Gay Chorus Deep South brings uplift and hope to 2019's Vancouver Queer Film Festival
Credit to Author: Shawn Conner| Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2019 18:00:35 +0000
When: Aug 15-25
Where: Cineplex, SFU’s Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, York Theatre, VIFF Vancity Theatre, Vancouver Playhouse
Tickets: from $10, queerfilmfestival.ca
A recipe for disaster turns into a surprisingly warm and uplifting experience in Gay Chorus Deep South. The documentary follows the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus on a tour of the Southern United States, but confrontations between the openly gay singers and red-state residents turn out to be few and far.
“Ninety per cent of the tour was positive and beautiful and uplifting and so hopeful, and then 10 per cent was that tension and conflict and opposition and hate,” director David Charles Rodrigues said. “That’s what I wanted to represent in the film.”
Screening as part of the 31st Vancouver Queer Film Festival, Gay Chorus Deep South is one of more than 100 films being presented.
The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus is the subject of festival favourite Gay Chorus Deep South.
Presented by the non-profit Out on Screen, established in 1989, the festival features Canadian and Vancouver premieres, work from 27 countries, more than 50 events, and four spotlights. It’s the largest queer arts event in Western Canada.
Highlights include the opening gala, Song Lang. Set in 1990s Saigon and filmed in Vietnam, it’s won 13 film awards including the 2018 Vietnamese Golden Kite Award for Best Feature Film.
Closing film An Almost Ordinary Summer is a feel-good LGBTQ comedy from Italy in the style of the romantic comedies of American director Nancy Meyers (What Women Want, Something’s Gotta Give, and It’s Complicated). The centrepiece film is José, a Guatemalan entry which won the 2018 Queer Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival.
Vancouver premieres include Lizzie, a reimagining of the Lizzie Borden murders starring Chloe Sevigny and Kristin Stewart, and Tell it to the Bees, a UK film starring Manitoba-born Anna Paquin.
Kristin Stewart and Chloe Sevigny star in Lizzie.
This year’s festival also includes more shorts than in previous years. While feature length films are often what gets audiences excited, festival artistic director Anoushka Ratnarajah thinks short films deserve more attention.
“I think they’re kind of underrated by audience members who aren’t necessarily film buffs,” Ratnarajah said. “The short film has an ability to tell a story in such a succinct, compact and beautiful way.”
Most submissions, whether local, national or international, are shorts as well. “It’s really exciting for me to represent and uplift the work of short filmmakers this year.”
Ratnarajah selects films along with programmer Justin Ducharme and a committee.
“I have a pretty broad palette when it comes to movies,” she said. “I love everything from arthouse films to action-y, popcorn-y blockbusters.”
At the same time, she wants to feature content in the festival “that is representative of the many communities we seek to serve.” This means programming that recognizes and reflects “queer people who have intersectional identities,” including queer people of colour, Indigenous queer people, queer people with disabilities, queer immigrants, and trans folks.
Anoushka Ratnarajah.
Ratnarajah is gratified to have been able to assemble Desi Queer, a South Asian-themed showcase.
“It explores the relationships queer people have in their own countries and in diaspora,” she said.
“For a queer person of colour those experiences are complex, no matter where you’re located. That’s exciting for me as a queer South Asian woman, because I never saw that kind of representation when I was a young person.”
At the same time, Ratnarajah’s at the mercy of the film industry.
“Often people will ask, ‘why isn’t there a film about this, or about this?’ My response is ‘because the film industry is still not a very accessible industry for a lot of marginalized people.’ That means those kinds of films are not necessarily getting made, especially from people who have those lived experiences.”
Selecting films based on the kind of relationship the filmmaker has to the story being told is also important, she says.
“I don’t want to program films that can be exploitative. I don’t want to show tragedy porn or poverty porn, the kind of problematic representations that can be made by people who don’t have those lived experiences. So I look to see who’s behind the camera.”
Gay Chorus Deep South doesn’t really tick any of those boxes, since it’s coming from a director (Rodrigues) who identifies as straight and is about a community that has seen its share of representation (white American male), at least in queer cinema. But that hasn’t slowed down its momentum on the festival circuit, where it’s picked up multiple audience awards. Rodrigues thinks he knows why.
“What I’ve been noticing, and been very thankful for, and the reason I feel we’ve already won 14 audience awards around the world, is two things: people are interested in hearing these more human stories. They need something more than sensationalist news, or the rhetoric on Facebook. I feel like the film is able to do that.”
As well, he said, “It’s a very hopeful and positive film. I’ve seen a lot of other films during the festival runs, and I love many of them so so much. But I haven’t seen one yet that gives us hope, that shows the positive side of humanity. One that shows, in the end, that we can figure this out.”
Gay Chorus Deep South
Director David Charles Rodrigues’ AirBnB-backed doc follows the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus as it tours cities in the Southern U.S. The film has picked up multiple awards on the festival circuit. (Aug. 16, 6:30 p.m., SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts)
Song Lang
Set in 1990s Saigon and filmed in Vietnam, Song Lang won 13 film awards including the 2018 Vietnamese Golden Kite Award for Best Feature Film, Best Cinematography, and Best Actor (for Lien Binh Phat’s portrayal of protagonist Dung Thunderbolt). It’s the festival’s opening film. (Aug. 15, 7 p.m., Vancouver Playhouse and Aug. 21, 7 p.m., International Village)
An Almost Ordinary Summer
In this lighthearted Italian comedy, two aging patriarchs who bring their two very different families together on vacation to announce their engagement. (Aug. 25, 7 p.m. Vancouver Playhouse)
José
Filmed in Guatemala City with a local crew and starring Mayan actor Enrique Salanic, José was based on two years of interviews with young Latin American people. The film won the 2018 Queer Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival. Filmmaker in attendance. (Aug. 21, 7 p.m., Vancouver Playhouse and Aug. 22, 9:30 p.m., International Village)
Mr. Leather
The gay fetish community of São Paulo is explored in this Brazilian documentary about the annual Mr. Leather Brazil competition. Canadian premiere. (Aug. 21, 9:30 p.m., International Village)
Nothing to Lose
Kelli Jean Drinkwater’s doc follows the fierce, fat, queer cast of Australia’s Force Majeure’s dance theatre company. Canadian premiere; filmmaker in attendance. (Aug. 18, 7 p.m., International Village)
Socrates
Co-written, produced, and acted by at-risk teenagers from low-income households in the Baixada Santista region of São Paulo, Socrates follows the 15-year-old title character in the wake of his mother’s death. Canadian premiere. (Aug. 23, 7 p.m., SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts)
Lizzie
The Lizzie Borden murders, reimagined in an American movie starring Chloe Sevigny and Kristin Stewart. Vancouver premiere. (Aug. 16 at 9 p.m., International Village)
Tell it to the Bees
The UK romance stars Anna Paquin and Holliday Grainger and is set in 1950s rural Scotland. Grainger plays a single mom, Paquin is the new doctor in town. Vancouver premiere. (Aug. 17, 9:30 p.m., International Village)
The Coast is Queer
A program of local shorts. Filmmakers in attendance. (Aug. 22, 7 p.m., York Theatre)
running, running, trees go by…
This exhibit features new and retrospective work by artist Zachary Longboy. Raised in Churchill, Manitoba, the Vancouver-based Longboy explores his cultural experiences through videos, paintings, and archival film. (SUM Gallery, Aug 20-25).
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