A few weeks ago I posted a blog about the perceived slight to the Leather community dished out by the local film festivals in Southern California.  Since then there have been some new developments and they are not all good.  Long Beach is seemingly trying to make amends for snubbing the award-winning Kink Crusaders earlier this year.  Click the logo to the left to make the jump to the official movie site.  Unfortunately there seems to be some deep, anti-leather sentiment coming straight from the top of Outfest.  Are the Los Angeles film elite hating on the local Leather community?  Click the link below, read the update from Mike Skiff of Third Rail Media, and judge for yourself…

Earlier this month, I met with Kirsten Schaffer, the executive director of Los Angeles’s LGBT film festival Outfest.  My goal was to raise awareness of a possible pattern of insensitivity Outfest has displayed during the last decade towards films that reflect the local Leather community.  Outfest’s theme for 2011 was “See Your Stories”; and while queer film fests around the nation programmed to include the Leather/Kink community’s stories, Outfest’s main festival program had not.

Kirsten demanded that the meeting’s discussion be kept “off the record”.  It lasted an hour and fifteen minutes. It was not a pleasant meeting.  I believe that Kirsten, representing Outfest, saw the meeting as an opportunity to berate and humiliate a filmmaker who’s documentary was not selected for their program.

Nothing in the meeting changed my prior opinion that “Kink Crusaders” may have been seen by as few as one Outfest programmer before being rejected – with the possibility that no one reflecting the leather, the men’s, or the transgender community, were ever included in Outfest’s viewing process for “Kink Crusaders”.

I spoke with Jason Garrett (the director of the 2005 documentary “Mr. Leather”) about his experience with Outfest.  Though Outfest did program “Mr. Leather” months later during a weekly non-festival screening, it did not select his documentary when it was submitted to the to the main film festival held in July.  During the Outfest festival selection process, he (like I had with “Kink Crusaders”) made the programmers aware that the story involved members of the Los Angeles Leather community.  Jason contacted Outfest about why “Mr. Leather” wasn’t selected and he said he was told his film was too similar in theme to other films out that year.  Jason disagreed, after he followed the programming done at other LGBT film festivals.

The LA chapter of the Sisters Of Perpetual Indulgence also submitted a short documentary to Outfest several years ago that was also rejected, I’ve been told.

Not only did Outfest snub “Kink Crusaders” this year, Outfest stirred up controversy in the LA leather community by approaching a local leather organization to sponsor the Bruce LaBruce movie “LA Zombie”.  Leaders of the organization where offended, wondering why Outfest felt “LA Zombie” reflected the lives of their community.  Outfest was informed that “Kink Crusaders” was the film they wished to sponsor because of its positive message about the Leather/Kink community.

While Outfest 2011 welcomed audiences to “See Your Stories”, Outfest did not receive sponsorship or the official support of the LA leather community this year.

Los Angeles has a strong, vibrant Leather community, composed of men and women.  The city is the home to the one of the oldest gay organizations, the Satyr’s Motorcycle Club, which just celebrated 50 years of existence.  There four former IML titleholders living in Los Angeles:  Guy Baldwin (IML 1989), a longtime psycho-therapist and Leather educator; Dr. Tony Mills (IML 1998), an HIV specialist; Mikel Gerle (IML 2007), an employee of the city of West Hollywood; and Gary Iriza (IML 2008).

International Mr. Leather founder Chuck Renslow recently gave an interview (carried at Towleroad and Leatherati) that discussed his personal experiences with the battle against discrimination and struggle for acceptance of the leather community by the greater gay community, including gay organizations. Chuck relates the many contributions he and other like Reverend Troy Perry have made to gay civil rights.
(See interview: http://www.leatherati.com/leatherati/2011/08/chuck-renslow-on-discrimination-towards-leather-community.html)

That Outfest, a not-for-profit, should demand meetings with filmmakers be kept “off the record” about the details of their discussion is devious – especially if the meeting’s closed nature becomes a cloak to hide behind an opportunity to belittle a filmmaker who is trying to raise concerns about institutional insensitivity to a segment of the LGBT community.

I hope Outfest takes the time to reach out to Los Angeles’s leather folks to discuss where these folks stand in the eyes of this major LGBT cultural organization’s staff.  And I hope this exchange will be “on the record”.

Long Beach Q Film Festival created the idea to use a future screening of “Kink Crusaders” to help raise awareness of issues that confront the local leather community.  We hope to be holding this screening early next year.

I do wish to note that I have volunteered for Outfest several years, including this year’s film festival, and that I’ve also covered Outfest for the gay press many times in the past, including this year as well.

–Statement received via email from Mike Skiff