Winnipeg’s Reel Pride Film Festival explores Queer experience with universal lessons
Posted September 27, 2023 4:29 pm.
Last Updated September 27, 2023 10:10 pm.
Sitting in the theatre at Reel Pride when he was still a teenager, Noam Gonick was moved by what he saw on the screen.
That first Reel Pride Film Festival experience as an audience member – at 17 years old – developed into a career making movies of his own.
“I can just remember thinking that maybe Queer cinema was something that I wanted to get into,” Gonick said. “From there, I went onto film school and became a filmmaker.”
Wednesday evening, Gonick is presenting a short film – “Purple City” – he co-wrote and co-directed alongside his partner Michael Walker.
“Images are important, and representation,” Gonick said. “There’s this phrase, ‘document or perish.’ You have to record the world around you. Your lives, the objects, the artworks around you, just to make sense of it but also to put it out there and define it. That works when you’re talking about people and their sexuality and their freedom, or whether you’re talking about art.”
“I am an artist and photographer, so to be able to translate that into film has been very wonderful,” added Walker. “I could not have asked for a better film partner, a co-director. It felt very natural doing films.”
“Purple City” explores the mythologies and the symbolism of the Manitoba legislature and the Golden Boy, the statue perched on the dome of the building. The story is told by queer artists living in an apartment building across the street.
Still from the film “Purple City.” (Courtesy: Purple City/Michael Walker and Noam Gonick)
“I’m really proud of the way that we got into so much of the lore of the Golden Boy, so much of the mythology surrounding him,” said Gonick, who mostly makes dramas and documentaries. “The more we researched and the more we scratched, the more unusual he was. For instance, very few people realize that the Golden Boy is a personification of Hermes, the Greek god Hermes.
“It’s so incredible to think that the people of Winnipeg have Hermes as their patron art piece.”
The “building across the street” from the legislative building is the real-life apartment shared by Gonick and Walker, making the movie a personal one for both filmmakers.
“(It’s) about this apartment building – the lives of the artists and everyone else who lives in this building,” said Walker.
“I hope (audiences) learn a little bit more about the Golden Boy himself and the journey from France to Winnipeg, and I hope they just have fun with it.”
Winnipeg’s Reel Pride Film Festival is the longest-running Gay and Lesbian film festival in Canada.
Reel Pride Film Festival marketing director Greg Klassen, Sept. 27, 2023. (Joanne Roberts, CityNews)
Marketing director Greg Klassen says the community has grown so much since its first festival in 1985.
“Back then, there was very few other opportunities to see international films, particularly about the Queer experience,” said Klassen. “And now, it’s different. Now we can watch them on Netflix and stuff. But it’s still fun to see these kinds of films that are just coming out, and that give us a contemporary view of what it’s like to be Queer around the world.”
Like the festival itself, Klassen says the storytelling has changed for the better in the last nearly four decades.
“I think Queer stories have evolved over time,” he said. “We used to be always the comic relief, or our lives would end tragically. Now, they’re still all of those things but I think that we’re telling our own stories and that we are the centre of our stories now, and so it’s fun to see how Queer stories have evolved over time.”
Still from the film “Purple City.” (Courtesy: Purple City/Michael Walker and Noam Gonick)
The timing of the Reel Pride festival is not lost on those involved, coming on the heels of Canada-wide protests that several have described as anti-2SLGBTQ+.
Walker says it’s important, especially today, to have a safe space to go for members of the community.
“With the political climate, I think people feel like their voices are being suppressed,” said Walker, who’s also a photographer. “So when we have events like this, it creates a safe space for people to attend and to know that they are welcome and that their voices should be heard. Having that platform makes me feel safe.”
Klassen, who has been attending the different iterations of the festival since 1987, agrees it’s not an easy time to be a Queer person.
“We’re struggling,” he said. “I think we see things that we thought we already resolved are coming back again. Going to a safe space at a film festival where you can see your lives represented, I think is an incredibly important thing.”
Klassen hopes people realize the stories told by Reel Pride’s filmmakers are not only Queer, but also universal.
The film festival continues until Saturday.
