Daily Archives: November 20, 2024

Image+Nation film fest: Iconic gay club was ‘the Studio 54 of the Prairies’

Breadcrumb Trail LinksEntertainmentArtsLocal ArtsMontreal movies”It’s remarkable that place even existed,” Image+Nation devotee Matthew Hays says of Edmonton’s Flashback, the subject of a documentary by his brother Peter on which Hays consulted.Published Nov 20, 2024  •  Last updated 1 hour ago  •  4 minute readMatthew Hays says “Alberta was the unofficial capital of homophobia in Canada” during the heyday of Edmonton’s Flashback club. Photo by Allen McInnis /Montreal GazettePostmedia may earn an affiliate commission from purchases made through our links on this page.Article contentMatthew Hays has attended Montreal’s LGBTQ2+ film festival Image+Nation more times than he can count as a journalist and audience member but never, until now, as a filmmaker. It’s a full-circle moment this year as the Marianopolis College film teacher and his brother Peter bring their documentary Flashback to the 37th edition of Image+Nation, which runs Nov. 20 to 30. Hays is quick to point out that he was a consultant on the film, which Peter directed. Advertisement 2Story continues belowThis advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLYThere with you then. Here with you now. As a critical part of the community for over 245 years,The Gazette continues to deliver trusted English-language news and coverage on issues that matter. Subscribe now to receive:Unlimited online access to our award-winning journalism including thought-provoking columns by Allison Hanes, Josh Freed and Bill Brownstein.Opportunity to engage with our commenting community and learn from fellow readers in a moderated forum.Unlimited online access to the Montreal Gazette and National Post, including the New York Times Crossword, and 14 more news sites with one accountSupport local journalists and the next generation of journalists.Montreal Gazette ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, where you can share and comment..SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLESThere with you then. Here with you now. As a critical part of the community for over 245 years,The Gazette continues to deliver trusted English-language news and coverage on issues that matter. Subscribe now to receive:Unlimited online access to our award-winning journalism including thought-provoking columns by Allison Hanes, Josh Freed and Bill Brownstein.Opportunity to engage with our commenting community and learn from fellow readers in a moderated forum.Unlimited online access to the Montreal Gazette and National Post, including the New York Times Crossword, and 14 more news sites with one accountSupport local journalists and the next generation of journalists.Montreal Gazette ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, where you can share and comment..REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLESThere with you then. Here with you now. As a critical part of the community for over 245 years,The Gazette continues to deliver trusted English-language news and coverage on issues that matter. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one account.Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments.Enjoy additional articles per month.Get email updates from your favourite authors.THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one accountShare your thoughts and join the conversation in the commentsEnjoy additional articles per monthGet email updates from your favourite authorsSign In or Create an AccountorArticle content“My brother is straight, but he’s not narrow,” Hays quipped. When Peter asked Matthew if he had any ideas for a documentary a few years back, he suggested Peter tell the story of what was once the coolest club in their old hometown, Edmonton’s Flashback, dubbed by one of the film’s interviewees as “the Studio 54 of the Prairies.” If it seems like a stretch to imagine New York’s iconic, gay-friendly disco mecca plunked in the middle of oil-digging Alberta, you’re starting to understand what an anomaly Flashback was in its heyday. There was simply nothing like it, in Edmonton, Canada or perhaps North America. Dance clubs have long been a joyous convergence point for the gay community, but while Montreal had an array of gay clubs and bars to choose from in the 1970s, Edmonton had next to nothing. “Flashback had to be an all-purpose rumpus room,” noted Hays, who remembers first attending the club with his best friend as a nervous, closeted 17-year-old high school student. “It had to be open to everybody. There were lesbians there, gay men there, bisexuals, straight people, the drag community and trans people — though that was not spoken of as an identity back then.” Advertisement 3Story continues belowThis advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.Article content Flashback is about Edmonton’s iconic gay nightclub of the same name. The film screens as part of the 37th Image+Nation festival. Photo: Image+NationHays tracked down and pre-interviewed former Flashback staff, patrons and owner John Reid, who all testify on camera to the club’s transformative role in their lives. He also travelled to Edmonton to help with the re-enactments in the film, shot at Edmonton’s Evolution Wonderlounge. “It was a surreal trip down various memory holes,” Hays said. “It reminded me of that time in my life, which was a very contradictory time. We were partying and having fun, but there was also a lot of anxiety about being gay, there was the AIDS crisis. We were seeing friends getting sick and dying.” Homophobia, AIDS and the legal repression of gay people are all broached in the film, filtered through the lens of the club where the community came together and found a sense of solidarity to help deal with these issues. Alberta’s first openly gay politician, Michael Phair, who is interviewed in the documentary, held gatherings on various issues at Flashback after being arrested in a 1981 police raid on the nearby Pisces Health Spa bathhouse. “Alberta was the unofficial capital of homophobia in Canada,” Hays explained. “Growing up there was not always easy. Then there was this club where we could go that was full of colour, zaniness and fun. It wasn’t utopia, it wasn’t perfect — it was a nightclub; there was judgment and clique-iness. It was like high school at times. But it’s remarkable that place even existed.” Advertisement 4Story continues belowThis advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.Article contentUltimately, Hays believes, Flashback — like gay clubs in Montreal and other cities around the world — played a key role in forging gay identity, and in creating a safe space where being gay could be more than a reason for shame or discrimination, or making one the target of physical violence. “It was a beacon of hope,” he said. “For the gay community, it provided a source of solace and strength. It was edifying for people to go somewhere where it was fine to be gay and it was fun to be gay. That in itself is radical when people are telling you you’re going to be miserable because you’re gay.”  Daniel Craig stars as a gay expat in Mexico City in the 1950s in Queer, the opening film of the 37th Image+Nation festival. Photo: Image+NationThe 37th edition of Image+Nation includes more than 150 films from 27 countries. Among the highlights is the opening film, Queer, an adaptation of the William S. Burroughs novel by Italian director Luca Guadagnino (Call Me by Your Name), starring Daniel Craig as a gay expat in Mexico City in the 1950s. Opening night is sold out, but the film screens again Sunday, Nov. 24 at 7:30 p.m. at Concordia University’s Sir George Williams Alumni Auditorium.  Sabbath Queen is a profile of gay Israeli-American rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie. Photo: Image+NationAlso of note is Sandi Dubowski’s Sabbath Queen. Produced by Darren Aronofsky, the decades-spanning documentary is a profile of gay Israeli-American rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie, who settled in New York in the 1990s. Screens Sunday, Nov. 24 at 1 p.m. at UQAM’s Salle de projection Jean-Claude Lauzon.   Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story looks at the life of the late trans soul singer. Photo: Image+NationAnd Canadian filmmakers Michael Mabbott and Lucah Rosenberg-Lee’s Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story looks at the life of the late Nashville-born trans soul singer (who lived briefly in Montreal, then Toronto, in the 1960s). The documentary, which was executive produced by Elliot Page, screens Friday, Nov. 29 at 5 p.m. at the NFB’s Alanis Obomsawin Theatre. AT A GLANCEThe Image+Nation film festival runs from Wednesday, Nov. 20 to Saturday, Nov. 30. Flashback screens Saturday, Nov. 23 at 3 p.m. at Concordia University’s Sir George Williams Alumni Auditorium. For tickets and more information, visit [email protected] from Editorial Remembrance Day: LGBTQ2+ veterans purged from military lay wreath at Montreal ceremony RIDM: Indigenous youth have ‘a lot to tell,’ says filmmaker O’Bomsawin Allison Hanes: Teaching LGBTQ2+ acceptance is inclusion, not ‘indoctrination’ Advertisement 5Story continues belowThis advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.Article contentArticle contentShare this article in your social networkComments Join the Conversation Featured Local Savings

What Were Your Favorite Movies, TV, Music and Books in 2024?

We want to know what stuck with you this year. What were the best things you watched, read and heard?Toward the end of every year, our critics share their thoughts on the best film, television, pop music, classical music, books, art, dance, theater, video games, comedy and so much more.They’ll be doing it again this year. But we also want to hear from you.What was the best TV show, or episode, you watched in 2024? The best movie? Your favorite book of the year? There are four areas of culture and arts that we want to hear from you about, all listed below. Please pick your one favorite in each category and focus on that, or else we’ll be overwhelmed!You can answer one or all of those questions. We plan to publish some of the responses, but we won’t publish any part of yours without following up with you, verifying your information and hearing back from you. And we won’t share your contact information outside the Times newsroom or use it for any reason other than to get in touch with you.

‘The Line’ tackles fraternity culture and hazing. The film has surprising ties to USC and Clemson.

GREENVILLE—Sitting in his basement apartment in New York City’s East Village, Zack Purdo would tell stories.He would talk about his life in Florida. About his life at the University of South Carolina. And about his life in a frat.He talked about the tucked in polo shirts, the friendship, the boar-hunting trip, the shaved head, the wall sits. The good, the bad and the ugly.And the hazing.His roommate, Ethan Berger, would listen. Somewhere in the haze of those stories told deep into the night, the aspiring filmmaker found a movie.A movie about a frat.More than a decade later, that movie came to life.”The Line,” released in 2023, explores the ritualistic and toxic world of fraternity life at a big Southern school. It interrogates how seemingly benign hazing practices can turn dangerous — quickly.

“Just because something’s a tradition doesn’t mean we shouldn’t examine it,” Berger said. “I feel like we just take tradition at face value when we need to figure out whether it serves us or not.”Viewers follow the bid process through the eyes of its main character Tom Backster (played by Alex Wolff), a working class kid climbing to the top of a wealthy and all-White fraternity. As Backster wrestles with his place at the university and in the frat, he finds himself at a crossroads after a hazing retreat goes wrong.

Berger’s first feature film features a star-studded cast, including Wolff, Halle Bailey, John Malkovich, South Carolina native Bo Mitchell and “Euphoria” actor Angus Cloud, who died in 2023.The New York Times labeled the movie a “Greek tragedy.” Rogerebert.com compared it to the hit film, “Social Network,” describing it as “amped up and disturbing, but … hardly the stuff of fantasy.” Slant Magazine called it a “Lord of the Flies” type tale.

Though it’s set at a fictional university, the movie has multiple connections to South Carolina.Purdo attended USC. Mitchell is from Aiken. Three actors were cast straight out of USC’s Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. The team even spent a weekend immersing themselves in the fraternity world at USC.But it’s not a story about South Carolina.It’s a story, they said, that can happen anywhere.”Hazing, whether it’s physical or mental or verbal,” Purdo said, “is something that everyone has dealt with in one way or another.”

How time at a USC frat inspired ‘The Line’Shortly after Berger and Purdo moved in together, they sat down with Alex Russek for an eight-hour interview. Purdo rehashed his whole life story on a camcorder.

In 2012, Russek and Berger wrote a draft, editing it back and forth for years to come.Berger, a Los Angeles native, had watched “Animal House” and “Old School.” But he didn’t feel like those happy-go-lucky partying films represented what he heard from Purdo, or what he saw as a student at Wesleyan University.There, he lived next to a fraternity, where they would play “Blue (Da Ba Dee)” by Eiffel 65 on repeat during pledge week.Purdo said he didn’t want to create a film that exonerated frats, but he didn’t want one that bashed them either.

Fraternity brothers, led by Alex Wolff (center), meet in 2023-released movie “The Line.” 

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His aim was to acknowledge the complexities of fraternity life, the loneliness it can cure in teenagers away from home for the first time, the brotherhood it created and the dangerous hazing it permitted. 

“I wanted to show a movie that really was in the gray,” Purdo said, “where there’s bad things, there’s good things and it really was up to the audience to make their mind.”

As they pitched the film and raised funds, real-life events confirmed Berger was on the right path.Most notably, in 2014, Clemson University student and Sigma Phi Epsilon member Tucker Hipps died in Lake Hartwell after a pledge run. A decade later, his death is still clouded in mystery.

When Berger learned of Hipps’ tragic death, he realized how much their movie resembled his story. And how “The Line” underscores a larger issue across South Carolina and the United States.A recent Post and Courier investigation found, in the 10 years since Hipps’ death, there have been 105 hazing incidents at South Carolina fraternities. After dipping during the pandemic, reports of hazing have risen again.

Pledges across the state have been gagged, blindfolded, required to drink alcohol and forced into dangerous quizzes on fraternity history — with little accountability from schools or state officials. “It’s happened 100 times since (Hipps’ death) because we don’t ever look in the mirror,” Berger said. “We don’t take the time to be like, how can we be better? It’s about this feeling of not having agency when you do.”

And the film has more South Carolina connectionsShortly before they filmed the movie, Purdo messaged the frat he joined while at USC, SAE. He asked if they would let some of the movie’s creators and actors hang out with them. They agreed. And in 2021, cast members flew to USC to become pseudo-fraternity brothers.Over a course of a week, they ate at Halls Chophouse, attended a football game at Williams-Brice Stadium, snacked on pimento cheese sandwiches, listened to the USC gameday anthem “Sandstorm” and went out in Five Points. Austin Abrams, who plays Gettys O’Brien, even attended SAE’s semi-formal.

While visiting USC, Berger recruited three fraternity brothers, including Nicholas Basile. The finance major did not intend to become an actor, but jumped into his role as Frank Vitti. He called the movie “a documentary” about the fraternity experience.Cast members would call him with clarifying questions.

Bo Mitchell, who plays Mitch Miller, speaks to a group of pledges in “The Line.”

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“Austin Abrams asked, ‘would he use the term pledging in a sentence?'” Basile remembered. “It was just stuff like that. To me, it didn’t seem that important, but to them, they’re so attentive to that kind of stuff.”

The movie also featured Aiken native Bo Mitchell, best known for his role in “Cobra Kai.”

Mitchell, who plays Mitch Miller, wasn’t in a fraternity, but the story mirrored others he heard growing up in South Carolina. To prepare for the film, he spoke with one friend who joined a fraternity. The friend served as the “driving force” behind his character.”I was like, ‘this is going to be more of a real take (of fraternities) and an opportunity to tell a story about where I’m from,'” Mitchell told The Post and Courier. “I really want to protect that as well. I want to protect how, in a way, Southern states, and particularly South Carolina, is dictated in film.”Berger interviewed countless fraternity brothers across the country. They discussed hazing practices like drinking hot sauce or running a marathon after consuming alcohol. He spoke with the family of Timothy Piazza, a Penn State University student who died during a hazing ritual. His parents gave Berger permission to use their sons’ image at the end of the film.

Even some of the props and scenes came from real life.Basile gifted the costume designers two duffel bags of his clothes. They were packed with polos, t-shirts and khaki pants. The creators took inspiration from the hardhats pledges wear at SAE. The movie’s shaved heads and boar hunting trip came from an experience Purdo had in college.That’s part of what made the movie work, according to The New York Times, which called the details “believable, and therefore more disturbing.””It’s supposed to be like a mirror,” Berger said. “I think it’s about America. I think it’s about the way in which we value tradition at all costs. I think it’s about masculinity and how we measure our masculinity by how much trauma we endure. I think it’s about a society that values silence.”

After filming in Oklahoma in 2022, the movie was premiered in 2023 at Tribeca Film Festival. It’s showing in some theaters across the country, including Columbia.Berger hopes it puts fraternities under a microscope, starts a conversation and encourages people to ask questions.

“I wanted the audience to think about fraternities’ influence here in the U.S.,” the director said, “and watch the movie and consider whether they think that fraternities feel antiquated, or if they feel like it’s tradition worth preserving.””The Line” can be streamed on Apple TV and Amazon Prime. 

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Hansal Mehta calls out OTT industry as All We Imagine As Light struggles for digital release: “Harsh reality of making independent films in India”

Filmmaker Hansal Mehta has expressed concern over the challenges faced by All We Imagine As Light, the critically acclaimed film directed by Payal Kapadia. The movie, which made history by winning the prestigious Grand Prix award at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2024, is yet to secure a digital streaming platform for its release, according to Mehta.Hansal Mehta calls out OTT industry as All We Imagine As Light struggles for digital release: “Harsh reality of making independent films in India”Struggles in Securing an OTT DealIn a post shared on social media, Hansal Mehta revealed that despite the film’s recognition at Cannes, no OTT platform has purchased the rights to All We Imagine As Light. The filmmaker shared a review of the film from The New Yorker and highlighted the film’s struggle to find a digital home.Mehta wrote, “And from what I hear a film that no OTT platform is buying. The harsh reality of making independent films in India. This is no country for the spectacular All We Imagine As Light. HOPE I’M PROVED WRONG.” His comment sheds light on the difficulties faced by independent filmmakers in India, particularly when it comes to getting their work seen by a wider audience through digital platforms.And from what I hear a film that no OTT platform is buying. The harsh reality of making independent films in India. This is no country for the spectacular All We Imagine As Light. HOPE I’M PROVED WRONG. https://t.co/nCN8wVppVw— Hansal Mehta (@mehtahansal) November 18, 2024A Breakthrough Film for Indian CinemaAll We Imagine As Light made waves at the Cannes Film Festival by becoming the first Indian film to win the Grand Prix award, a significant achievement for Indian cinema. Despite its critical acclaim, the film is struggling to find an OTT platform to distribute it. The film, a Malayalam-Hindi feature, is being distributed in India by Rana Daggubati’s Spirit Media. It has already been released theatrically in Kerala and is scheduled to hit theaters across the rest of the country on November 22, 2024.Also Read: Payal Kapadia speaks on Laapataa Ladies being India’s official entry for Oscars over her Cannes Award-winning film All We Imagine As Light: “Oscar is like a lobby”.also-read{border-radius:10px;background:#f2f2f2;padding:10px 15px 0}.also-read .bx-wrapper{max-width:100% !important}.also-read h2{font-size:20px;margin-bottom:5px}.also-read ul{display:flex;-ms-flex-wrap:wrap;flex-wrap:wrap;position:relative;box-sizing:border-box}.also-read li{position:relative;flex:0 0 33.333333%;max-width:33.333333%;padding:0 5px}.also-read .imgsnb .imaginary img{border-radius:8px}.also-read h5{margin-top:10px}.also-read h5 a{color:#000 !important;font-weight:400;line-height:15px}#also-read .bx-controls-direction{display:none}@media only screen and (max-width:400px){.also-read li{width:31.10% !important}}.addformobile{display:none}@media only screen and (max-width:767px){.addformobile{display:block}}Tags : All We Imagine As Light, Bollywood Features, Features, Hansal Mehta, OTT, OTT Platform, Payal Kapadia, Social Media, Trending, Twitter, XBOLLYWOOD NEWS – LIVE UPDATESCatch us for latest Bollywood News, New Bollywood Movies update, Box office collection, New Movies Release , Bollywood News Hindi, Entertainment News, Bollywood Live News Today & Upcoming Movies 2024 and stay updated with latest hindi movies only on Bollywood Hungama.