June 17 marked the first OutFest, an LGBTQ+ film festival held as part of Pride Week.
The festival, meant as a fundraiser for the Rainbow Crosswalk slated to go in at the intersection of 5th Avenue and Broadway between the K2 Rotor Lodge and Kootenay Savings Credit Union, was very well attended.
Nakusp Secondary School’s Gay Straight Alliance, (GSA) and Options for Sexual Health (Opt) teamed up to bring four features, two of which had been produced by local filmmakers: Rhys McLeod and Morghana Tulak.
The event started with Two Spirits, an award winning feature that paints the life story of Fred Martinez, a youth from Cortez, Nevada against the larger narrative of the four genders recognized by North-American First Nations by focusing on some members of the Navajo Tribe.
The third gender, feminine men called Nadleehi in Navajo, are revered for their powers given by the Holy People. They were traditionally trusted with child-rearing and relationship counselling roles in their respective communities.
These groups, their revered status and traditional roles have been largely erased by Christian colonists.
Two Spirits shows it has become harder and harder for people with non-binary sexual preferences to integrate in the exclusively binary society the Western world has become under Christian stewardship. Martinez’ story does not have a happy ending.
The second feature was by Rhys McLeod who came out with a loving posse of family and friends.
His film, I Am Me, paints a picture of diversity, inclusion, and supportiveness, against the piano track from Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’ “Same Love.”
McLeod’s feature asserts that even in a small town like Nakusp, people share skills and talents, likes and fears, but also have their differences.
He certainly had quite the diverse cast to prove it, from fellow classmates, to teachers, the high school principal, former reporter Jillian Trainor, even one of the local ministers.
With Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau getting the government and the public eye out of the bedroom of Canadian citizens last century, McLeod’s feature is testimony to why in this new century it wouldn’t do to get back in there.
I Am Me shows that we all are who we are, on a continuum of skills and preferences, allied for each other in “compassion and empathy,” as Teresa Weatherhead from Opt said, who is trying to bring home the point that “diversity is all around us, not just something far away; it’s here, it’s there, it’s everywhere.”
The third feature was a short one by Grade 11 student Morghana Tulak that was originally a school assignment.
The night ended with a touching documentary entitled My Prairie Home,in which the main character, indie singer Rae Spoon, is making sense of their life through musical sequences interspersed with interviews and videotaped self-reflections.
Opt and the GSA hope to do another OutFest in the future.