people so used to you being around that they let their guard drop for a moment while the camera is rolling … something so revealing that it might actually convince the viewer sitting at home in front of a screen not to click away to something more interesting. It’s a thought that makes me sick.

I decided I didn’t want to be the type of filmmaker to condone the ethos of reality TV and degenerate factual filmmakers’ thirst for blood. No, I would stand for solid ethics in documentary production—I would protect the moral rights of my participants. Everyone in my documentary would be able to negotiate their participation and decide how much and what to expose of themselves and their lives. And why should I exploit an orchid brother or sister just so I could make a film about intersex? Did I not have an intersex variation? Shouldn’t I be the one to turn the camera on myself and lead by example?

I fired up and convinced myself to make my film autobiographical—no hiding behind the camera for me.

I invited my sister Bonnie to come along in my utility vehicle and travel Australia, meeting many amazing people with intersex variations and have a rip-roaring adventure at the same time. To my delight, she agreed. Now, get mum and dad involved!

I called my parents thinking they would be ecstatic to be a part of the creative process. Imagine my disappointment when I asked my parents if they’d also like to join me on the frontline only to be summarily rejected. For some reason, I really thought mum and dad would be only too happy to appear in any one of my productions, should I so require it. I failed to realize how dramatically deep this particular issue—the family secret—cut. In retrospect, I must have been deluded, naive, or just extremely hopeful to believe they would agree. But in true Hart style, I decided to battle on gamely, wounded but telling myself it was too late to turn back now.

I was very fortunate to receive a scholarship to ramp my Masters up to a full-blown Doctoral creative research project. Fortunate, because all the jobs I got via my independent production work pretty much paid a pittance. As a producer, once you’ve done the hard work of convincing a commissioning editor from a broadcaster or distributor that they should take on your project, there’s the nightmare of raising the rest of the budget. Broadcasters pay a license fee, which may trigger limited investment or grants from state and national funding bodies. But it’s barely enough to cover the enormous expense of making a film, and the only option is to seek private investment, philanthropic investment, or overseas broadcaster interest. Never an easy task. Often, it’s best just to pare down the budget and work with what you’ve got. And one of the first things to come right down in price is the producer and director fees. As I was keen to make a name for myself, I accepted almost all offers to direct other peoples’ films. Was it exploitation? Only if I hadn’t learned anything along the way.

Phoebe Hart with sister and co-creator, Bonnie Hart

Copyright Hartflicker Moving Pictures

You need to be incredibly tough to survive and succeed in this business. I directed other films while making Orchids and had seen how very difficult working in the independent film sector was. There are so many parties to satisfy—the broadcasters, distributors, funders, talent, crew, media, and other stakeholders—and so much could go wrong, and so many decisions could negatively affect the original vision for a film, diluting the creative process immeasurably. On another documentary on an entirely different subject to Orchids, I witnessed the producer and the broadcaster go head-to-head on a critical issue of whether to include a highly controversial scene. The scene was pivotal, but there was a threat of a lawsuit so the broadcaster declined to support the producer to continue with the scene included. The fantastic footage ended up on the editing room floor. We tried our hardest to bring the rest of the film together in the edit, but it just didn’t have the same oomph. Even though I was proud of what we’d achieved, when the film was finally broadcast, it seemed everyone else thought it was a dog of a show.

My reaction was to clutch my Orchids project closer to me. I didn’t want to take it to any other producer or commissioning editor until I felt I was ready. I wanted to control how this story emerged, even if it took years to do so.

Happily, I built a tight supervisory team around my PhD project, and I was enjoying the theoretical component of the work. I could do this, be an academic, although I could see that the world of academia is every bit as competitive as the world of independent filmmaking. This would be true of any industry that relies on ever-dwindling grants from the government. Everyone has to jig the dance of the dollar in some way or another—that’s life. I must be a real princess, though, as I find anything to do with making money kind of distasteful. But I also see this as a somewhat dysfunctional thought pattern, because it means I undervalue my art—and ergo, my own creative ability. Kind of depressing.

I continued to work on my PhD and the rough cut of the film, toiling mostly by myself at my home office. Gradually, I’d begun to tell more and more people what I was doing, letting some trusted advisors look at the cut and give feedback. But I still hadn’t come to terms with how outing myself in such a public fashion would affect my life and the lives of people around me. I had panic attacks sometimes, but I also had a quiet confidence that this would be an important film—not just for me but for those people who were supporting me. There was an unstoppable momentum now, and there was no other way to go but forward.

I was submitting my PhD for assessment when an opportunity came up for young documentary filmmakers to get their work on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) program called Opening Shot (formerly known as JDocs). I’d heard good things about the initiative from other filmmakers who had participated in previous rounds, so I applied and sent my cut of the film. It sorely needed some additional scenes and a good re-cut, animated sequences, a musical score, a mix and grade, but I simply couldn’t afford this expensive work on my own. Now was the time to open the project up, to go commercial, in an effort to do the film justice.

Luckily, the commissioning team loved the concept and what I’d already put together. They green-lit Orchids as an ABC project with me as producer and director, ensuring that I’d be able to find the funding to complete the film to a high standard. At the same time, my parents, who at first refused to be a part of the documentary film, had been watching me make the film for some years and had changed their minds. Even though they were afraid to come out and be potentially judged by people who saw the film, they agreed to be interviewed, completing the narrative arc of the film.

Once I had some money to spend, I managed to get some great mentors and craftspeople on board and finish the film to a level that exceeded my expectations. In particular, my experienced editor worked with the many hours of footage we’d shot and very cleverly built up the story in ways that I couldn’t have done, being so close to the material. This was my chance, and the stakes were higher now than ever before to deliver an outstanding documentary film.

But there was one more barrier to cross—exposing my story to the rest of the world.

Up until that point, I’d only told really good friends and colleagues that I’m intersex. Now I’d made the film and was going to have to show it to random strangers. That really freaked me out. Acquaintances and people I only knew in passing would know that I’m intersex. People in the supermarket might even recognize me. I had no idea how audiences would react to the film. I really thought they’d see only the faults or that they’d find my story trivial and shrill. But when it finally happened, the audience response exceeded my expectations. Orchids premiered at my home city’s local festival (the Brisbane International Film Festival) to a sold-out audience and rave reviews. And at the end of the screening, audience members mobbed my mother and father, who came along to see the film for the first time. Everyone was so proud of my parents for having the nerve to support the film and tell their side of the story.

Final poster art for Orchids: My Intersex Adventure

Copyright Hartflicker Moving Pictures

Slowly, it began to dawn on me that my deeply personal on-camera confession was engaging. At that festival, Orchids was voted the best film of the festival by audiences. And since then, the film has gone on to screen at dozens of film festivals, win many awards, and be broadcast on television in Australia, throughout Europe, and in North America. It’s been translated into Italian, Spanish, German, Russian, Swedish, Hungarian, Turkish, Polish, Chinese, Japanese, and Hebrew.

Most gratifyingly, I’ve received so many warm messages from viewers who really got something out of watching the film, particularly other people with intersex who want to reach out to me. I still get messages to this day. The film has even been illegally uploaded to the Internet, where it’s had hundreds of thousands of views.

It appears that the psychic was right. I did achieve fame by the time I was 40. It might not have been how I expected, but millions of people have witnessed my life and have seen my film, and it’s rewarding to know that it’s changed some lives in the process.

DR. PHOEBE HART is an award-winning television writer, director, and producer, and she’s a screen studies academic at the Queensland University of Technology. Her interests and research include screenwriting, autobiography, digital disruption, identity and representation in documentary, cultural studies, and feminist phenomenology. She is known particularly for her autobiographical road trip movie, Orchids: My Intersex Adventure, which has been screened and broadcast globally.