What is the project?
Honey Birch (Director) and Grace Talbot (Producer) are hoping to raise £1500 to make a short documentary film capturing London's queer scene through its queer club queues. With a rise in homophobia and transphobia, the streets can be hell for queers. If the club is heaven, what does this make the queue?
Who IS Making this film?
Honey Birch (Director) is a mixed media filmmaker and artist, telling stories that blur borders and focus on the intersections that are left on the wayside. Often exploring their own identity as part of their work, their most recent documentary ‘Little Chairs, Little Conversations’ explores being a part of the adopted Chinese diaspora.
Grace Talbot (Producer) is a multidisciplinary film maker and animator. Recently directing and producing their animation/live action film “We’re not in Essex anymore” (2023), a fictional film exploring hyper-femininity within Essex night life culture. They have so far produced all of their own Animation work, and currently freelance Animating, primarily for Documentary.
We are in Conversation with a number of other queer film makers, as our aim is to build a queer crew for this project, eg, DOP, Sound Recordist, and Assistant Director. We would love this project to be backed by this funding so we can pay each of our crew members properly for their time and expertise.
why are we making this film?
- For many, club culture is utopic, providing a safe space to explore queer fantasy through music, fashion, and community. The queer club queue operates as an intersection between this utopia and reality. It is where queerness is visible and vulnerable to the eyes of the general public.
- Through the use of observation, group interviews, and layering of audio, this film will pair the fantasy of queer clubbing with this reality. It will explore the idea that that queer people, by nature of being marginalised, exist on the borders, free to move within the space between. We aim to create the feeling of being within a queer club queue, and the euphoria of leaving it.
“I work part time at a queer club. For me, If This Were Purgatory highlights small but important observations that I have witnessed, as well as celebrating queer night-life spaces that serve as such an important asset to the community.” - Grace Talbot (Producer)
“Last pride, a drink was thrown on me outside a queer night-club. If This Were Purgatory is an act of self-defence, self-expression, and queer self-preservation. I think we can tell this story responsibly, and ethically. Through our own lived experience.” - Honey Birch (Director)
Where will the money go?
It is important to us that our crew are paid a fair wage. The goal being to have a crew made up of members of the queer community, this project therefore will not only be telling important stories but also providing paid experience for queer creatives.
Pre Production = £800
- DOP: £200
- Sound: £200
- AD: £60
- AC: £60
- Club fees: x 3 (cast members) = £50
- Transport: (for all cast and crew) £60
- Hardrive: £120
- Snacks/Drinks: £50
Post Production = £300
- colour grade: £150
- sound engineer: £150
Festival submissions = £200 +
- Any extra funds we cant to use to submit this to a varied range of film festivals, in the UK and abroard to spread awareness of the importance of queer club culture around the globe.
Images and video
Reference Image Story Board + Plot outline:
More images in our treatment linked below:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1r9ya_YaSrWonujiM_ZEUpvzCa1hLGMig/view?usp=drive_link
whats next!
We hope to submit this is a number of festivals in the UK and aborard, and then screen this film at queer clubs across London which we will be shooting at, in order to celebrate these spaces, and give back.
Help us succeed!
- You don't need to give money to help us succeed! Please share this project with anyone you think would support us – on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, by email, telephone, in a chat over the fence or on your blog.
- We think it's hold a really important part of the queer history we are currently living in, that needs to be shared, and the more people who know about it, the more likely we are to make this work out.
- And we know we said you don't need to give money to help us, but we'd love it if you did! Please sponsor us and help make this happen.
