"In many ways you're a casting agent," Elizabeth Klinck says of her job. "You go out and find the characters and you have to find good characters."

In the docu-biz, the researcher provides the film's bones, its foundation. Not just for stability, accuracy and integrity, but also for punch, for visual appeal, for intriguing stories.

That always involves looking for real people (not "expert panels") to tell their tales: what it's like growing up an identical twin, for example, or what it's like experiencing the closing days of Second World War.

That documentary, dealing with the obscure world of transgender and transsexuals, has earned Klinck a highly coveted Emmy nomination, for outstanding individual achievement in research craft.

"In Canada, research isn't recognized as a craft or skill (at awards ceremonies), so I was just delighted to discover the Emmy recognized it," Klinck says. "For many of us the Emmy's the ultimate award."

Narrated by Gore Vidal and broadcast in England and the United States, the Middle Sexes documentary's lone Emmy nomination is a tribute to Klinck's skill as a casting agent, a master foundation builder.

The producer and director, veteran British filmmaker Antony Thomas, first partnered with Klinck 10 years ago for a documentary about identical twins which aired as part of CBC's Witness series. That program, which won a Peabody Award, was not only a "great experience," says Klinck, but as a result she "ended up working on his subsequent projects."

This one got underway in 2003 and involved about 18 months research "on and off, much more intensive in the first few months." It aired last year on HBO in the United States and on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom. It has yet to be broadcast in Canada.

Probing people's sex lives isn't unusual for Klinck: "I had worked on an earlier film on the history of celibacy, and have done quite a bit of research on sexual identity," she notes, "so it was a natural progression to the world of transgender people."

While society is more accepting and understanding of gay and lesbian rights, "the world of transgender is still much misunderstood and stigmatized . . . Lots of people don't even understand the difference between a drag queen or transvestite and transgender," she says.

"Then there are the people born with indeterminate sex, and a surgeon decides, or those who at an early age, 8 or 9, decide that they're not a girl or boy . . . So my job was to find these people, and talk to them, or in the case of really young people, talk to their parents, to discover what their lives are like, what is the prejudice, what it is to be in a family with prejudice."

Klinck tracked them down around the globe and sized them up: in California, an eight-year old boy teased for acting like a girl; in India, a person who has a sex-change operation as part of an ancient ritual; in Thailand, a transsexual with a Western boyfriend she met over the Internet; in Suriname, a subculture where sexual orientation is considered fluid. All became part of the film.

A history and politics graduate from Queen's University in Kingston, Klinck plunged into research with the National Film Board of Canada. After working in Winnipeg, she moved to Montreal, a hotbed of documentary creativity at the time, where she worked with "Donald Britton and some of the finest filmmakers to come out of Canada. . . They were all living in Montreal in the early '80s."

That's where she met soundman John Martin, a musician who had grown up in Prince Edward Island where he had fallen in love with movies as a youngster, changing films on the projector for his father, who was a National Film Board rep.

Marrying and opting for a change of lifestyle to raise a family, they moved back to Klinck's hometown, Elmira, settling in a home with memories -- it had belonged to her great- aunt.

In the early days she was on the road a lot for research. "I got to travel around the world a couple of times, got to meet people in Thailand, South America, Africa, Europe," Klinck says.

But these days, "that's the great thing about where we are as a society. I can be on the phone with someone in Thailand from my office here in Elmira."

This fall is an exciting time for Klinck and her husband. Canada's Gemini Awards come up in October. She has worked on a few nominated films and Martin is nominated for best sound on a film called South Africa.

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