acceptable face: filmmaking for the LGBTQ+ community
“The sort of person who someone might say: ‘oh he’s gay, but he’s lovely!’”
What does it mean to be a ‘respectable’ queer person? How are you expected to look, dress and behave to prove you’re not that type of gay? Does growing tolerance towards LGBTQ+ people apply to everyone, or just those who fit a certain ‘acceptable’ image? Chatting about these topics with a group of LGBTQ+ people led me to create ‘Acceptable Face’ - a short documentary combining interview recordings with experimental charcoal animation. The people who kindly volunteered were amazingly open, thoughtful, funny, and willing to discuss pretty difficult topics. The biggest challenge of this film was cutting down their interesting responses into just 6 minutes.
The film builds up a description of the ‘ideal’, acceptable queer person. Obvious - but not too obvious. Comfortable in their identity - but without ever talking about it. Endlessly calm, high- achieving, attractive, informed, conventional… It’s impossible and ridiculous, but this flawless image can be very harmful when people can’t live up to its standards. And a lot of us don’t want to! It was really interesting to hear different people’s perspectives on the role of this ‘ideal’, how that pressure affects them, and what helps them deal with it. It’s sad when people say they relate to the film, but I do think it’s important to have discussions like this one. The attitude that ‘everything’s fine now!’ seems to be pretty common, and while we obviously want to celebrate how far LGBTQ+ acceptance has come, we also need to keep working for things to get better!
Simon Howard did an amazing job with the sound design, which hopefully underlines the slightly surreal and playful quality I was going for in the animation. I’m really interested in experimenting with animation, and my favourite projects are those where I get to explore social issues in expressive, unusual ways.
Acceptable Face was my graduation project for my Animation BA at Edinburgh College of Art. It was also helped along by Scottish Queer International Film Festival (SQIFF), who held some really interesting talks and workshops last year that influenced me a lot. They take disability access very seriously and that also helped me get a lot more out of their events. So far my film has screened at a few festivals, including SQIFF where it won ‘Best Scottish Short’ 2019. It is part of Glasgow Film Festival’s ‘Shorts in Support’ programme, which makes it available to cinemas in Scotland to screen before feature films. You can also see it at Mxogyny’s ‘Voices’ event on the 24th November!