By Rosie Mazza
In 2002, Christopher "Christoph" Lee stood at the front of the San Francisco Pride Parade as the first openly trans man ever named Grand Marshal. Someone asked him how old he was. His answer? "Immortal."
He was right.
Christopher Lee (September 4, 1964 – December 22, 2012) was a Chinese and Polish-American transgender activist and award-winning filmmaker whose fingerprints are all over the Bay Area's trans cultural landscape, whether you can see them or not. His life was an act of radical creation. He made films when there were none. He built institutions when there were none. Christopher showed up for his community with a force that still echoes.
His first film, Christopher's Chronicles (1996), was a documentary record of his own transition and was among the very first films made by and about a transgender man of color, premiering at the 1997 Frameline Festival. The follow-up, Trappings of Transhood (1997), went even further, centering the stories and lived experiences of a multiracial group of trans men who shared their experiences negotiating issues of race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, and the medical industry. It was the first known feature-length work to document the experiences of trans men.
Then came Tranny Fest. Co-founded by Christopher Lee and Alex Austin in 1997, with Elise Hurwitz as technical director, the festival is now known as the San Francisco Transgender Film Festival and is the world's oldest transgender film festival. It started with volunteer power and zero institutional funding, built entirely on what artistic director Shawna Virago described as "transgender smarts, sweat, and love from the community." Over its nearly three decades, it has been a lifeline for trans filmmakers who deserve a stage.
Even after his death in 2012, Lee's impact continued to reshape California law. The Respect After Death Act, authored by Assemblymember Toni Atkins and sponsored by the Transgender Law Center and Equality California, passed the state legislature and requires coroners and funeral directors to record a person's gender identity rather than anatomical sex on their death certificate. A man who could not be defined by others in life made sure the same would be true in death.
Now, Christopher Lee lives on in a different way: hanging on the walls of No One Way. Photographer Catherine Opie's portrait of Lee renders him, as the exhibit wall statement puts it, "in military garb, hat under arm and sabre in hand" with the formality and grandeur of a historical portrait. (No One Way wall statement, QAF.) That is exactly what he is: history, the kind that made space for everyone who came after him.
No One Way is a show about pluralism, inheritance, and the many gorgeous, inventive ways people have lived transmasculine lives in the city. Christopher Lee is the through-line. His work, his courage, his "immortal" energy runs underneath every piece in this exhibition.
So come see it. And before you leave, pick up a postcard. We want to know… what else is there no one way to do? Fill it out, leave it with us, and become part of the living collective history of queerness in the Bay Area.
There is no one way to be remembered. Christopher Lee proved that beautifully.
Sources: KQED Arts, "Christopher Lee Made Space for Trans Cinema" (June 2025); San Francisco Transgender Film Festival website; Wikipedia, "Christopher Lee (activist)"; No One Way exhibition wall statement and artist bios, QAF.
Photo: Christopher Lee arrives at a film premiere in 1999. (Courtesy Elizabeth Sheldon)
Cover Photo: A still from Christopher Lee’s ‘Sex Flesh in Blood,’ 1999. (Frameline)