Prom Queen and Queen

It may look like a real­ity show and talk like a real­ity show, but “The Real World” it ain’t.

Famil­iar con­flicts and enter­tain­ing dia­logue make the doc­u­men­tary “Queer Prom,” screened Mon­day at Tin­sel­town as part of the Van­cou­ver Queer Film Fes­ti­val, feel hon­est with­out indulging too heav­ily in sac­cha­rine feel-good moments or worse, slow-motion montages.

Directed by Nicky Fors­man, who also directs the OUTTV series “Don’t Quit Your Gay Job,” the doc­u­men­tary fol­lows a group of LGBT youth at the Qmu­nity GAB Youth Cen­tre as they attempt to orga­nize the annual Queer Prom: a homophobia-free event for queer 13-to-25-year-olds who may have grad­u­ated or are still in high school or col­lege. Ulti­mately the event is a suc­cess, though the group doesn’t make it through unscathed.

TV Pro­duc­ers take note: Queer Prom is what hap­pens when you put quip-heavy per­son­al­i­ties in a meet­ing room deemed a fur­nace and tell them to plan a large-scale event. It’s also one of the pro­found secrets of people-based doc­u­men­tary film­mak­ing: when shit gets hot, the raised crank­i­ness lev­els con­tribute to some really good dialogue.

“Nobody cares about fuck­ing mock­tails,” uttered by dec­o­rat­ing com­mit­tee mem­ber Tay­lor after an argu­ment with GAB staff over the place­ment of Prom mock­tail selec­tion on that meeting’s agenda, was a laugh-winner, “It’s one of the top 4 or 5 best things ever. It’s pretty much bet­ter than the renais­sance,” also care of Tay­lor, was another.

The list goes on, and it was a nice sur­prise Fors­man avoided focus­ing on the teenage cul­tural obses­sion of drama, or should we say, da–rah–mah­hhh, in favour of show­ing how humourously and ami­ca­bly a group of youth inter­ested in mak­ing a dif­fer­ence can work through prob­lems with­out killing each other – though, threats are made. Friend­ships are tested dur­ing the film but are always resilient; every com­bat­ant inevitably rec­on­ciles over a fist bump with the other, in stark con­trast to other documentary-style pro­duc­tions in North Amer­ica that thrive on unre­solved con­flict (hello again, MTV).

Queer Prom reveals that the queer youth in Van­cou­ver are, in a word, amaz­ing, and can take care of each other in ways given fam­i­lies sim­ply can’t, or worse, won’t.

To describe the doc­u­men­tary in one word would be the same way a GAB staff mem­ber describes Queer Prom, the event, at the end of the film: important.

Jeff Lawrence is a con­trib­u­tor to Sad Mag and V-Rag mag­a­zines.