30 YEARS OF DIVERSITY
Image + Nation milestone
AT A GLANCE
The 30th Image + Nation film festival takes place Thursday to Sunday, Dec. 3. For tickets and more information, visit image-nation.org.
Pride comes with the territory as Montreal’s Image + Nation film festival marks 30 years of bringing LGBTQ stories to the big screen, Thursday through Dec. 3.
“These things make you sit down and reflect,” Image + Nation executive director Charlie Boudreau said over coffee with programming director Katharine Setzer.
“It made us come up with this,” she continued, pointing to the festival program.
“You need a round number to say these things. I’m a pop culture fiend. I’ve been observing queer representation in television and movies (for years). TV moves faster in terms of characters and how we’re represented, but lesbians are still getting the bad jokes because gay writers can’t deal.
“Films are way harder to make, so there are more constraints. When you see this kind of more true, honest representation of diversity — we’re flawed like everyone else, we’re great like everyone else, we cry and do all kinds of stuff like everyone else, and there’s a lot more of that in (this year’s Image + Nation lineup). To me, that’s a beautiful sign of maturation and moving forward.”
“It also certainly signals that queer cinema is alive and well,” Setzer said, “and vibrant. This festival can only exist if a vibrant queer cinema exists. There are still stories to be told, and there are still audiences hungry to see those images.”
Standing tall as Canada’s longest-running LGBTQ film festival, this year Image + Nation presents more than 120 features, documentaries, shorts and a handful of queer favourites from years past at venues including the Imperial Theatre, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Concordia’s J.A. de Sève Cinema, the Phi Centre and the Cinémathèque québécoise.
It’s not about quantity, they insist, but quality.
“We’re looking for originality,” Boudreau said, “in terms of creativity but also production technique. It has to be something we haven’t seen before, or a story we haven’t heard. If it’s a story we have heard, what’s the spin?”
Looking for the inside scoop, the Montreal Gazette asked Boudreau and Setzer for 10 must-see films at the 30th Image + Nation festival. Here they are.
1 Call Me by Your Name
(opening film, Thursday at 8 p.m., Imperial Theatre). “That Armie Hammer,” Setzer said, referring to the star of this James Ivory-penned coming-of-age love story, which premièred at Sundance.
“Isn’t he in town shooting?” Boudreau asked, before beginning to scheme a way to get Hammer to show up at the screening. Stay tuned.
2 A Date for Mad Mary
(Friday at 9 p.m., Concordia’s J.A. de Sève Cinema). “An Irish film about a woman who gets out of jail, returns to her familiar surroundings and realizes people have moved on and she’s still the same person,” Boudreau said. “Beautiful, wonderfully written.”
3 Chavela
(Sunday at 7:30 p.m., J.A. de Sève Cinema). “A documentary on the (Costa Rican-)Mexican singer,” Setzer said. “She disrupted gender norms by performing in a poncho and breaking the malefemale divide, singing songs sung by male mariachi singers. She had this torrid affair with Frida Kahlo, and broke many hearts. She had this rough-and-tumble life and in her later years, with the help of Pedro Almodóvar, had a resurgence.”
4 Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami
(Wednesday, Nov. 29 at 7 p.m., Imperial Theatre). “Grace Jones doesn’t need much introduction,” Setzer said, regarding British director Sophie Fiennes’ documentary on the 69-year-old singer.
“Grace Jones represents queer in so many ways,” Boudreau said. “She’s gender fluid, sexually free and a bit of an ‘I’m here, deal with it’ person.”
5 Tom of Finland
(Friday, Dec. 1 at 9:30 p.m., Imperial Theatre). “Tom also doesn’t need an introduction,” Setzer said. “This biopic was Finland’s entry to the Oscars (in the category of best foreignlanguage film). He began doing illustrations of the gay leather underground scene (in the 1950s), with a kind of exaggerated feel to them. Then he moved to the U.S. and became a gay phenomenon.”
6 Extra-Terrestrials
(Friday, Dec. 1 at 9:15 p.m., J.A. de Sève Cinema). “This is a Puerto Rican co-production with Venezuela,” Boudreau said. “A light film that takes place in Tenerife, one of the Canary Islands, and Puerto Rico.”
Setzer: “A nice lesbian love story.”
“Fun and quirky,” Boudreau added, “and beautifully shot.”
7 Maurice
(Saturday, Dec. 2 at 4 p.m., Cinémathèque québécoise). “Part of our 30-year celebrations,” Boudreau said. “A Merchant Ivory film (from 1987) which has a pre-fame Hugh Grant in it. It’s called a gay classic, and it’s been digitally restored, so it will be extra spectacular.”
8 Hello Again
(Saturday, Dec. 2 at 7 p.m., Imperial Theatre). “A really interesting musical that’s not super gay,” Boudreau said. “It’s about love, emotion and sexuality over time.”
“It’s a film based on a Broadway musical,” Setzer said. “It stars Martha Plimpton, Audra McDonald, T.R. Knight.”
“And Rumer Willis, who can really sing!” Boudreau said.
9 Behind the Curtain: Todrick Hall
(Sunday, Dec. 3 at 2:45 p.m., J.A. de Sève Cinema). “A documentary on the YouTube star, who was a semifinalist on American Idol and was also in RuPaul’s Drag Race,” Setzer said. “This film follows his YouTube fame and decision to make an album and tour. It speaks about his family and upbringing, how he grew up in small-town U.S. as a young gay black man. Ultimately, it’s a message for young LGBTQ people … about self-acceptance, pride and courage.”
10 God’s Own Country
(closing film, Sunday, Dec. 3 at 8 p.m., Imperial Theatre). “The tagline is that it’s the British Brokeback Mountain,” Setzer said. “It’s being hailed as the new gay classic. Subtle and incredibly powerful. It’s got this raw, visceral sense to it, ranging from harshness to real warmth and love. Wonderful.”