LUCIDMEDIA

The Inside Out Festival

Written by Catherine Kustanczy Wednesday, 14 May 2008 05:06

Like A Virgin

Newscastle, the Centrepiece Gala (May 20th, Isabel Bader Theatre), is written and directed by Australian Dan Castle, and revolves around a trio of brothers confronting their own identities amidst the world of competitive surfing.

Similiar to Like a Virgin, and Lucia Puenzo's XXY, which closes the festival (on May 25th), Newcastle is a film that takes the theme of gay youth to heart, without the pandering, bland or stereotypical attitudes associated with coming-of-age tales.

"Part of our strategic plan is to outreach to youth, for obvious reasons," explains St. Laurent, "We need to cultivate a young audience to get into the fever of Inside Out -but this year we really took the strategic plan to heart."

All three of Inside Out's major galas feature youth as their primary subject matter, and feature teens in leading roles.  Furthering the youth-oriented approach is the all-ages icon that appears throughout this year's official program guide.

"We've done a major push to get these works," says St. Laurent, "to get the go-ahead from the Ontario Film Review Board. It’s about opening up screens to younger audiences."

Aside from the youth and family-friendly inclusions, the decision to feature Australia as the focus country this year might raise a few eyebrows. 

Films from Down Under aren't necessarily perceived as being particularly 'cultural' or daring in terms of busting stereotypes, but St. Laurent points out that that "there is an openness in Australia on behalf of the funders and the film council, to support that kind of vision."

"It's also a very unique cinematic vision coming out of Australia. There's often kooky works you can't imagine any other country producing", citing the punchily-titled short film Front Bum Dancing as an example.

Ask St. Laurent about the daunting process of deciding on a feature country, and he'll readily admit that "it was a bit scary to go back to a one-country focus. We've typically, over the past few years, concentrated on one area, (like) East Asia, or Latin America the year before."

It was the screening of Newcastle at this past February's Berlin International Film Festival that, as he puts it, "anchored our entire focus" for deciding on a feature country.

As well as the Canadian premiere of the hit comedy Razzle Dazzle, the Gala screening of Newcastle, four Aussie films and several shorts, there will be screenings of the 1994 film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, a film that St. Laurent admits "is sort of the cliche, but it’s the film that is not without its influence. You talk to many people and they'll tell you Priscilla is one of their favourites of all time."

Newscastle

Besides fictional narratives, there are meaty real-life flicks to be found at this year's Inside Out Festival too.

The Icon Documentary Series, a new addition to this year's festival, was launched, at least in part, because of the large number of submissions to the festival.

"For one thing, this year we received many submissions that were focusing on specialized subjects -ones that have public profiles -and so we saw a bit of a trend there," he explains before correcting himself. "Well, not a trend, a coincidence. We received all these works at once."

That experience, along with seeing Patti Smith: Dream of Life and Derek (about the life of filmmaker Derek Jarman), confirmed St. Laurent's sense of having enough material "to have a really solid series."

Derek

Presented in association with the Hot Docs Documentary Film Festival (which wrapped up at the end of April), the Icon series will screen six films, including works covering the lives of artist Robert Mapplethorpe and the Canadian art trio General Idea, as well as the Smith and Jarman features. 

Complimenting Inside Out screenings are exciting events that allow for a greater interaction between the public and the film world. Queer Here! Queer Now! Symposium is a joint venture between the festival and the University of Toronto's Mark S. Bonham for Sexual Diversity Studies.  Its aim is to bring together a myriad of academics, artists and activists to explore various aspects of queer visual culture.  The symposium will feature filmmakers Tom Kalin and Abigail Child, trans academic Bobby Noble, and video artist Doug Ischar, among many others.

The Queer Here! Queer Now! Symposium isn't the only place to find the work of video artists, however. The Church Street strip will be playing host to Video Village, an outdoor exhibition featuring the work of video artist Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay.

"We normally have some kind of Canadian artist spotlight at the festival, traditionally a screening of someone's work, " explains St. Laurent about his decision to expand the festival's boundaries, "but we thought we'd do something more unusual and try to reach a broader audience."

St. Laurent expands on the significance of an event like Video Village to the festival, and indeed, to Toronto's gay community as a whole.

"The idea (of) installing works through the gay village might be a way for not only the festival to announce its presence –a clever way to insert ourselves into the most important neighbourhood as far as queer outreach is concerned - but also bring people into contact with contemporary art which they might not otherwise seek out.  Benny's work sits just as comfortably in the best of museums as it does in more popular contexts. His work is really an investigation of popular culture, his own notions of masculinity, so (it) fits quite well in that kind of context."

The Inside Out Festival continues extending their connections with developing filmmakers via the Youth Digital Video Project, which celebrates its tenth anniversary this year.

The video project is an opportunity for young members of Toronto's gay community to write, direct and produce their own shorts.  Over a period of four months, first-time video artists under the age of 25 are taught by professionals. To date, 70 youths have had the opportunity to produce debut works through the Youth Digital Video Project.  This year, the results of the participants' labour are set to be screened at the Isabel Bader Theatre on May 24th, along with five other shorts that have gone on to international acclaim. 

"There's always new issues that queer youth are addressing," says St. Laurent, "To give you an example, one of the youth in this year's program is facing deportation, so that brings in the issue of not only immigration into this program, but also brings to the forefront the need for Canada to accept people on the basis of humanitarian grounds. That means, people return to countries where they may face homophobic violence. In a city as multicultural as Toronto is, this issue of homosexuality within a cultural context is something we see a lot of."

The coming-out story is, says the programmer, "something that some members of the gay community may find tedious, but I think they need to understand the broader context, that people come from different family situations and cultural contexts where the coming-out story can be more than just relevant -even within Toronto. If someone's growing up in a Muslim household, the ease for them to come out is not there."

And yet, despite the urgency of the issues, as well as the overall homogenizing of much gay culture, the cash-grabbing world of cinema still is at odds with producing mainstream films with gay themes and storylines.

"Producers still have a difficult time imagining the success of films that are queer-oriented, because people want to invest in films that have the broadest possible appeal, and there are still some who fear that (theme)."

Citing the 2005 breakthrough film Brokeback Mountain as "a sort of banal example", he says such films are still important, because they "can transcend and affect broader audiences."

"At the same time," he notes, "an area like east Asian has a burgeoning queer video scene –it’s amazing, especially in South Korea. We're opening with Like A Virgin, a big budget film, which you'd never see in North America, that type of investment in a film like that.

"On one hand, East Asia isn't the most accommodating to queer culture, but the flip side is, there are producers and investors there willing to risk everything to make these queer stories heard, so I don't know what's in the water... something very interesting!"

If age is anything to go by, Inside Out, at age 18, is officially grown up, and ready to take on the world.  The world, or Toronto it seems, is ready to sit up and take notice.

For more information about the Inside Out Gay and Lesbian Film and Video Festival, including films, schedule, and events, go to www.insideout.on.ca.