Phoebe Hart

• Name — Phoebe Hart • Birthplace — Queensland, Australia • Occupation — Filmmaker and lecturer • Known for — Filmmaker • Website — www.hartflicker.com

Hart describes how she was told she would never menstruate nor have children, but the reasons were not discussed and the topic was taboo. When Hart was 17 years of age, her mother told her the family secret, that Hart had testes in her abdomen. Hart was pressured into a gonadectomy (sterilization), and in the documentary she faces the traumatic emotional scars from that operation and the secrecy associated with it. During the shooting of her auto-biography, her parents initially refused to be filmed.

Hart completed her film studies at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in 1995. She has been involved in the children's programme Totally Wild, Network Ten's documentary unit, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Race Around the World and Fly TV. In 2009, Hart was awarded her doctorate from QUT, of which Orchids was a central element of her doctoral studies. This documentary took six years for the principal documenters (sisters Phoebe and Bonnie Hart) to film, using a variety of cameras including semi-professional digital cameras, domestic VHS camcorders, and Super 8. She describes the work as a means of helping young intersex people to come to terms with their bodies: Hart is also a former president of the Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome Support Group Australia.

* *

* *

Hart has received multiple awards and academic honours for the documentary Orchids, My Intersex Adventure and also academic commendation for a related thesis entitled "Orchids: Intersex and Identity in Documentary". She is a Robson Fellow of the Ormond College, University of Melbourne.

Hart and her husband desired to start a family, and adopted a child. Hart's infertility and the stress of the adoption process strained their marriage.