Her meeting with Tara Emory, trans and eclectic artist if ever there was one, changed her life. Laurence Turcotte-Fraser has made a documentary that could change yours.
The end of Wonderland, launched Wednesday as a world premiere in Amsterdam, then this Friday as a North American premiere, as part of the Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal (RIDM), is the first feature film by Laurence Turcotte-Fraser, a young queer Montreal director who doesn’t is not cold in the eyes. And who above all does not shrink from any taboo.
Her film is indeed about a character more flamboyant than life: Tara Emory, pink hair, oversized glasses (and chest), is a pioneer of trans erotic photography on the internet, multidisciplinary artist with a thousand projects (including a science odyssey). -transfiction: hang in there, she literally tinkers a porn movie herself, both daring, epic and … cardboard), as a bonus struggling with family concerns that are complicated to manage (think compulsive accumulation, it gives you a idea of the topo). Are you still following?
Let’s say that at first glance, Laurence Turcotte-Fraser, met earlier this week in a cafe in Mile End, with her long black hair and her demure young air, does not exactly have the physique of the job. But you should know that before knowing Tara Emory, a little less than ten years ago, she was even more reserved. And certainly less assertive. “I felt that this meeting was going to change my life,” remembers the young woman, then more or less in the closet.
It made me grow enormously in my personal quest.
Laurence Turcotte-Fraser, director
Their meeting is the fruit of pure chance, but a “happy coincidence”, takes care to specify the director. At the beginning of 2010, a friend invited him to film a performance at the Café Cléopâtre. Laurence Turcotte-Fraser, then freshly graduated from Concordia, does not yet know anything about this counter-culture, but literally falls under the spell (“love at first sight!”) Of one of the artists present… Tara Emory, trans star at the exacerbated extravagance, otherwise so reserved about his private life, brief, complex and endearing, originally from Massachusetts.
Religiously, in the years that followed, the young director followed the trans artist on her annual pilgrimage to the Montreal Fetish Weekend, like her “personal paparazzi”. “I’m really curious: what is this? I do not understand anything, she sums up, transparently. I am an ingenuous person in this complex, very interesting world. ”
PHOTO PROVIDED BY ARTÉMIS FILMS_LES FILMS OF MARCH 3
Tara Emory
Hence her film, therefore, within which she dissects this duality between the public and the private, revealing a much more complex experience than it seems (and which ultimately has nothing to do with transidentity , even less pornography): “All her life, Tara had to clean up what her parents had left her,” sums up Laurence Turcotte-Fraser. About a hundred cars. She has been cleaning up her whole life, and she has a compulsive hoarding portion within her. It is through the film that she will heal herself. ”
To heal, a bit by force of circumstances, since his studio (a rented barn, called Wonderland, a nod to the title), a veritable cave of Ali Baba, has been sold. And she has no choice but to empty it. A painful exercise, as epic as it is (she has nearly a hundred vintage cars that collect dust, it should be remembered, not to mention all her wigs, her costumes and other fetishistic decorations, which she must remember. ridding), filmed with great humanity.
This is also the director’s greatest wish: “To humanize these characters that we see at first glance with preconceived ideas,” she sums up. Make people more comfortable with the trans community. My dream: to create bridges. Like me, I created bridges with Tara over time. “A” bridge “which” transformed “, she confirms. “I have enormous admiration for Tara. Because she is capable of being herself, without concessions. […] My film allowed me to accept myself. To be the person I want to be. And the moral of the film is that: we have the right to be who we want to be. Life is too short ! And we will all be happier like that! ”
The end of Wonderland, a film by Laurence Turcotte-Fraser, Artémis Films
Presented on Friday, November 19 at 9 p.m. at the Cinema du Musée, in the presence of the filmmaker and Tara, the protagonist.
Online November 22-25
Visit the Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal website