“Our community was being torn apart both by illness and in the media.
We were craving safe spaces and true representations of who we were.
In 2018, the culture has changed, but the value remains.
Credit: Tereza Cervenova/Hulu; Focus Features; Big World Cinema/AfroBubbleGum Productions
In Hollywood, LGBTQ representation is still excluded from most major studio releases.
In the indie landscape, queer voices are fighting to be heard by financiers and distributors.
She initially pitched it to American-based networks after the press tour forAppropriate Behaviorbut found she couldn’t get work.
Akhavan had more luck sellingThe Bisexualin the U.K., mainly because the industry there was financially different.
She found the budgets were typically less than U.S. productions, so the risk of a flop was less.
“When I got to London, suddenly every conversation I had was different,” she recalls.
“It was like, ‘What chances do you want to take?’
‘What are your ideas?’
‘Where do you want to go with this?’
‘How do you want to make this unlike anything else I’ve seen?’
And it was very easy to sell [The Bisexual].”
In October, NewFest welcomed the gestating series for its U.S. premiere.
“It’s more emotional.”
With LGBTQ festivals also comes a systemic dilemma that Tan, personally, has difficulty reconciling.
When a film premieres at a Sundance or Cannes, it brings a “legitimacy” to the work.
Trying to reconcile it all, however, “is just a road to more frustration.”
“I believe they call it ghettoization of the queer film marketplace,” Akhavan remarks.
I would like to reinvent what a queer film means.
I think that can be something mainstream.
But he, too, was aware of the challenges of fighting that niche label.
“‘LGBTQ stories’ is not a genre,” he says.
It gave Lisa Cholodenko the support she needed as a budding filmmaker to launch her career.
“I think that’s always been born out in different ways, unfortunately.
There’s always a need to come home and have your people.”
