LGTBQIA+ Rights Reel Camp for Girls July 19-24, 2021
filmmaking mentors
writer
facilitators
social worker
day-by-day
Thanking the journeys we took and continue to take - LGTBQIA+ day 1
We decided to start off a little differently for day one. A few minutes after 1:00, we all gathered into a circle and gave thanks to the experiences, places, cultures, families, and ancestors that brought us not just to the space but to who we are today as individuals. We thanked the journeys we took and continue to take. And we acknowledged the intertwined histories that enabled us to be here. For the LGBTQ+ camp, this felt like the perfect way to start; thinking about the fraught histories and forgotten peoples and voices that have paved the way for so many queer and trans people today to be who they are or at least explore what that means. It is important we acknowledge and show gratitude to everyone who has brought us here and allowed this type of a camp to take place, both our blood ancestors and our community ancestors. Known and unknown. It all transpired into us sharing this space with each other for the next week.
After our intro hui and the sharing of community agreements from each team, we launched into a short intro of gender and orientation terms. The participants played a game to match definition to term and people were able to match things up without much difficulty. While these terms are the ones most used and the ones people are most familiar with, film mentor Inez was sure to remind everyone that the terms presented aren’t an exhaustive list and that sexuality and gender are much more expansive than a slideshow could capture. Taking into account the branches that stem from each term as well as different genders and sexualities that exist outside of the colonial language and mindset, there is so much more to these experiences than we can possibly explain within a day. But this is an excellent launching pad for people who want to know more and it helps give people a start. The rest of the day saw participants learning camera hands on with the mentors. Some have been in the previous programs. Others are completely new to filmmaking as a medium. It is practice for some and a whole new world for others. We are excited to see where this week takes everyone.
We were always here - day 2 at the LGTBQIA+ camp
Day two saw us opening once more with a gratitude hui. Bringing love and thanks to our ancestors, chosen and blood families, our experiences, and the people whose land we stand on, Kānaka Maoli. After our opening, we launched into a presentation on settler colonialism and the ways in which the presence of colonizers and their ideals continues to influence the ways in which the Eurowestern world defines gender and sexual orientation. When I learned about colonialism and LGBTQI+ identities in college, I remember it being mostly separated. It was rare for professors or instructors I had to make the connection between colonialism and non-cis-gendered/heterosexual sexualities and genders.
When it comes to Indigenous communities specifically, most things would circle back to the man and woman and the need to keep our respective nations going strong through continued procreation and the building up of blood families. There were few instances where I would hear things outside of the binary and it was not until graduate school that I truly learned about my own culture’s ways of viewing sexuality and gender. Settler colonialism impacted the ways in which cis-gendered-heterosexual men and women interact, yes; but it also wreaked such destruction on people outside of the gender binary and heterosexuality that we have to dig for our lives to find any evidence that we existed at all before colonization arrived. I am glad the participants were able to learn about settler colonialism and the impact on LGBTQI+ identities as a single, related subject. We were always here. We are integral players in our cultures and members of our communities. We will continue to be here. Even if colonialism wants to convince everyone that we aren’t real.
After this presentation, the rest of the day was spent going through camera again. In between small breaks, participants started capturing some film and audio for the first time. Three teams have been pretty firmly established. A few film ideas and genres are being thrown out as potentials, one being a genre hybrid of sorts. Today was heavy and filled with a lot to think about. I’m sure the participants are going to make something splendid out of it.
Day 3
There are only two teams now, with one team having joined another and creating a super team. The teams are Dead Bunny Studios with Inez and Jessie as the mentors and Jupiters’ Moons with Noa as the mentor. I have to say out of all the names I’ve heard these two are definitely my favorites.
I’ve found that day three is when the sessions start to quiet a bit. We start off loud after Vera has gone over the agenda and the teams go off to practice filming but once the story portion of the day comes around again, things begin to come down. Energy starts to focus a bit more as participants hone in on all the elements necessary in a story and what they need to make it possible. Sitting in the back watching the weather outside tantrum between windy drizzle and scorching Fire Time, I listen as the room grows steadily into a brainstorming session. Everyone huddled around tables with their mentors. Throwing ideas out, typing out words and descriptions, and sketching images and shots out on paper. They’ve had the hands-on practice needed in the first two days of the camp. Learned the technical jargon for each stage. Vera has defined the roles that make up a production team as well as had each team practice with the slate and verbally calling a shot. Editing is a continuous process. Everything leads to this moment. To the story writing. The world-building. The full on creative process needed to make films come to life.
How lucky I am to witness this. To be in a room with all of these kaihanga kiriata. How fortunate we are to know stories keep being written; that we are in good hands.
Day 4
Day four saw everyone deep in the mahi. Even as I strolled into the space about a half-hour before starting, one team was already gathered together. We opened once more with a gratitude hui before the teams went off to make their films. One team still had some last bits of storyboarding to work out before heading outside to film. Looking out from my desk, I saw Jupiters’ Moons lined up in a perfect row on the grass as they checked out the setting they had chosen to film in. With their rainbow pride flag trailing behind them, it legitimately looked a lot like some superhero team ready to rush in and take care of business. I don’t really gravitate towards superhero movies but I would definitely watch this one if it were a thing.
In between shots, participants would come in to check their storyboards laid out on the table, get snacks, upload footage, and add to the Spotify queue. Those of us who aren’t mentors or the documentarian watch the day unfold around us as the participants flow in and out of the space. Have our own snacks and whatever burnt bean coffee drink we brought with us today. One more full day of shooting ahead. Getting as much footage in as possible before the showcase on Saturday. Everything is moving along just as it should.
Day 5
I walk into the space on day five to find the few people already there setting things up and preparing what’s needed for the shoot. Dedication. Having everything in place. Commitment to ensuring films come out as close to what was planned as possible. Slowly the participants and mentors trickle in. Some unpack gear and cameras while other folks go off to change back into their outfits for the movies. One team has secured the office in the assembly room for their film today, managing to fashion a sort of closet situation in amongst the books, surveillance screens, and dim lighting. The other team starts off in the teacher’s lounge before continuing to shoot outside and deal with the ever-changing weather that has since become the norm here on Oʻahu.
The rest of us stay behind in the assembly room. Listen and watch as once more the space goes from full, painted canvas to blank and ready. The showcase is just around the corner. The canvas will be full and bright again. Bursting with everything they’ve made this week.
Day 6
The last day for the first of its kind. HWF’s first LGBTQ+ Reel Camp for Girls ever and we’re already at showcase day. Almost a full week of conversations and presentations focusing on a topic that many of us know and care about but perhaps aren’t aware of how interconnected it is with literally every other pressing issue in the world. Queerness. Trans rights. Sexuality and gender identity. LGBTQ+. What many people see as an issue separate from the larger fold when in reality many of our causes tie back into it. Environmental, reproductive, racial, and gender rights all find their way back to us too. We too are subjected to the crime that is systemic oppression. We also feel the sting of being a part of one oppressed group while also occupying various others. Queer and trans people live, breathe, and walk through this world. Since time immemorial. We have always been here. Our stories have been clawed at and pushed into the deepest pits. Colonization and Eurowestern falsities have convinced many of our communities that we are a recent, invented sum of things. Have tried time and again to sell us on the lie that we do not have ancestors, lineages, and histories through which we can trace our queerness. Our fluidities. The ways in which we bleed out of the imposed gender and sexuality binaries of the West. Yet we continue to emerge. Find ways to keep moving. Keep speaking. Keep telling.
And so naturally we find ourselves at a reel camp. In a space where these stories are allowed to come to life in their fullest, most authentic form. Where young people are encouraged to take it there, wherever ‘there’ may be. Where we shun the so-called traditional and the comfortable in favor of what is real and what actually exists in the world. The past week saw participants throwing out the conventional plot lines and stereotypes we’ve been fed about gender, sexuality, and what is expected as a gendered human within the colonizing body politic we are up against. We remembered the harm that binaries and rigidity inflicts on our bodies, our peoples, our cultures, and our minds and stomped it out. We brought our ancestors into the space to help us remember the beautiful, decolonial expanse that lives in all of us and left the heteropatriarchal twistings of “love” and “living” in the trash where they belong. I heard laughter ricochet off the walls of the assembly hall. I watched participants shroud themselves in pride flags on the sunlit lawn. I watched young people write, film, act, and edit against the colonial imaginary. I heard the stories that deserve to be told.
Stories like Opposites Attract from Dead Bunny Studios, a short film about two close friends who happen to like each other but don’t know how to tell each other. The two are shown hanging out and throughout the film, we can see that they ~clearly~ like each other. One of them eventually confesses her crush and they have a sweet moment where the two kiss and everyone in the room screams at how cute it is. This is familiar. The sweetness, yes, but also the apprehension that comes with crushes that aren’t cishet. The fear and the not-so-sure that lives within knowing queer crushes are hard to read because we have always been fed the supposed cut and dry boy-meets-girl narrative. The reality of being young and experiencing all of this for the first time in a world that is more conscious of LGBTQ+ identities but not necessarily more accepting. There are also stories like Jupiter’s Moons’ Closet which centers on a young queer girl, Elara, who is coming to terms with herself as a queer person before she decides to come out of the closet. A poem relating to the experience of being young and queer is being read in the background as we watch shots of Alaura finding different ways to hide, one of them being in a literal closet. Once again, a feeling many of us in the audience can find ourselves relating to. When pākehā cultures and mentality crashed onto our respective kāinga and seeped into our communities, they pushed our ways of living, loving, and expression into the background. Then into the corner. Then into the unproductive darkness. Naturally, as this colonial, capitalistic, machine-like system stays in place, many of us who are a part of the LGBTQ+ community are still in hiding. We are still not safe enough to come out and be our fullest selves in every sense of the word. While the world is changing and becoming a place where more LGBTQ+ folks are coming out and living openly as trans, queer, gay, lesbian, etc., we still have such a long way to go. Still so much to consider. Still, so much more work to do.
As much as the films show the problems that come with being a young, queer person, it is also important to highlight the joy. First off, I feel it is important to state that this is written from the perspective of a takatāpui Māori or, in English terms, a trans and queer Indigenous person. I am writing largely from this place and holding other LGBTQ+ Indigenous folks, as well as Black, Brown, and other folks of color, in mind as I write this as we have suffered extraordinarily from the homophobia/transphobia that is Everyday Life in a Colonized World. It has traveled from our ancestors to us and we are doing our best to re-wire with every generation. Alongside the very real struggles of self and society-closeting and feeling attraction to someone in a way that falls outside of the cishet binary narrative, these films also show us the re-wiring taking place. The re-wiring that we are doing. Not only is giving a voice and shape to these issues through film a part of it but so is the joy of what takes place in the films when we are not thinking of the hard parts. The pure excitement of a crush. Finally telling someone you like them and they end up feeling the exact same way. Kissing your crush in front of the world and all the gods. Crouching down in the closet but finding ways to express yourself while within it. Finding time to learn more about who you are and navigating your way through what it means to be LGBTQ+. That when we find the courage and the people, we can one day learn to be out in the world in every shade of real that exists. The way the binary shatters into a million pieces once we see just how vast and unique our love, bodies, and ways of living can actually be. The way our ancestors were. The way we deserve to be.
Both films are showing us that we still have the capacity for sweetness, goodness, joy, and butterflies. That not every action or thought related to our struggles and fight has to feel like trudging through the mud; that we are allowed to also include laughter, color, singing, and dancing our way through the work. These are also radical actions. This is also re-wiring. That nothing will stop us from having moments of beauty and happiness alongside the hardest parts. This is telling those who would rather us be quiet, in the un-productive dark, and non-existent that we will not stop moving. Shaping. Building. Smiling. We will continue to be here, shrouded in Uenuku and glory.
*note: Uenuku: god of rainbows in Te Ao Māori
The LGTBQIA+ Rights Reel Camp for Girls organized by Hawai‘i Women in Filmmaking and made possible thanks to the generous support of the National Endowment for the Arts, the NoVo Foundation and the Gerbode Family Foundation.