It was my first Vancouver Pride event: Sunset Beach on July 31. The sun beat down hard above the event space — a fluorescent petri dish of corporate tents with rainbows stapled on. The scents of sweat and weed mingled in the air. But none of it mattered, because my friends and I had found the tent for Vancouver Queer Film Festival (VQFF), which felt like a safe haven for genuine, not-purely-profit-motivated representation.
Flipping through the programme and chatting with one of the representatives, a short film collection called Keep in Touch caught my eye. The throughline of the collection was “masculine connections, from brief hookups to uncomfortable encounters with other men’s insecurities.”
The representative said the shorts were mainly about people wrestling with masculinity, specifically “newcomers” to open gender-nonconformity. ”Newcomers” was a novel term for me which felt patronizing at first, as if it implied that people who struggle with their sexuality just don’t “get” it yet. However, persistent as hope, the word has slowly weaved its way through my relationship with queerness.
“Newcomers” is a word ripe with promise: a promise that one’s identity is not inextricably linked with hate, that discomfort is transient and things get better with time. We’re just new.
The first short film in the collection — Swedish director Jerry Carlsson’s Nattåget (The Night Train) —presents a connection between two men stripped back to its boldest simplicity, foregoing dialogue in favour of a flirtation that is almost purely visual.
Confident closeups meditate on the betraying power of the human face. Minute behaviours can tell us everything about a person. How do you hold yourself when you know someone’s looking at you? How long until you dare your eyes to meet theirs? Will you follow him into the cabin? Or will you make him follow you?
The audience become well-acquainted with the faces of the two central characters: Oskar’s rosy embarrassment and Ahmed’s aquiline strength. The camera frequently exists in the space directly in between them, caught in the crossfire.
The lack of dialogue leaves room for sharp sound design; from the sudden snap of Ahmed's inciting glance to the juiciness of the symbolic orange slice — it all serves to enhance the subdued drama of their seduction. The film leaves us wondering: why do we even bother using language to voice our attractions, when a look can say it all? Words almost feel crude in comparison, like trying to capture a Romance painting on an Etch-A-Sketch.
Next up, Christian Jacob Ramon’s Hard is a tender depiction of sexual frustration. In the apartment of a blossoming relationship, a recently-out man struggles to act on his feelings for a crush. The characters' progression from tension to acceptance is easy on the palate — and I think it’s valuable to depict such honesty — but the subject matter feels like a fragment of a longer and more interesting story. It reminded me of a gay Master of None episode, complete with self-aware millennials spelling out their emotions (the horror!). It’s enjoyable, but not particularly groundbreaking.
Thirdly, we have a slam-poetry music video for the queer proletariat… in case anyone was getting worried that they could recommend this event to their mom. In Lucie Rachel and Chrissie Hyde’s Factory Talk, images of clanging, mechanical labor are underscored by a young man’s poetic verses of inner turmoil. Day after day, the narrator twists metal with blunt instruments, and hides a sexuality that was tempered in an acid bath of self-hatred.
Queerness and class struggle are not commonly associated with each other, so a depiction of their intersection feels both fresh and important. After all, your sexuality follows you in all facets of your life, even when it would be easier to leave it behind.
Those were the standouts from the collection, but Adam Baran’s Trade Center, Thy Tran’sSUMMERWINTERSUMMER and Kai Tillman’s Hey Man are all worth a watch.
The VQFF reminded me of a fact that’s too easily forgotten in our age of seemingly endless top-shelf content: that making films is hard. Getting actors to behave convincingly while you point the all-seeing, all-knowing lens of a camera in their face is really hard. Anyone who has the bravery to do so deserves loads of credit, particularly when they are exploring such sensitive subject matter. Every artist who took risks in making this collection are heroes, full stop.
To all the newcomers out there: share your experiences. Make art. You’ll never know just how much it could help people like you.