We know that many in LGBT2Q+ communities are feeling more isolated during the current quarantine. With the uncertainty of how COVID-19 will affect our ability to gather moving forward, Out On Screen has been very busy planning opportunities for people to connect now and into the future. Below are important announcements about how our programs have changed in response to the needs of the communities we serve.

The Vancouver Queer Film Festival

Out On Screen is here for you. You are not alone. Queer film is more important now than ever, which is why the VQFF and Out In Schools have expanded to support you through art, visibility, and connection.

Queer people are resilient; we grow, thrive and bring beauty to the world even in the harshest times. The VQFF is on this August, and will feature films and interdisciplinary programming from queer filmmakers and artists whose work shows the many ways we fight for the fullness of our lives, for what and who we love, and for our shared futures. Our theme this year is Still Here, because our survival is an inevitable miracle. Nothing can stop us from taking root; we will always reach for the light and sky.

We are working to ensure this year’s Festival will be as accessible as possible, as you have come to expect from Out On Screen, and remains safe for those in our community who are immunocompromised or part of another vulnerable sector. This is why the VQFF has adapted to continue to bring LGBT2Q+ communities together: 

• VQFF goes digital: We can’t predict the future, but we can plan for you to not miss a single moment of the 2020 Vancouver Queer Film Festival. We are proud to announce that the 32nd VQFF will be fully digital from August 13th-23rd. The online Festival will feature all the films, workshops, artist Q&As, panels, parties and – most importantly – the feeling of gathering with friends and kin that you’ve come to expect from your favourite queer film festival.

• Online watch parties: The VQFF is also creating new opportunities for folks to stay connected through art with biweekly watch parties. We are convening together, while in our homes, around the queer films that brought us together at previous Festivals. These viewings are made possible through Netflix, and the Netflix Party Chrome extension which includes an online chat function. The experience is enhanced with the opportunity to hear directly from Anoushka Ratnarajah, our Artistic Director, through post-film Q&As on Instagram.

Out In Schools

Today, queer youth are isolated from their schools and peer groups, which makes some far more vulnerable and in need of connection. As Out In Schools always strives to meet young people where they are, it only makes sense for us to make every effort to meet youth and educators online during this time.

Out In Schools has expanded our program offerings for educators to include:

• Online educator and youth webinars
• Pre-presentation activities, lesson plans, and our online video library for educators
• Programming specific to youth in GSA/SOGI clubs

Serving youth in BC remains our priority, but our new offerings have opened digital doors, making it possible for us to now reach beyond BC, supporting even more teachers and students than before. Wherever you are, we can be there.

We also know that it’s a tough time for everyone, even schools. This is why Out In Schools will continue to offer its sliding scale fee structure so no youth, classroom, or school is denied our lifesaving program based on a lack of financial privilege.

Community Update

You are invited to join us to hear more about these changes in our live Community Update next week. We are doing a Zoom webinar on Thursday, May 21st from 6:30-7pm to provide more details to you, our audiences, and partners about our plans for this year’s VQFF and Out In Schools. Please register so we know to expect you!

Afterwards, you are invited to our watch party that evening at 7:30pm. We’ll be watching Tell It To The Bees, which we first screened at last year’s Festival. 

We’re back with our third Netflix Watch Party this Thursday, May 7th at 7:30pm. Join us and experience Dream Boat, the story of an annual gay cruise that promises seven days of fun, sun and two-thousand nearly-naked men. Register for your ticket here.

Beneath the sexy speedos live a host of tender stories. In one way or another, the Dream Boat cruisers have complicated and varied identities, families, relationships and desires. There’s buff, Polish-born Marek, who wants to be loved. Dipankar, a gay man living in Dubai, who can’t shake his loneliness even when partying with with thousands of men. Philippe who finds himself the sole user of a wheelchair on the ship, bringing a unique perspective to the accessibility of desire. Palestinian Ramzi travels with his Belgian partner, both celebrating the latter’s recovery from cancer. Finally there’s Martin from Austria who’s navigating hooking-up while living with HIV. Gorgeous to watch and unexpectedly tender, Dream Boat challenges the idea that men’s party culture is vacuous or unfeeling, going deeper than one would expect from such a pretty cover. 

Dream Boat Q&A with VQFF’s Artistic Director

Anoushka Ratnarajah will be going LIVE on our Instagram immediately after we watch Dream Boat on Thursday to answer any questions you have about the film.

You’re welcome to post any questions that may come up for you during the screening in the Netflix Party chat feed. We will be recording them to give you detailed answers around 9pm.

How to join our watch party

If you haven’t yet, please download the ‘Netflix Party’ Google Chrome extension. You’ll need this to watch with us and join the conversation. If you need additional support while setting up, please use our step-by-step guide.

Join us for another watch party on Netflix this Thursday, April 23rd at 7:30pm for VQFF 2018 Alum, The Feels! Once again, please register here, or using the button below, and you will be sent the link prior to show time, at 7pm. 

From The Big Chill to American Pie to Bridesmaids, every decade offers a selection of party comedies. But where are the lesbians in these fun and raunchy films? Lesbians like to party too! Or at least that’s what brides-to-be, Lu (Angela Trimbur, UCB Comedy Originals) and Andi (Constance Wu, Fresh Off The Boat) set out to do on their bachelorette weekend getaway.
The couple soon discover that it’s going to take more than a few bottles of pinot grigio to bring together their eclectic group of guests. What begins as a mild clashing of personalities builds into Molly-dropping, clothing-stripping, jealousy-making, secret-spilling drama. Like all good party comedies, the characters in The Feels have more than their hangovers to contend with on Sunday morning.  

Content Advisory: discussions of sexual assault
The Feels | Jenée LaMarque | USA | 2017 | 90 min

The Feels Q&A with VQFF’s Artistic Director

Anoushka Ratnarajah will be going LIVE on our Instagram immediately after we watch The Feels on Thursday to answer any questions you have about the film. You’re welcome to post any questions that may come up for you during the screening in the Netflix Party chat feed. We will be recording them to give you detailed answers around 9pm.

How to join our watch party

If you haven’t yet, please download the ‘Netflix Party’ Google Chrome extension. You’ll need this to watch with us and join the conversation. If you need additional support while setting up, please use our step-by-step guide.

To host our upcoming Watch Party, we’re using the ‘Netflix Party’ Google Chrome extension that allows users to synchronize viewing with friends and chat while watching together. You will need a Netflix account and the Google Chrome browser to watch with us and join the conversation. Unfortunately, Netflix Party does not work on mobile devices.

Follow the instructions below to connect with us, and each other, through incredible queer film.

You’re invited to the Vancouver Queer Film Festival’s first online Watch Party, happening Thursday, April 16th at 7PM. Connect with us, and each other as we come together to watch ‘Behind The Curtain: Todrick Hall’.

This feature-length documentary screened at VQFF 2017, and we’re so excited to experience it again with you (from the safety of our homes). To join our Watch Party click here to get your free ticket. We’ll send you a link to the screening by 6:50pm on on Thursday, April 16th.

We’re using the newly created ‘Netflix Party’ Google Chrome extension that allows users to synchronize viewing with friends and chat while watching together. You will need a Netflix account and the Google Chrome browser to watch with us and join the conversation. 

VQFF Artistic Director, Anoushka Ratnarajah will be online to take note of any questions you have during the screening, and will be hosting a follow up Q&A live on our Instagram the following day, Friday April 17th at 6PM. If you can’t watch with us on Thursday 16th, enjoy the film at your own leisure and join us for the Q&A with your questions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBVcBoVjp28

With over three million subscribers, multi-talented YouTube and Broadway star Todrick Hall launched his most ambitious project yet: the full-scale original musical Straight Outta Oz. 

Behind the Curtain: Todrick Hall is a fiercely fun and inspiring behind the scenes look into Hall’s journey producing music, a visual album and musical stage tour in a heart-stopping production schedule of mere months. Director Katherine Fairfax Wright (Call me Kuchu) delivers a film that is part tour chronicle and part biography—allowing audiences to form a deep connection with Todrick and his crew. 

Hall grew up Black and gay in a religious household in Texas. His personal roots greatly influence his 2016 tour, which was set amidst the political backdrop of the US election, the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, and the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castille at the hands of police. Behind the Curtain offers an intimate look into the creative process and tells an artist’s coming-of-age story at the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality that’s made possible thanks to family, friendship, dance, song and lots of glitter.

Written by Out In Schools Program Manager, Gavin Somers

Today is Transgender Day of Visibility (TDoV), and I’d like share my thoughts on the importance of visibility for LGBT2Q+ communities. For those of you who are unfamiliar, TDoV began back in 2009, and is described by its founders as: “an annual holiday celebrated around the world. The day is dedicated to celebrating the accomplishments and victories of transgender & gender non-conforming people while raising awareness of the work that is still needed to save trans lives.” 

I am proud to work at Out On Screen, an organization that shares these same values and dedicates its time to celebrating queer lives through film, education, and dialogue. Out In Schools travels to all corners of the Province to deliver presentations that include transformational film, our team’s personal narratives, and valuable insight into the lives of LGBT2Q+ communities.

During presentations the Out In Schools team deploys the ever-epic Gender Unicorn to support students and educators in understanding how things like assigned sex and gender identity are actually two different things, and how while gender expression may be an indicator of someone’s gender identity, it isn’t always! Sounds complicated? It can be, but at the end of the day, it’s about respect, and how witnessing diverse experiences can teach us to treat each other better.

“Transgender”, “gender creative”, “non binary”, and “genderqueer” may be new words, but it’s simply a different way for people who have always existed, to self-identify. I particularly love this story about James Allen, a documented “female husband” because even before the possibility of medical intervention, it proves that we (as trans folk) have always been here.

Within many Indigenous communities, how gender was understood before contact/colonization looked very different than it does today. The word two spirit was coined in the 1990s as an english translation of the Anishinaabemowin term niizh manidoowag. It sometimes (but not always) describes a person’s experience of their gender and roles within a community. 

We share lived LGBT2Q+ experiences by showcasing a wide variety of films, using them to uplift and make visible the incredible stories of trans and gender diverse people from around the world. In the famous words of transgender activist Laverne Cox:

“I would never be so arrogant to think that someone should model their life after me. But the idea of possibility, the idea that I get to live my dreams out in public, hopefully will show to other folks that it’s possible. So I prefer the term ‘possibility model’ to ‘role model.” 

I find Laverne’s words relatable because I believe Out In Schools is all about providing possibilities.

There is no singular experience of being transgender, much like there is no singular experience to being cisgender. I love to share these diverse stories with youth and engage in dialogue that helps them see that the possibilities are endless. 

“When I was in grade 4, I told a friend “I feel like God, or whoever, messed up when it came to me.” I didn’t have the language to know that my experiences were like those of thousands and thousands of people- I didn’t know or even know of any trans people at all. It wasn’t until Grade 9, by which time my mental health had hit a horrid state, that I first saw and connected with a nonbinary person: a contestant on a reality TV show. It was then that I realized how vital it is for people to be able to see themselves represented. Transgender Day of Visibility is a day that epitomizes representation; it’s a day to celebrate our existences, see our successes, and connect people to community.”

Avery Shannon, Out In Schools Facilitator

Possibility gives us hope, so now more than ever, we need to continue uplifting the stories of trans and gender diverse people.

Join Out In Schools program manager, Gavin Somers, in conversation on Wednesday April 1st on Instagram at 6PM for a Q&A around transness, visibility, and the context of film and storytelling.

If you would like to support the work of Out On Screen, you can make a donation here. Your gift ensures we can continue to engage youth through film in the promotion of safe and inclusive learning environments, free from transphobia, homophobia, and bullying. 

Over the last few weeks and days, much has developed regarding the global response to COVID-19 (Coronavirus). The health and well-being of our team and the communities we seek to serve is our priority. We also strive to support the health and well-being of communities around the globe and to follow advice to #FlattenTheCurve.

In light of what’s important to us, we made the decision to close our downtown Vancouver office earlier this week. Our entire team is working from home and will not participate in-person meetings, instead seeking to convene by phone and digitally. 

We are actively monitoring ongoing updates by our local health authority, centre for disease control, governments, and media, while paying close attention to the situation worldwide. With this in mind, all public events and presentations organized by Out On Screen will be suspended for the next month. Assessments about further impacts to Out On Screen operations and programming suspensions will be made weekly, and when it makes sense, we will communicate these to you. 

Out In Schools plays a pivotal role in promoting safe and inclusive learning environments, free from transphobia, homophobia, and bullying across BC. To ensure that everyone has access to our dynamic presentations, we will be considering requests for online alternatives on a case by case basis. We look forward to re-scheduling all suspended presentations and bringing authentic stories to young people across the province once we resume normal operations. 

We are resilient—LGBT2Q+ communities are glittery examples of how we rise to occasion to support one another. As the following days, weeks, and months bring new challenges, we will find ways to stay connected and care for one another. Please consider how you can support the queer artists in your communities who give us so much, and are disproportionately affected during this time. 

We encourage you to reach us by email during our normal operation hours of 9AM – 5PM. If you are unsure who to contact please reference our website, or email info@outonscreen.com. 

We invite you to consider supporting Out On Screen during this time as we are not unaffected by the financial impacts of this unprecedented time. If you’d like to, you may make a donation here. Regardless, we appreciate you during this time and throughout the year.

Stephanie Goodwin, Out On Screen Executive Director

Out On Screen’s Board of Directors shares with you all that after five years of leadership and tireless commitment to LGBT2Q+ communities, our Executive Director Stephanie Goodwin is stepping down as its leader. Stephanie will remain with the organization until the end of June. 

 Stephanie joined us in 2015 and has been a leader in connecting queer communities with films that transform. Her many achievements with Out On Screen include growing the organization to be more intersectional at every level, tripling the capacity and reach of the award-winning Out In Schools program throughout British Columbia, and growing the bottom line of Out On Screen by 50%. Through this success she has affected the political and educational landscape for the betterment of queer communities, all while mentoring young queer leaders.

A message from Stephanie: “I’m so proud of what we have accomplished together over the past five years. It has been an honour to serve and grow LGBT2Q+ communities through film as well as community building. Bearing witness to the power of film to transform not just individuals but social landscapes has been one of my life’s highlights. Knowing how competent and experienced the Out On Screen board and staff are, the future is certainly bright for Out On Screen.” 

Out On Screen’s Board of Directors has established a committee to lead the transition and will engage a recruitment firm to conduct a nation-wide search for its next Executive Director. Given the long transition period, the board is confident it will find the next leader who will continue the tremendous work that has already been done. In the coming months, Stephanie will support the committee to implement their succession plan to ensure a smooth transition that prioritizes the leading-edge film and education programs. 

“Stephanie will leave behind a legacy of growth & revitalization,” says Out On Screen Board Chair Catherine Wong. “We are grateful for her years of service, and look forward to working with her through this transition period. The entire Out On Screen board wishes Stephanie continued success in her future endeavours.”  

Once her tenure is complete, Stephanie plans to pursue creative ambitions and simply enjoy being a patron at this year’s 32nd annual Vancouver Queer Film Festival. 

If you have messages, ideas, questions, or feedback, please feel free to reach out to Stephanie.

This post, written by VQFF Artistic Director Anoushka Ratnarajah, originally appeared on viff.org.

When I first saw The Watermelon Woman, I was so completely taken by Cheryl Dunye’s quest to uncover the hidden history of the titular character, a Black actress who became popular through the ubiquitous mammy roles of the 1930s, that I was genuinely shocked by the eventual reveal that the Watermelon Woman, aka Faye Richardson, wasn’t real. Invented by Dunye, Richardson is a symbol of a lost Black queer archive inaccessible to future generations of Black queer filmmakers who must build a cinematic canon on the foundations of a dominant white imagination that has limited and erased Black stories. 

When The Watermelon Woman came out 20 years ago, it was the first feature by and about a Black lesbian. A cutting-edge work at the height of the culture wars, it won the Teddy Award at the Berlinale as well as Best Feature at Outfest LA. Dunye made the film on a tiny budget of $300,000, a portion of which came from the National Endowment for the Arts. Michigan Republican Pieter Hoekstra tried unsuccessfully to get his colleagues in Congress to deduct Dunye’s $31,500 grant from the NEA budget, arguing that the organization was funding a series of gay and lesbian films that “most Americans would find offensive” and referring to The Watermelon Woman specifically as “patently offensive and possibly pornographic.” The film is still revolutionary in the ways it depicts race, gender and sexuality, and is especially unique in its critique of film as an industry and artistic form. Far from being essential only to the history of Black or queer cinema, The Watermelon Woman is an invaluable classic within the broader film canon, holding the whole industry accountable for the ways it has tokenized and erased Blackness.

The opacity of Black cinematic history plays a huge role in this film, but so do the limits of the lesbian, queer and women’s history. Who has access to representation, who has access to archives, are questions Cheryl (the film’s main character and its director) confronts again and again. On a trip to the Center for Lesbian Information and Technology (or C.L.I.T., a delightful parody of the Lesbian Herstory Archives), Cheryl finds the organization helmed by white lesbians, who haphazardly store their Black lesbian material in disorganized boxes. Sarah Schulman amusingly plays a frazzled member of C.L.I.T. who unceremoniously dumps photos and papers on a table and panics when Cheryl attempts to document images of Faye Richardson with her camera. “These are confidential!” she cries out. Even in an anarchist archive, Black queer women are barred from taking ownership of their own history. On this occasion, white women serve as the barrier. 

White women are also shown policing Black women through personal and professional relationships, like the one Cheryl uncovers between Faye Richardson and her white lesbian director Martha Page. Faye accesses mainstream Hollywood films through Martha, who refuses to cast her in anything other than a subservient role. In one movie, she appears as the bereaved, darker-skinned sister of a light-skinned woman attempting to pass as white. “Why can’t I choose to live in their world?” the sister cries, and Richardson slaps her, a puff of white powdered makeup flying off her face. Proximity to whiteness can often afford people of colour of many races upward class mobility, but always at the expense of having to cater to that whiteness, at the risk of losing spaces and privileges that are contingent on obeying a white narrative of your own experience. Echoes about passing pass through generations, appearing in the conversations Cheryl has with her best friend Tamara, especially when she starts dating a white woman, Diana, who is portrayed as something of a tourist, floating uncritically on her surety of her political goodwill and her “Black friends”. 

Another dubious white female ally is played by cultural theorist Camille Paglia (who has become increasingly problematic in queer academic and activist circles given her views on trans people and her strange biologically essentialist views on sex and gender). In this film, she parodies the narcissistic white feminist film theorist, nonsensically trying to appropriate Black culture to justify her racist views on white supremacist Black iconography. “Watermelon has the colors of the Italian flag, you know,” she says. “Red, green, and white.” She posits that Black theorists are overthinking when they argue that the mammy role is a problematic one, claiming instead that she is a goddess figure, one of fertility, one whose domesticity is empowering (thus completely ignoring the fact that these Black women and those they historically represented never had a choice about what kinds of roles they occupied, in or out of the house, because they were enslaved). The film critic, Martha Page, and Diana all exhibit the benign racism of white liberal women, whose acts of compassion and assurances of allyship are more about moral vanity than genuine respect.

The Watermelon Woman also charts the shifting geography of Black, queer Philadelphia through Cheryl’s day-to-day life. In a particularly poignant scene, the Philadelphia PD harass Cheryl, mistaking her for a man, calling her a crackhead, and assuming she is carrying stolen goods (in fact, her own camera). The scene passes and is never addressed again; the harassment happens quickly, without cause. This is the injustice that Black people experience in America on a daily basis. The fact that the police interrupt Cheryl as she’s exploring a once Black-owned business (now shut down, the building condemned) demonstrates how white supremacy interrupts and dismantles Black people’s access to space and history. Cheryl’s research reveals a complex and thriving Black and queer ecosystem in the city, one that has been continually shut down and displaced. The relocation of Black and queer bodies through gentrification never completely succeeds; Black and queer folk always find ways to rebuild and recreate. Despite the desire of white supremacy to control their lives and narratives, their resilience cannot be quashed, and Dunye’s humour, genuineness and creativity in this film has that same spirit. She invents, reinvents, remixes, creating something new through fragments of the past and projections of the future. 

In her search for Faye, Cheryl meets her life partner, June Walker, who emphasizes the importance of Black queer women telling their own stories. “If you’re really in the family,” she tells Cheryl, “you need to understand that we only have each other.” Her message is urgent; Black lesbianism is something that is uniquely at risk and therefore precious. No one can speak to these stories better than Black queer women themselves. And Cheryl’s kinship with Tamara, Faye and June is the most important part of the film, growing and shifting as she does. They feed her as much as she feeds them. 

It’s extremely rare to see a film defy narrative conventions like The Watermelon Woman. Its intimate and conversational style invites and challenges the audience through the thoughts and feelings of Dunye and her character of herself. Everything is framed through Dunye and Cheryl’s modern, fractured understanding of her own history. The film continually interrupts our relationship to history and representation even through the framing of the camera—everything is cast through Dunye’s own personal lens. Faye’s films play on television but are viewed at a remove through  Dunye’s camera, a filter of distance that mirrors the lengths Dunye herself has to go in order to find her own Black lesbian predecessors. “Sometimes you have to create your own history,” the end credits say. “The Watermelon Woman is fiction.” As a Black queer woman, Dunye has limited access to her ancestry—so she must create relationships to it through her imagination. In the process, she develops something so embodied and emotionally resonant that it becomes indisputably real.

The Watermelon Woman screened on Monday, February 10 as part of VIFF’s Black History Month series. This screening was co-presented with the Vancouver Queer Film Festival.

Calling all queer, trans, and two-spirit filmmakers!

Submissions for the 32nd Annual Vancouver Queer Film Festival are open and you can submit your film by January 31st for FREE. We seek work that confront stereotypes, pushes boundaries, provokes conversation, and about all, highlights the tremendous diversity of queer artists, locally, nationally, and internationally.

The Festival presents over 75 films each year, including shorts, documentaries, fictional narratives, and experimental works. We also host workshops, exhibitions, performances, and parties. Each year we welcome visiting artists and industry professionals to our spectacular city for both work and play. You’ll find them hosting Q&A’s, sitting in on roundtable discussions, and attending our events throughout the Festival.

This is your chance to screen your short or feature film at one of Canada’s most prestigious queer film festivals. Submit yours now through FilmFreeway.