HOMETOWN EMPRESS

Drag icon's story kicks off Queer Film Festival

This year's Vancouver Queer Film Festival (VQFF) makes a fitting entrance back into the world of in-person screenings and events.

Now in its 34th year, the festival will kick off the Aug. 11-21 program with the feature-length documentary The Empress of Vancouver.

The film from Vancouver's Lanterns Films and director David Rodden-shortt celebrates and illuminates Vancouver's queer artistic legacy and it does so through the fabulously made-up eyes of Oliv Howe, performer, artist and queer icon.

“I think to open the festival back to the public in person with a film about Vancouver and our queer history in Vancouver is a perfect alignment for this year. I think it just feels like a good homecoming in many ways,” said Brandon Yan, executive director of Out on Screen, the organization that produces the Vancouver Queer Film Festival.

Rodden-shortt's The Empress of Vancouver came about while he was focused on other work.

“While I was doing research for another film someone told me I should talk to Oliv about local queer history and when I met her, I was like, `Oh wow, there is no one else like this person.' She just had so many stories and such a vivid memory of the period of time that I was interested in, which is around the early '80s,” said Rodden-shortt. “I went back to my office and I told my business partner Jessica Hallenbeck that I met someone who I think would make a good subject of a feature film.”

The next step was, of course, convincing Howe to hop aboard. The 69-year-old has seen it all (reporter's note: There isn't enough room here to recount Howe's very full and very colourful life), so she wasn't quick to entertain another “you want to be in a movie?” question.

“At first I wasn't sure he was even real,” Howe said about Rodden-shortt approaching her.

After a few meetings, Howe felt Rodden-shortt and Hallenbeck were the real deal and she said yes to the project.

“I have been asked before, but this was the first time that I thought to myself that this is actually real. Then I thought: `Wow, I could save myself three or four years sitting at home writing a book, then taking a course so I could learn to digitize all the archives. Instead, let them do all that.' That was literally what went through my mind.”

The story in the film revolves around Howe shaking up the drag status quo when she strutted her punk-rock, all-inclusive performance art all the way to the title of 10th Empress of the Vancouver Dogwood Monarchist Society.

Until Howe stepped a stiletto onto the stage, the Empress was generally nicely teased, tucked and tilting a tiny bit toward the demure.

As the film shows, Howe was not about to sashay down that runway.

“I wanted to change it from the female impersonation level to more of an artistic level,” Howe says in the film.

“The fact that she celebrates nonconformity, I was really drawn to that especially now (with) the time that we are living in,” said Rodden-shortt, who is enjoying a full-circle moment as he worked in the festival's graphics and marketing departments two decades ago.

“Because of the politics now, I think a lot of people feel like they can't express how they feel about things because they might say the wrong thing or say it the wrong way. Whereas Oliv is unapologetically Oliv. She just says whatever she thinks, and she is completely direct.”

While giving Howe plenty of close-ups, the lens also pulls back to show the larger picture of life as an LGBTQ person in the early '80s. The AIDS crisis, the fight for rights and recognition are discussed and documented here.

The film threads that legacy together with interviews with Howe and her contemporaries as well as younger, local drag performers who have been inspired by Howe. The film also is an in-depth archive highlighted by many fabulous photos from the day.

The film includes a couple of new performances from Howe — they were supposed to be part of a show celebrating the 40th anniversary of her coronation as Empress, but COVID had other plans — that are deliciously fun additions to the film.

Specifically, Howe's performance of Pat Suzuki's Black Coffee sits perfectly in this piece.

“I think it speaks to the resilience in my life,” said Howe. “Everything is down, everything is up and what are you doing? Oh, just get another cup of coffee.”

These days Howe rides her bike three times a week, is long sober and goes out in full drag every Friday in the Davie Village. She will be at VQFF in full force to see The Empress of Vancouver kick off the festival on Aug. 11 and she hopes those who see the film will walk out of the theatre a little more knowledgeable about the city's past and with some inspiration on how to face the future.

“Don't give up. Keep going. Don't let the bastards grind you down. I am an old hippie at heart. I mean I was a young hippie, but now I am old,” said Howe. “It is so easy for people to disconnect and walk away. Don't let other people make you do that. You make that decision. You decide what your actions will be.”

The Empress of Vancouver is one of 97 films from 20 different countries that will be screened online and in person at this year's VQFF. There are also 20 live events and celebrations taking course over the 11-day festival.

Like many festivals that had to learn to do things differently during the pandemic, VQFF has embraced the online world.

“We had comments from very small communities from across B.C. that were excited that they can now watch these films that are predominantly only available one time only at a festival because they are small independent films that don't get broader release,” Yan said of audience feedback received after the last two online festivals.

The hybrid model also helps to keep longtime festival goers in the loop.

“We have a lot of our patrons who have been coming for the last 30 years who are much older now and can't actually leave their home comfortably,” said Yan.

The festival's theme this year is Make It Yours. It celebrates not only the festival's founding ideal, but calls for people to look at a collective future and the importance of being in this together.

“We have seen that in a blink of an eye you can have the forces of politics move us in a direction that isn't always conducive to our existences, so I think coming together, that's really important,” said Yan.