Author Archives: Kevin Allen

Queer Film Saved Us

Posted on May 6, 2021 | 1 comment

The Calgary Gay History Project’s Kevin Allen has created a historic poster exhibition for the City of Calgary’s Open Spaces program. Open Spaces began in 2009 and celebrates the diversity and quality of works by regional artists, with gallery windows on the Centre Street LRT platform: enlivening the Calgarian commuter experience.

The Fairy Tales Queer Film Festival premiered in Calgary on June 17, 1999, and has become a treasured annual event ever since. The LGBTQ2 Festival has a history of engaging talented local artists to design its festival posters. Over the years, Fairy Tales accumulated a backlog of visually iconic posters that served as both marketing vehicle and artwork. Queer Film Saved Us is a curated retrospective of those beautiful posters. They assert—on the walls, streets, and bulletin boards of Calgary—that queer people were here and always have been.

The 23rd Annual Fairy Tales Queer Film Festival, produced by the Calgary Queer Arts Society, is happening soon (online again this year): running from May 21 – 30, 2021.

Seeing ourselves represented on the big screen was alchemy and moved LGBTQ2 rights forward when public funding for queer cultural events was considered controversial. Festival organizers routinely got harassing phone calls and hateful mail but kept the event going—defiantly.

Fairy Tales posters would paper the streets every year at festival time, claiming space in our city. Queer Film Saved Us is a retrospective of those claims: stylized, beautiful and proud. Artists and graphic designers represented in this exhibition include Lisa Brawn, Glen Mielke and Toqueboy Studios.

*Poster from the 5th Annual Festival created by Toqueboy Studios*

We especially thank Heather Campbell, Public Art Consultant for the City of Calgary, who managed all of the administrative details for this exhibition. She is a delightful and enthusiastic collaborator.

{KA}

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Posted in Gay history

Tagged bisexual, Calgary Queer Arts Society, City of Calgary, Fairy Tales Film Festival, gay, Glenn Mielke, Heather Campbell, lesbian, Lisa Brawn, Open Spaces, queer, queer cinema, Toqueboy Studios, transgender, twospirit

Everett returns to Crescent Heights

Posted on April 29, 2021 | 1 comment

The Crescent Heights Community Association (CHCA) embarked on a mural project last year to rehabilitate a local eyesore—an unloved retaining wall on Centre Street on the hike up from downtown Calgary. The wall is immediately north of the the iconic centre street bridge and its emblematic lion statues.

The artist trio of Sydonne Warren, Tyler Lemermeyer, and Cory Bugden, were selected by a community jury. The mural was conceived to honour the people, places and history of Crescent Heights. Part of their proposal was to include a portrait of Everett Klippert, whose story they had researched. They were particularly impressed by his role in the human rights struggle of the LGBTQ2 community in Canada.

*Artists Cory Bugden, Sydonne Warren, and Tyler Lemermeyer stopping traffic on Centre Street.*

The Klippert family lived in Crescent Heights from 1934-1942 and they worshipped at Crescent Heights Baptist Church. The artists contacted the Klippert family and received consent to memorialize Everett in this way.

Sandra Neill, the CHCA’s Engagement Director wrote: “You will see our beloved lion who overlooks the City from Rotary Park, and the portrait is of Everett Klippert who lived in Crescent Heights as a teenager. The lion is symbolic of Everett’s bravery who was a catalyst for change towards the decriminalization of homosexual acts between consenting adults. The Rollerblades [on another panel] represent the different ways of travelling up and down the hill. The pants in rainbow represent fashion and an inclusive element to the LGBTQ2S+ community.”

In September 2020, with the help of many volunteers, the artists made the mural manifest and named it #yycmagicwalk. Everett passed away in 1996; perhaps he would be tickled to know that he has moved back to Crescent Heights—just a few hundred metres from his childhood home.

*CBC Calgary: How Calgary artists turned the “walk of doom” into the “magic walk”*

{On a personal note, I graduated from Crescent Heights High School in 1988; the community has a soft spot in my heart. I’m delighted the mural is there! – Kevin}

{KA}

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Posted in Gay history

Tagged #yycmagicwalk, bisexual, Cory Bugden, Crescent Heights, Crescent Heights Community Association, Everett Klippert, gay, lesbian, queer, Sandra Neill, Sydonne Warren, transgender, Tyler Lemermeyer

Keyboard Fantasies @CUFF

Posted on April 22, 2021 | 1 comment

The 18th Annual Calgary Underground Film Festival opens tomorrow. Movie-lovers will be able to stream the bulk of films over ten days from April 23rd-May 2nd followed by three days of drive-ins from June 3rd-5th, 2021. CUFF is featuring a queer history documentary that Calgary Gay History fans might want to note: Keyboard Fantasies: The Beverly Glenn-Copeland Story.

This film, this artist, this music, this story: all rare gems…see this film.”
—Film Threat

Keyboard Fantasies is about Glenn Copeland, a black transgender musician, who emerges from years of isolation to find a dedicated and enthusiastic audience. Attending McGill University in the 1960s as one of the only black students, and one of the only gay students, Beverly Glenn-Copeland was a gentle trailblazer out of sheer necessity.

Later, in 1986, Glenn-Copeland was sci-fi obsessed and living in isolation in Huntsville, Ontario. Glenn wrote and self-released “Keyboard Fantasies.” The album was recorded in an Atari-powered home-studio; the cassette featured seven tracks of a curious folk-electronica hybrid, a sound realized far before its time. Three decades on, the musician—now Glenn Copeland—began to receive emails from people across the world, thanking him for the music they’d recently discovered. Courtesy of a rare-record collector in Japan, Glenn’s music finally finds its audience in the 21st Century. Debut feature film director, Posy Dixon, one of these fans, developed a close friendship with Glenn over Skype. The film is a love letter to the album and the artist.

Keyboard Fantasies won an Audience Favourite Award at HotDocs 2020 and will be streamed on-demand as part of CUFF from April 23rd-May 2nd (Alberta audiences only).