Lesbian Christine Vachon is behind such classic gay films as
Swoon,
Poison and
Go Fish.
Vachon sat down with
Xtra's Matthew Hays at the
Toronto International Film Festival following her participation in the industry program panel The Social Network: Marketing Indie Films Online.
The prolific producer talks about the early days of queer film and the heyday of the New Queer Cinema movement of the 1990s. She says she thinks many people ignore or underestimate the impact of HIV and AIDS on cinema.
“For me, the fact that we were living through such an extraordinarily devastating epidemic drove so many of those filmmakers with a sense of urgency, in the sense of, 'If I don't tell this story now I may not get to,'” she says. “And in a lot of ways it fuelled that sense of ‘I can’t ask for permission, and I just need to take matters into my own hands.'”
Post-New Queer Cinema era, Vachon has produced Boys Don’t Cry, Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Far from Heaven. This year, she was at TIFF with At Any Price and Inescapable.
Below are video clips from Vachon's interview with Xtra.