08 Mai Gavin Seal
May’s #MainArtist and member of Main Film since 2014, Gavin Seal joins us to share his vision of languages, creativity and the worlds of possibility that engage with them, as well as the often invisibilized experiences that can arise from characters and stories with multiple facets and identities.
In addition to his contribution to the #MainArtist forum, Gavin is currently completing his short film produced with the support of Main Film as part of the (tri)Cycle! creative support program.
Gavin Seal is a Writers Guild of Canada prize-winning filmmaker. His work often captures his intersectional Indian-Québécois-Canadian heritage, with multiracial, multilingual characters exploring themes of belonging as they challenge cultural norms, traditions, and social codes.
His films have screened internationally at festivals including Fantasia, Hot Docs, Reelworld and Just for Laughs. He is an alumnus of the TIFF Filmmaker Lab, Reelworld Emerging 20 Writers program, Berlinale EFM’s Fiction Toolbox, and EAVE Access BIPOC Producers program in partnership with the National Screen Institute.
- The Tides That Bind Us, Short Film, Drama, Intersectionnel Films, 2024
- Followers, Short Film, Horror-Comedy, CBC, 2021
- Case Claus’d, Short Film, Neo-noir Christmas, CBC, 2015
Faire son coming out en tant que Bi au Québec
Coming out as Bi in Québec
❝ I’ve gotta get something off my chest…
Beat.
I’m bi…
He clears his throat.
…lingual…
Wow, it feels so good to say it out loud ;p
I’m not an Anglophone. I’m not a Francophone. I’m bilingual and I’m writing this shortly after being forced to remove French (you read that right, French, not English) from a screenplay because it didn’t fall into one SODEC juror’s belief that my characters should fit into a box as either Anglophones or Francophones.
Montréal is Canada’s most trilingual city and it’s about time Québecois cinema celebrates the cognitive diversity that makes our culture so rich. I can’t even imagine how infuriating this must be for Indigenous artists whose only options for submission are colonial languages. Telefilm has already removed this criteria because it doesn’t represent the contemporary landscape of our culture and it’s about time the Québec funders did the same. With Telefilm, the script still needs to be translated into one of the two official languages for the readers/jurors but the film can be whatever language the writer wants to write in.
Artists are united by curiosity. We share an unquenchable thirst for learning through the creative process of curiosity, courage, and experimentation, audiences discover that we have more in common than we could ever express in words.
As David Rose famously said on Schitt’s Creek, “I do drink red wine, but I also drink white wine and I’ve been known to sample the occasional rose.” But even that’s overly reductive in a world where orange wine, Champagne, and Cava are on the menu.
So let’s raise a glass to more bilingual, trilingual and multilingual films.
Besides, cinema is the one true universal language, right?
Take that, « Math! » ❞
Gavin Seal
#MAINARTIST
Notre organisme est un centre d’artistes engagé à soutenir sa communauté dans son ensemble, sans aucune distinction.
Au-delà des simples déclarations de solidarité contre le racisme suite aux événements de l’été 2020, mais également contre les actes racistes plus récents et ceux qui perdurent historiquement, il nous est apparu comme essentiel d’offrir une place à nos membres afin qu’ils·elles expriment leurs ressentis face aux discriminations qu’ils.elles vivent et qui pourraient être fondées sur la couleur de peau, les origines, l’orientation sexuelle, leur genre ou un handicap.
Nous les invitons donc à partager leurs réflexions face à ce drame sociétal que constitue toutes formes de rejet de l’autre.
Notre 25ème artiste à contribuer est Gavin Seal.
#MainArtist #ArtisteImportant
Car ce sont les artistes qui portent à la fois le rôle de représenter la société et de la faire évoluer.