A short documentary about Red Deer pianist and LGBTQ advocate Curtis Labelle will be screened next week at the Edmonton Short Film Festival — as well as later in July, during the K-Days fair.
“I’m really excited about it,” said Red Deer filmmaker Angel Peterson, who submitted her film to the short festival a year or two ago and was thrilled to recently learn it is a 2022 selection.
Peterson made The Other Side of the Rainbow in 2019, just as Labelle was embarking on a project to record his own original music for the first time.
The Red Deer musician and songwriter “was rediscovering his purpose and his passion with the support of his eclectic group of friends and his loving husband,” said Peterson.
The 13-minute made-in-central-Alberta film, will be shown on July 1 at the Edmonton Short Film Festival. It’s among six independent, Alberta-made shorts “that offer unique experiences and perspectives, representing National Pride Month. “
While Labelle returned to Red Deer this spring from his ‘High on Pride’ Tour to Ontario and back, Peterson said The Other Side of the Rainbow focuses more on the artist than on LGBTQ issues.
“I never think of being gay as a being this big thing. It’s a part of people, but it’s such as small part of who people are,” she added.
The film is the first Peterson has made, with assistance from a Telus Storyhive grant. She has since directed and stars in a fictional short film, The Beginnings, about the start of a transgender journey. That film is showing on the Telus Optik channel.
As well, Peterson has created a series of short documentaries about six local visual artists — Margaret Hall, Marianne Harris, Amanda Frost, Marlene Kallstrom-Barritt, Susan Delaney, and Carol Lynn Gilchrist — for the Red Deer Arts Council. These can be viewed on the local Shaw TV channel.
The Other Side of the Rainbow will be screened from noon on Friday, July 1, at The Foundry Room, 10426-82 Ave. in Edmonton.
The film’s screening date during Edmonton’s K-Days fair, which runs from July 22 to 31, has not yet been determined.