Ethno science fiction is a co-creative genre of ethnographic film in which the informants express their imagined future through improvisation and other forms of applied theatre and artistic practice.
As part of my practice-based research on the ethnofictions of Jean Rouch, I conducted 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork in São Paulo in 2005 and 2006 that resulted in the film Transfiction (2007), an ethnofiction focusing on identity and discrimination in the daily lives of transgendered Brazilians. In the film, Fabia Mirassos projects her life through the role of Meg, a transgendered hairdresser confronting intolerance and reliving memories of abuse. Savana “Bibi” Meirelles plays Zilda, who makes her living as one of the many transgendered sex workers in São Paulo, as she struggles to find her way out of prostitution.