Jason Vanrooy

Reel Pride has a lot to be proud of!

For 25 years the men and women behind the Reel Pride film festival have brought some of the very best of GLBTTQ* cinema from around the world home to Winnipeg, much to the delight of their audiences. Reel Pride is celebrating its silver anniversary with all new programs and an expansion into more than just the cinematographic arts. This year’s festival is set to include other visual arts, panel discussions, video projects created by local youth and documentaries and short films which explore an even broader rainbow than in previous years. Now in its third year at the Gas Station Arts Centre, REEL Pride boasts  a six-day schedule with a broad spectrum of events and showings covering topics from GLBTTQ* refugees to positive youth. Each day provides an array of options from romantic comedies to documentaries and everything in between. 

A fascinating collaboration between a Winnipeg artist and a group of queer kids is already showing results

Can art allow a person to express their true gender and their inner strengths in ways they never thought possible? Can it make them feel more at ease with themselves and with the world? Those were some of the questions asked by Winnipeg Arts Council’s WITH ART program and the Rainbow Resource Centre’s  Peer Project for Youth. Finding the answer to those questions has turned into an intriguing creative collaboration, one that will likely result in some unique works of art that will be on view for the public.

The difference between a Pride march and a Pride parade is the floats. Parade floats, loaded with people, dripping with energy and pounding music bring the energy level up in the parade.

When teacher Ray Desautels goes to a school function with his partner he knows the gay couple won’t face a hostile reaction. “I have always been able to (attend functions),” he says of the accepting environment in the St. James-Assiniboia School Division in west Winnipeg. “I have found St. James-Assiniboia to be supportive (though it) was not always that way.”  That acceptance extends to allowing gay and lesbian teachers to display photos of their significant others in the classroom, he says. Sadly, acceptance isn’t universal, Desautels points out. It’s common “in most Winnipeg schools [but] in rural areas not so much,” he says.