Putting the LGBT into VLAFF

> BY CRAIG TAKEUCHI

The Gas Trap from page 27

this enormous space where we can dump whatever and it sort of goes away, and the reality is that it’s a bounded space. Whatever carbon and other junk we put up there stays within our atmosphere.”

This will be the first performance of The Gas Trap in Canada, but Metz thinks the message is especially relevant to Canadian audiences, as it asks people to consider what role they might play in changing the market’s demand for gasoline.

“That’s a key, absolutely central part of environmental preservation, because once the oil companies start to see a trend in terms of declining revenue, a lot of these projects like the tarsands and et cetera become not profitable,” Metz says.

The Gas Trap was designed to be visually striking and interactive. Metz and the designers chose a warped, nonspherical shape to give the bubble structure an interesting look, and to offer the characters some hope of potential escape routes. Audience interaction is anticipated, and interested folks can come inside to explore the set after the performance.

This isn’t the first public-art piece Coltura has undertaken. Back in Seattle, the company is working on installing a sculpture made of gasoline-related found objects, and an antigasoline mural in the city’s Georgetown neighbourhood. It recently put on a concert where everyone arrived without using gasoline.

Metz and his team use public art as a means of environmental activism because of how it can tell the story of climate change as something affecting, imminent, and personal.

“When you see people sort of asphyxiating and they’re in this trap, you have this realization, like, ‘Oh, I wouldn’t want to be in that trap, hooked up to a car!’ But then if you have a car, where does the exhaust go?” Metz says. “It starts to raise these issues in a way that the bureaucrats, the economists, and the activists or whatever aren’t really able to do.”

At various performances, Metz has had people talk to him about their intent to get rid of their cars, or to go electric.

“It starts to prompt—i’m not sure I’d say it was exactly guilt, but just this desire to get away from gasoline,” he says. “People kind of know at some level that it’s a dirty, messy thing that’s bad for the environment, but there’s almost no one pushing them or prompting them to really reexamine that.

“What we’re trying to do,” Metz adds, “is really start to spur the public and say, ‘There actually is something coming out of your exhaust. You need to consider it; you need to stop doing it.’ ”

As in previous editions, the Vancouver Latin American Film Festival is showing its support of LGBT issues and people with a variety of selections.

On Thursday (August 31), the 1993 feature Strawberry and Chocolate (Fresa y Chocolate) will be back on the big screen at the Cinematheque. The dramedy-romance, set in Havana, Cuba, in 1979, follows the unlikely friendship between two very different men: an exuberant gay artist, Diego, tries to seduce David, a straight and reserved communist, who in turn seeks to befriend Diego to monitor him.

The themes of that film are echoed in Cuba’s controversial drama Santa and Andrés, which will close the festival on Sunday (September 3) at the Goldcorp Centre for the Arts at SFU Woodward’s. It’s set in the early 1980s, and the title refers to the unexpected relationship that develops between a revolutionary woman from the countryside, Santa, and the man she’s sent to guard: a gay writer, Andrés, under house arrest for his ideas and sexuality.

Elsewhere in the program, Indigenous LGBT people are also represented. On Thursday (August 31) at the Cinematheque, Time Was Endless (Antes o Tempo Não Acabava) follows a Tikuna man who leaves his Amazon forest community for life in the city of Manaus, where he struggles to come to terms with his two-spirit identity.

Meanwhile, the short film “Regalia: Pride in Two Spirits”, directed by Vancouver’s Jen Sungshine and David Ng of the local blog and video project Love Intersections, profiles Duane Stewart-grant, a First Nations man who discusses how reclaiming his language and culture is important to his queer identity. The film screens as part of the program Ritmos, Rhythms of Resilience on Saturday (September 2) at the Goldcorp Centre.

Also on Saturday, “Tailor”, directed by Calí dos Anjos, screens as part of Short Films in Competition: Program 2 at the Cinematheque. This Brazilian animated short explores the issues faced by transgender Bernardo, who embraces the roles of both mother and father.

For full details about these films and more on what else is screening at the festival, visit vlaff.org/.-

The Gas Trap Strawberry and Chocolate