Where did the idea for Gay Mean Girls come from?

“My own high school experiences where I came out in grade nine kind of, [with the] wrong sexual orientation and then dealing with racism in the gay community. And then also the idea came from my experiences [at Toronto Metropolitan University] at the time and my political awakening with that as well.” – Heyishi Zhang

The first season of Gay Mean Girls follows Lucy Ching, a prom committee member seeking to diversify the royalty race at their school by making it queer. The story involves Lucy’s coming out, the intersectional issues of race and queerness, and the emotional rollercoaster of high school.

Although set in the same universe and at the same high school, the second season takes on a slightly different frame.

“I came up with the second season having had my own experiences with community organising and activist spaces and seeing all of the corruption and open secrets that took place within it; I think I wanted to tell the story because it seemed like not a lot of people were willing to talk about these things. […] The thesis of this season is trauma, but make it fun.” – Heyishi Zhang

Gay Mean Girls season 2 follows student journalist Savannah Lin who infiltrates a queer POC “safe space” to bolster her chances at a scholarship. What starts as wholesome curiosity spirals into a traumatic masterclass in toxic power dynamics and the complicated reality of activist havens. Coming from first-hand experience, Heyishi Zhang brings a lot of herself into these stories and creates an incredibly layered, raw and honest portrayal of intersectional issues within the queer community.

“There’s a degree to which I feel like I’m playing a game with the audience regarding what the show reveals about me. [But I also] think the show is a way for me to process my own experiences and organise my memories. My intention for making this show is that I hope it helps other people do the same. The characters are written in a certain way, but I feel like the way that Jenna [Phoa] portrays [Savannah], she made her own character. So, I would say that it’s more collaborative. I think that writing it felt like it was very close to who I am. But in the directing, I had let that go and let the actors take it where they wanted it to go.” – Heyishi Zhang

It’s refreshing to see a queer creator taking on the status quo. No one wants to see a straight white man write a script about the unbalanced power dynamics within the queer community because it’s not coming from the right fountain. However, that doesn’t make the issue any less relevant or in need of attention. Heyishi Zhang brings these issues to the forefront while also creating something fun, vibrant, and sarcastic that’s a joy to watch.

Catch up on Gay Mean Girls on KindaTV on YouTube; Season two premieres February 24th.

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La Ronde is a Toronto set, all queer anthology of 10 two-person encounters, exploring themes of sex, love, monogamy, sex work, and sexual identity. Shot in a black box theatre, the episodes have an intimate theatrical feel that only small stage performances can give you. Each conversation is connected by a character from the previous, delivering a glimpse into their lives and different sides containing needs and desires they may otherwise keep hidden.

With delicate performances and intimate conversations; Peach Emoji Productions’ La Ronde portrays a queer interpretation of Arthur Schnitzer’s original meaning by integrating healthy sexual boundaries, kinks, gender identity and more. In the span of each 10-minute episode, characters unravel to form a circle of intimate expression.

Jason Raynor and Alexandra Ketnis started Peach Emoji Productions in 2019 to create a place dedicated to showcasing queer stories and uplifting queer voices through unique perspectives and intersectionality. They show initiative and ambition in their work and appear to be quite resourceful in their productions.

Arthur Schnitzer wrote the original La Ronde (Reigen) in 1897, and when it first premiered on stage between 1912-1920, the audience’s reactions ranged from vexed to outright violent. The original play critiqued the restrictive morality of sex in the 1890s and the intersectionality of class, sex, and transmission of sexual diseases. In today’s context, most reproductions of La Ronde focus on the character studies within each conversation.

La Ronde has been adapted by Hollywood plenty of times but never queer. After watching Jason Raynor and Alexandra Ketnis’s interpretation, it’s clear that the format and themes lend themselves perfectly to queer culture and forms of intimacy.

The first two episodes are out on June 21st on Youtube and larondeseries.com explore love and lust but also the fragility of ego in an intimate setting and the romanticism of monogamy. We follow The Actor from one conversation to the next, showing a vague emotional growth from the conversation he had before. It will be interesting to see The Writer from episode one reappears in episode 10 and how this circle of love and sex will tight itself together.

Otherwise, the black box theatre gives each episode a dark and intimate mood. There’s something about a stage-lit conversation that makes it seem all the more awkward, vulnerable, and honest. Jason Raynor and Alexandra Ketnis know how to use a blank canvas and create warmth.

Peach Emoji Productions’ La Ronde is also being released as a podcast to listen to while on the go. They’ll be releasing the series in five parts, two at a time on Tuesdays. Be sure to take a look or listen.

The post “La Ronde” From A New Perspective appeared first on Toronto Guardian.

Francis Plourde is the new host of The Village: The Montreal Murders which takes a look at not only the crimes within the Queer community at the time but also the historical context: the AIDS crisis, Gay Rights activism, the Catholic Church, and more.

The first two episodes (out now) set the stage with the case of Joe Rose, whose death motivated a movement, and the horrible police brutality in the 90s. “We had to revisit this event [Sex Garage] that was so shocking, so traumatic for the community [because] we use that to explain how the relationship with the police was so tense and how there was mistrust in the police… We’re going to be building on that for the next few episodes and [focusing] on the murders because that’s the core of this series. It’s about those 17 murders that happened between 1989 and 1993… The next episode is going to be about how they figured out that gay men were dying because it was not obvious that the men killed were gay.”

The Village: The Montreal Murders is a seven-part series that took Francis Plourde and his team eight months to make. The episodes clip together interviews from witnesses, activists, and prominent members of the LGBTQ+ community in and around the Montreal scene at that time, with Plourde’s narration providing context and audio to immerse you in the moments they describe. It’s an all-encompassing experience, a podcast your mind can’t wander away from.

Plourde noted the struggle in making this series wasn’t that people were unwilling to talk about that time but, “When it came time to revisit the 90s, that period for some people and those were the front of those battles, it became quite hard to revisit. There was like a willingness to share their experience, but in some cases, they had blank spots because it was so intense that they completely forgot about it.”

Also, when trying to fill in the gaps in his research and visiting a Montreal archive to retrieve court files for these murders, Plourde found all but one of the case files had been destroyed. Even Joe Rose’s court case, which ultimately became a significant cultural moment for the Montreal Queer community, was deleted. “It was a recurring problem not just for the case of Joe Rose, but for many of those cases… Most court files will be deleted after 30 years. They’ll keep a trace that there was a trial, and they’ll keep the judgment. But for the kind of work I’m doing, those boxes with evidence and transcripts are precious… We have to rely on newspapers, witnesses and all that. It’s complicated work, the work that we did.”

 

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The Village: The Montreal Murders is produced by Justin Ling, Carrie Haber (Ideas, The Current), and Michelle Gagnon (Ideas). Season one is nine episodes, and season two is five episodes; both entirely worth the retrospective listen. New episodes of season three are available to stream every Tuesday on CBC Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Also, be sure to check out Francis Plourde’s recommended palette cleanser for after the heaviness of The Montreal Murders: Welcome to Provincetown with new episodes available Wednesdays on Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also check out the french version of the podcast, Le Village : meurtres, combats, fierté.

Happy listening!

The post The Village: The Montreal Murders, An Immersive True Crime Podcast appeared first on Toronto Guardian.

Framing Agnes

(Virtual Screening noon May 26th)

Framing Agnes is a documentary discussing and investigating the lives and experiences of trans people. The name’s sake and re-enactments emerge from a case study of interviews with transitioning people in the late 1950s by Dr. Harold Garfinkel of UCLA. Agnes is the first sociological case study of a transitioning person. However, after Garfinkel died in 2011, two grad students categorizing his archives found not only Agnes’s original file but eight other interviewees as well.

Framing Agnes re-enacts these patients’ interviews while intermittently showing us the BTS of those shoots, the interpretation and experience of the actors, and scholar Julien Gill-Paterson’s takes on the historical context. Paterson’s interpretations of the history, transcripts and today’s culture provide the novice viewer with the information to properly comprehend the significance of these archives, of these people, of this history.

Chase Joynt is one of the grad students to find the forgotten archives of Dr Harold Garfinkel; he is also the director, co-writer, and interviewer in the documentary. The re-enactment of the transcripts is presented as a talk show with Joynt as the host – a play on the prevalent meaning talk shows have for the trans community and their progressive visibility in mainstream culture. Chase Joynt’s presence is prominent throughout the feature. His openness to the experiences of the trans actors portraying the archive interviewees creates a warm environment for them to be vulnerable.

The standout performances are from Zachary Drucker (Agnes) and Angelica Ross (Georgia). Zachary Drucker’s Agnes is the misunderstood trans icon; she is confident and sly – she only answers the questions she wants. Angelica Ross’s Georgia is similar, but she’s black whereas Agnes is white. Ross provides that confidence while also showing vulnerability in her movement and fidgeting – Georgia encompasses the intersectional history Garfinkel’s original publication lacked. Her existence and her archive contribute to a much larger context of the growing history of trans people.

Framing Agnes does a beautiful job bringing life to people we should have met long ago and teaches us a history often forgotten or ignored.

Pat Rocco Dared

(Virtual & In-Person Screenings June 4th)

Pat Rocco Dared is a documentary about the late queer activist photographer and filmmaker Pat Rocco of the late 1960s and 70s. Filmmaker Charlie David guides us through our growing understanding of this influential man and takes us through the various influential films that helped push boundaries and change laws for LGBTQ+ people.

The documentary features interviews with Pat Rocco, his original footage and photographs, people he knew and worked with, Toronto’s own trans activist Syrus Marcus Ware, and historian Whitney Strub.

Despite all of Pat Rocco’s accomplishments and recognitions, pop culture often overlooks his influence as a gay nude erotica filmmaker, the first to put gay erotica in cinemas across the United States. He’s known for his romanticism, sentimentalism, and long, lingering passionate kisses.

Pat Rocco was the first President of Pride. He filmed the first Pride parade; he was instrumental in the sculpting of how we understand the Pride Parade today. His activism was raw and unyielding – he filmed the truth and showed the beauty in it. Pat Rocco worked closely with Harvey Milk; the first only gay man elected to public office.

Pat Rocco’s body of nude films prevalently showed the joy and happiness of gay love, not Hollywood’s preferred tragic gay narrative. Pat Rocco’s work was provocative and pushed the boundaries so much so that he kept a lawyer on site.

Pat Rocco Dared shares the stories of Pat Rocco’s successes and intentions, his life and his work. Directors Bob Christie and Morris Chapdelaine carve an intricate picture of who Pat Rocco was with love and admiration for a man who inspired so many and brought joy to a community constantly fighting for their right to be happy and simply themselves.

The post 2022 Inside Out LGBTQ+ Film Festival | Documentaries appeared first on Toronto Guardian.

Describe your charity/non-profit in a few sentences.

Venus Fest is a Toronto-based music festival and mentorship series celebrating underrepresented identities in music. Founded in 2017, the festival has worked with hundreds of Canadian and international artists to support their development and celebrate creative expression and community building.

What problem does it aim to solve?

Venus Fest predominantly aims to create a platform and artistic development path for women and non-binary artists, in an industry where they have historically comprised less than 15% of festival lineups, with even more sparse representation on boards and organizing teams. In addition, the festival prioritizes intersecting identities that may include women and non-binary artists who have been marginalized based on their race, sexuality, physical ability, and more. Venus Fest strives to create equitable and safer music spaces where the celebration of artistic excellence and community are at the forefront, overcoming long-standing issues of access, representation, and safety.

When did you start/join it?

I founded Venus Fest in 2017, and we have since hosted an annual festival alongside a monthly show series (on pause since March 2020) and professional development activities.

What made you want to get involved?

As a musician myself, I have experienced firsthand some of the vast inequity and lack of safety within music spaces. I wanted to use the privilege and access that I do have to create something in service to other women and non-binary artists who were struggling to find their place and their people in a difficult industry. In addition, my work in the healing arts has supported Venus Fest proactively as I strive to work with our team and board to create trauma-informed, anti-oppressive frameworks that aim towards a healing curve for our staff, artists, and audience.

What was the situation like when you started?

There were a couple DIY events in Canada such as Slut Island and Femme Wave specifically geared towards women and non-binary artists, but to the best of our knowledge, there was only a handful of these across the whole country, and none currently running in Ontario. Coincidentally falling on the 20th anniversary of Lilith Fair, which was revolutionary in some ways but exclusionary in other ways, Venus Fest was an effort to revisit that need, which continues to exist.

How has it changed since?

The resurgence of the #metoo movement came merely days after the first Venus Fest, in the fall of 2017. While the movement itself had started much earlier with activist Tarana Burke, this more public-facing conversation brought many people (especially cis-gendered men) into contact with realities that they rarely thought about. At the same time, initiatives like the Keychange Project in the UK were emerging, calling music festivals to commit to long-term plans around gender equity and representation. I believe that as with any movement, many people felt inspired to a similar call at the same time, and some progress has been made in certain areas of the world. Within Canada, I have seen organizations starting to consider equity where they may never have thought about it before and more open conversations around the imperative of it. At the DIY level, smaller initiatives continue to integrate these practices with more ease.

What more needs to be done?

While there has been some headway made, we are far from a place where equitable, safe, and connected music spaces are normalized. Much work needs to be done in equitably hiring and developing new leadership within music, especially on boards and directorial roles. Gross inequities still exist with gender and race-based wage gaps and unlearning the internalized biases that may lead festivals to create these issues in the first place. Lastly, while some organizations have begun to include more women and non-binary artists in their lineups, there is often a tokenizing quality that allows the organizations to create a facade of equity and continue to receive funding, while not addressing the deeper issues of power and internalized bias. I believe that some level of inner work is helpful for us all, in order to understand our blind spots and how we can move forward differently.

How can our readers help?

Support events that celebrate women and non-binary people on all levels – especially on the board and behind the scenes. Donate when you can to the organizations and people who are already doing this work. Continue your own inner work of examining your biases and working to unravel them.

Do you have any events coming up?

The fifth year of Venus Fest, with a virtual presentation of music and art collaborative videos, happened on October 22-23rd, and an in-person gallery exhibit screening the videos and with a full art installation was on October 15-30.

Where can we follow you?

Website | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter

PAY IT FORWARD: What is an awesome local charity that you love?

Anduhyaun center for Indigenous women and children

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