Hello and welcome to Superbia Sunday
this is the cinema portion
of our day and where we're screening a
selection
of exciting LGBTQ+ short films
and then we get to spend some time with
the filmmakers talking about um their
work
I'm here today with Finley Letchford-Dobbs
who is a dancer and a choreographer and
a photographer
and his work Seize and Hold, which you will
have seen
is a short dance film and that was made
as the first of our Superbia Spotlights
commissions which is our
kind of really new exciting program
that's an Arts Council Funded project
and that's making it possible for
artists in our community to make work
where they are with what's around them
and Ithink Finley's work was like
such a brilliant example of that because
it was in
the natural setting where he found
himself during lockdown so
thank you for joining us Finley and
thank you for
making such a beautiful film for us so i
guess we'll start there
if you can talk to us a little bit about
the idea behind the film what inspired
it
and you know the making of it
so um during lockdown i
ended up i live in a canal but so that'd
make the whole thing make a lot more
sense
and so I wanted to get out of the city
center and
so I went towards like the countryside
basically and i found a lovely little
mooring
that was alongside some woods and a
river and it was just
such a beautiful setting and everything
crazy
that was going on around me and around
everyone Ijust found myself in this
little setting and when all like my
dance classes and performances and stuff
got cancelled
that had like quite the effect on me
because I just kind of
got going with it really I just started
getting somewhere
and it all kind of come crashing down
so um I still wanted to do it and I
found that
because I had such great surroundings
and such beautiful weather luckily
that I could still do it so um i started
just like taking photos myself
and like dancing and started doing some
choreography doing outdoor lessons
and and then you approached me
about um Superbia Spotlights so I had
the idea to
do you know um so I wanted to create
like a mix of this
um like idyllic setting that I was
living in
and this mindfulness and tranquility
that I was experiencing
but also with the clash of anxiety and
like
financial worry and all the negatives
that was coming with
um curvid and so i thought
what better way to do that and do my
favorite thing
yeah that really really comes over
because i think
I mean even now it feels like a long
time ago at the start of
the lockdown and I think at the time
when I first saw the film i was like oh
like craving
that that setting that you were in but
then like the other side of it like you
say is well what does it cost us to be
separated and all of that worry and
stuff
and I remember when we first worked
together for Nobody's Watching so for
those who don't know,
Finley was one of five dancers who
worked on a project called Nobody's
watching
where we brought together LGBTQ+ dancers
and who wanted to make a piece of work
about themselves and their own
experience
and we were lucky enough to um work with
well we were lucky enough to have Darren
Pritchard visit us for that
those rehearsals and I remember Darren
saying to you at the time
with your dancing you can tell that
there's a story to tell
and i feel that that's true for season
hold as well
i feel like it's such a moment in time
and such an experience that's so unique
to you is that is that important in your
work like to have a story
to have for me definitely like even
like before and i started creating my
own dance work it's
a lot of it came from a photographer I
always like to just share
my experiences my stories and
my life basically but I'm not always
that great with words and
things like that so i my way of
expression
is through dancing really and I don't
have to say anything and I
somehow find a way like with my
choreography and the music that I choose
to like
portray these feelings and experiences
and
like for the great good sort of thing
yeah and I definitely think that it's a
language you know
and people talk about dance as a
language and I wasn't sure I always
understood that
I think I do now you know because it's
so emotive and there's nothing between
you and the dancer really which is
why it's so powerful um so we've been
looking off to
a a handful of really great films
alongside
yours and i'm interested always in what
artists think about each other's work
so i'd love to like spend a bit time
talking about the rest of the program
with you so
we'll start with uh Binders by
Sade Mica and, Sade is a really
interesting
young non-binary artist who works in all
different platforms like film and
performance and costume and stuff
and and they and i are going to be doing
a show together
in manchester a small gallery called
Paper next year so everyone look out for
that
um but this film is like so brilliant
and so unique
um and it's a real window into like the
whole way that an artist think what did
you
what did you take from Sade's film
um for me it was because I as a trans
man I
I can relate to like the binder issue
like
pretty closely and i thought it was
really brave for someone
to want to show off um the devices
that they use to kind of disguise the
parts of the body that they are
comfortable with
because most trans people whether
they're non-binary
male or trans male trans masculine and
they
want to not only hide the parts of their
body that
they don't feel aligned with themselves
but they they
don't want to show the devices that do
that because they're not normally very
attractive
pieces of clothing and and you just
you find yourself just hiding a lot and
I found it was even though it might not
be
every trans person's ideal approach to
it I don't think
everyone like would want to show them
things off
but the fact that there is somebody
doing that for them
it's really important and brave that
there's someone out there doing it
yeah i agree with that and it reminds me
of what you were saying about
your work that it's for the greater good
like some people from the community
express
something that others may not be able to
I also loved that they did it in kind of
a fun and
playful way they were like this one's
made out of light puffer jacket this
one's made out of canvas and
it was like it just took down the
pressure of that whole
shame I think um yeah definitely not
really
right um and so let's go on to Invisible
Women - did you know the story of those
two women Angela
and Lucia and the amazing kind of
uh lesbian activist history that was
right here in Manchester because that
story was so new to me when i first saw
it what did you think of that
I honestly I like probably many other
people I had no idea that these people
existed you hear about all the
like the LGBT movements and the big
things that changed how we live now and
how we can live our lives as
lgbtq people but these I've just never
heard of them I've never heard of these
stories and all of these great things
that they did and it was just so
important and Iwas honestly shocked
that um that
it hadn't been showcased or written
anywhere and
it was really poignant when she was sat
um
I don't know if it was a library like a
research center asking the person to
like
search for these names in the database
and just nothing was coming up
yeah and like for example that um
I think one of the films on Netflix or
something about
the um the
like first Pride parade and stuff like
that and
the group in that bookshop on
Christopher Street and things like that
like everyone knows about that story and
everyone's seen that film but nobody's
heard about these women
in in Manchester which is like now a
pretty proud LGBT inclusive place
yeah and they made such a huge
difference and i that was like
definitely my favorite film
um in the series that we're showing yeah
that's great to hear and I do, I agree
with you Ifeel like sometimes people in
our community we know more about what
happened in New York than about what
happened in Manchester
it's a it's almost a year since that
film came out and we showed the premiere
at home last year and Angela and Lucia
came and
um they are very much still activists
you know they're really
empowered people but we were talking in
our other conversation
how great would it have been if if
people like you and Icould have seen
that film at school as a teenager i mean
it's a brilliant thing
as a teaching tool would you agree like
yeah it was it was really like
educational
like Iactually learned a lot from it
about like the history
which that's why it was my favorite
really yeah
same um learnt so much
and so the last thing we're going to
chat about is Crypsis and like speaking
about
learning you know about other people in
the community
this is what that film was for me and
the filmmaker
and Chris and the producer, Siobhan um
they gathered lots of experiences from
different refugees and migrants
who were moving into the country because
of LGBTQ+ persecution
so they chose that story really
carefully and I found it really really
moving and you and I have both worked in
kind of nightlife settings as well and
that so that clubbing scene
was such an eye-opener because those
places for you and me are obviously like
where we work and where we celebrate but
for other people it might be quite a
different experience so there's a lot of
tension in that film and
what did you think of it what did you
get out of it I thought the um
like the beginning where he's getting
just bombarded and bombarded with all of
these questions
and that you could you could feel like
what he was feeling from
the repetitiveness of it and how many
times he had to go
through that and no matter what how many
times he said it and
the the um like severity of the things
that he was saying and she was still
like oh
well that's just not good enough like
can you go and get evidence it was like
what
like how can I you see my friend died
like what more do you want and it was it
was really upsetting that someone who's
already been friends so much
they still have to battle to just
feel safe you know what i mean and then
when it progressed
um like because the rest of the film
there wasn't any dialogue at all after
that bombardment
um and you could just feel him like
giving up like he didn't he did he tried
to go out
and get the photos and get the evidence
but he just
he didn't he didn't want to because he
didn't to me he didn't feel like he
should have to and he didn't feel like
he needed to
and then when he deleted the pictures at
the end he felt like
well i might as well give up because
even if i do show them these pictures
they're probably going to come up with a
reason
saying oh well you've just posed for
this you know i mean because he hasn't
got enough all the act from a certain
time skill it's all from one night so
you could really feel what the character
was feeling
yeah me too I really felt especially
because you say the language went away
and we just had him
and in that silence and that made him
queer feel
quite isolated and that's what really
moved me but also Ithink we're familiar
with that
as LGBTQ+ people it's like i am who i say
i am
you know what I mean and that's a really
powerful thing that I think people from
outside the community often don't have
to face
and yeah so well even when he didn't say
you know something he said a lot just
with his face and with his
with his demeanor so yeah I love that
reading of it and actually it's
interesting that
some people have read the deleting at
the end as him giving up
and some people have read it as him
taking back his power saying no i'm not
going to do that for you
so yeah I see that does that does
there's different possible outcomes both
of which are kind of painful in their
own way but like
yeah um I really enjoyed talking about
these
films with you friendly thank you so
much yeah me too and thanks for joining
us thanks again for having me
yeah of course um and I'd encourage
everyone to watch
the um Superbia Cinema collection it's
going to be online
all Sunday and all of the Bank Holiday
Monday and Finley's gonna have some
uh photography work in the Superbia
Gallery that's
uh the link for that is on the same page
thanks once again Finley Letchford-Dobbs D
um and thank you to everyone for tuning
in and enjoy the rest of Superbia
Sunday.
Goodbye, thank you
