Audio Interview, Larry Champoux, October 22, 2012

EVELYN BAILEY: Make sure the volume is up.

So today is Tuesday, October 22.

And I'm sitting here with Larry Champoux,

who is one of the founders of ImageOut twenty years ago.

And I'd first like to have you share some of your background.

Were you born in Rochester?

LARRY CHAMPOUX: I was born in Syracuse.

And my family moved to Rochester when I was about ten years old.

And like a lot of families, my dad got a job at Xerox.

So like many Xerox families, we moved to Penfield.

So I grew up in Penfield, New York.

EVELYN BAILEY: And so you went to the Penfield School?

LARRY CHAMPOUX: Penfield School District--

EVELYN BAILEY: --district.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: And graduated in 1973.

EVELYN BAILEY: Were you out then?

LARRY CHAMPOUX: I was a hippie then.

So there was a lot of flexibility

to maneuver within that framework.

EVELYN BAILEY: Free love.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: And so I wasn't--

I wouldn't say out, but I was surrounded

by many open-minded people, so many of whom

are still my great friends today.

EVELYN BAILEY: And where did you go to college, Larry?

LARRY CHAMPOUX: I went to SUNY Binghamton, Binghamton

University, and got a degree in English literature

and studied art as well.

EVELYN BAILEY: Were you always interested in art?

LARRY CHAMPOUX: Yeah.

I would say pretty much.

And from the time I was a child, I was creatively

engaged in one way or another.

EVELYN BAILEY: Were you an artist or--

LARRY CHAMPOUX: Well, I started out after college

writing poetry and studied poetry.

After Binghamton University, I went to a university

in Boulder, Colorado called Naropa University, Naropa

Institute, which is a Buddhist accredited college,

where I studied writing with people like Allen

Ginsberg and William Burroughs.

And it was the school that had been founded--

the writing school founded by Allen Ginsberg.

So I spent a couple of summers studying writing there also.

So my background after college was

in writing and worked at Writers & Books organizing readings,

organizing writing workshops.

And I got to meet a lot of writers and other artists

at that time and became sort of entrenched

in the creative community in Rochester.

EVELYN BAILEY: So you never really left Rochester?

LARRY CHAMPOUX: I never really left.

I was in college.

And I've traveled a great deal.

But this has been home base for quite a while.

My partner and I also have a home

in Vancouver, British Columbia, where

we try to spend as much time as possible also.

EVELYN BAILEY: Oh, wow.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: So I'm also sort of from Vancouver

I consider myself now.

EVELYN BAILEY: It's a great city.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: It's beautiful.

EVELYN BAILEY: Yeah.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: Beautiful.

EVELYN BAILEY: How did you get into the Pyramid?

My first introduction to you was through the Pyramid art

gallery at Village Gate and your auctions

and that sort of thing.

How did you get into the Pyramid?

LARRY CHAMPOUX: Well, Writers & Books

was a smaller, medium-sized cultural organization

as was Pyramid Art Center, which is now Rochester Contemporary.

And so I knew a lot of the folks there

and knew some of the board members.

And the two directors there--

Gina Mosesson and Tony Petracca--

had left to pursue other things at that time.

So the position became available at Pyramid Arts Center.

And I had done performances and had participated

in a lot of different activities at Pyramid Art Center,

so I applied for the job of executive artistic director

there.

And I think I got the job because I could write,

I could write grants.

And if you can write grants--

EVELYN BAILEY: You can get it.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: --you can do a lot of the job.

So they hired me.

And it was a wonderful opportunity.

And as it turned out at that time,

Pyramid Art Center was deeply in debt,

which I was not quite aware of.

So I spent a lot of time shoring up the finances

there and getting new sources of income

and getting rid of its debt.

But it was a wonderful opportunity

and broadened out my awareness of a lot of other arts

and artists at that time.

EVELYN BAILEY: As I recall, you had a very eclectic show

all the time, very--

LARRY CHAMPOUX: Yeah.

Pyramid Art Center at that time was

considered an artist's space.

And we had a couple of locations while I

was director there-- one at Visual Studies

Workshop and then a very large one at Village Gate.

And we had two theaters.

We had several different galleries.

And as an artist's space, which was dedicated

to support and presentation of artists,

we had musical performances, dance performances,

theater, a lot of performance art,

in addition to painting, sculpture, crafts,

installation art, whole range of visual arts.

EVELYN BAILEY: So when did you meet Susan Soleil?

LARRY CHAMPOUX: Well, that's sort of after Pyramid Art

Center.

Well, there's sort of a gap in there.

Let me go back a little bit.

After Pyramid Art--

Pyramid Art Center had a board of directors.

One of its board members was Martha Leonard,

whose partner was Lee Andrews, I think her name was at the time.

EVELYN BAILEY: OK.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: And they organized an event,

which was a convention conference called

Pink Flamingos and Purple Hearts, which

had a wide range of workshops and performances.

And Martha Leonard was on the board at Pyramid Art Center.

So in talking with them about their plans for it,

we discussed the possibility of having a film festival

as part of that.

So Lee and Martha hired me as a curator in Pyramid Art Center

to develop this film festival for Pink Flamingos and Purple

Hearts, a lesbian and gay film festival.

And I had been at Pyramid Art Center,

I'd been working with a lot of gay artists through the years

and presented--

well, presented a great deal of gay artists,

including some of the most notorious ones,

like Holly Hughes, lesbian theater artist

defunded by the NEA; and Karen Finley, very not a lesbian

but extremely gay-friendly, performance artist,

perhaps the most notorious performance

artist of the late '80s and early '90s, also defunded.

These were sort of the sorts of performance artists

that we brought, which were popular in New York,

and at the top of their field actually,

which was why we brought them in.

It wasn't that they were gay or lesbian or gay

or lesbian supportive.

They were doing some of the most incredible performance

work of the late '80s and early '90s,

tops of the field at a time when performance art was really

blossoming and blooming and where

there was an extremely vital period of time, driven partly

because of support from places like New York State

Council on the Arts and the NEA, which in New York state

were extremely supportive.

So I had done some film festivals

at Pyramid Arts Center before this.

I presented Todd Haynes' work at Pyramid Art Center

several times and had done many film festivals.

So the time came when Pink Flamingos and Purple Hearts

came around to expand that a bit and develop a film

festival for that, which essentially was the first film

festival of ImageOut, was this festival.

EVELYN BAILEY: Right.

That was in 19--

LARRY CHAMPOUX: Gosh, I'm trying to remember now.

I was looking through some old issues of the--

EVELYN BAILEY: 1990.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: '91 or '92?

EVELYN BAILEY: '91.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: '91 or '92, something like that?

And--

EVELYN BAILEY: Now, let me stop you for a minute.

Do you recall why--

what was the purpose in having you develop this--

LARRY CHAMPOUX: Well--

EVELYN BAILEY: --film festival?

LARRY CHAMPOUX: to understand that, it's a little bit

important to talk about what was happening with gays

and lesbians as it related to the federal government

and the state government.

In 1989, controversies erupted regarding funding

for lesbian and gay, LGBT artists,

and allied or allied artists due to what

was considered controversial nature of their artwork.

In 1989, Alfonse D'Amato, our New York state senator,

denounced Andre Serrano's photographed Piss Christ,

if you remember that, which was--

EVELYN BAILEY: I do.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: And that opened up

a wide range of conservative backlash

against artists, particularly those working

in the avant-garde or experimental ways, which

gay and lesbian artists have been lumped in with avant-garde

and experimental artists because of their outsider status

for so long.

And that extended to the National Endowment for the Arts

eventually.

It sort of blew up there with defunding of some gay artists,

like Holly Hughes and, again, Karen Finley.

Now, some of these artists were ones

that we were supportive of and actually ones that we

had helped get NEA grants.

So Pyramid Art Center was embroiled

in much of the controversy there,

because while this was happening,

we had grants for some of these our same artists that

didn't get defunded, like some of their other grants did,

fortunately.

But it was a very strange time.

And we were under a lot of heat and a lot of pressure

in some very strange ways.

During that time frame sort of out of the blue,

the Internal Revenue Service audited us,

which in the middle of all of this,

we really viewed as a harassment and intimidation that

was coming down from the federal government,

though there's no way to prove that.

EVELYN BAILEY: No.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: But these were tactics--

EVELYN BAILEY: But coincidences don't count.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: These were tactics

that were not unheard of.

EVELYN BAILEY: Right.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: And the audit turned out perfect.

Our books were totally in order.

But it was a small arts organizations,

so it was very difficult to be audited.

So we were embroiled in all of that.

And I spent a lot of time actually on the phone

with lawyers at the National Endowment

for the Arts trying to ensure that this funding was secured.

And like directors of a lot of artist's spaces

around the country, we organized in order to try and fight

this oppression and censorship.

It became this issue of censorship of artists

mostly impacting LGBT artists.

And so then my last couple of years at Pyramid Art Center

were taken up largely with this issue of censorship,

which I felt a responsibility to respond to.

And in many ways, that over a course of time blew over.

But there was what was called the chilling effect, which

meant that, while specifically LGBT artists were not not being

funded, there was a movement away from addressing

those issues, a chilling effect, where we can talk

about all sorts of other things, but we

don't need to talk about LGBT issues

or be supportive of LGBT artists.

And it's not that we're not funding them.

It's just our interests are over here.

So there was a chilling effect that actually persists

to this day, when you look at the Smithsonian Institution

just recently taking down an exhibit of portraits

of LGBT individuals.

And that was just like last year that that happened.

So we still are experiencing this.

And Andre Serrano's work is still

controversial to this day.

And even right now, Mitt Romney is threatening

to defund the National Endowment for the Arts

as one of his priorities.

So we still live with these issues today.

So after that involvement, it became

important to figure out what are some long term

strategies for dealing with this issue in my own community.

And one of those strategies was empowering--

how do you empower a community to take control

of their own cultural expression in a way

so they're not dependent upon the bestowing of funds

to do that?

EVELYN BAILEY: To do that.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: And the film festival

early on became a vehicle, not only

for telling of the wide range of stories of our community,

but for our community to take control of it also,

to not have it controlled by other forces

or a conservative agenda, to set our own agenda.

And Pink Flamingos and Purple Hearts

was an opportunity to step into that water of a larger film

festival than Pyramid Art Center had done before.

And I viewed it as an opportunity also

to let it be something of a focus group as well,

because the audiences were much smaller at that point.

And we talked after each film, not only about

the films, but about, what do you think?

Could a film festival of a larger scale work here?

Should we move forward with this?

And so those discussions became very important

in developing the larger festival that at that time

was called the Rochester Lesbian and GAY Film Video Festival.

EVELYN BAILEY: So it was because of Pink Flamingos and Purple

Hearts that the opportunity arose

to create this film festival that was larger

than what you had done before?

LARRY CHAMPOUX: Well, what happened

at that point is, after that conference,

I left Pyramid Art Center and spent about the next eight

months to a year working pretty much exclusively

on some other issues but also in the development of a film

festival.

It was like, OK, well, go for it.

I had an opportunity to just devote time and energy to it.

So I did that.

But that allowed the--

that was an opportunity to bring resources together

around a larger film festival at a time when I was also

making a transition of being director of Pyramid Art Center.

EVELYN BAILEY: And so the Alliance

was your kind of umbrella?

LARRY CHAMPOUX: Well, at that time,

I was on the board of the Gay Alliance.

And I was also vise president of the Rochester Lesbian and Gay

Political Caucus.

So the Alliance was well aware of the success

of Purple Hearts and Pink Flamingos, which sort of was--

I look at it in many ways as sort

of a new era for how the community began

to identify itself.

There was a lot going on at that time.

And there was-- like the Alliance is always reinventing

itself to a certain extent.

I approached the Alliance, said, look,

here's a really great idea for a fundraiser,

a way to raise some funds.

And initially, my consideration for the film festival was--

because I was in the cultural community

and in the political and social community,

it was that a film festival could

be a vehicle to raise funds and support for the Alliance.

It's bring so many people into it.

And they said, well, let's go for this,

let's see what we can do here.

And I immediately set to raising funds,

immediately because I had worked with NYSCA for so long,

I was able to get NYSCA support for the film festival.

So the first film festival, in the first couple of them,

I believe, were under the auspices of the Gay Alliance.

And actually, the very first one was also

cosponsored by the Rochester Lesbian and Gay Political

Caucus.

And the first one made money.

And those dollars were split between the Alliance

and the Political Caucus.

At that time in the Political Caucus,

the major issue was domestic partnership benefits

in the city of Rochester, which had been there now

for about twenty years.

So the funds raised from the first film festival--

the first full film festival under the Alliance, part

of those funds where the educational opportunities

regarding domestic partnership benefits

and educational materials.

So it was really a wonderful sort

of like fusing of the community in many ways

that had multi-fold benefits.

EVELYN BAILEY: And that was--

it was shortly after that that the city passed

domestic partnership benefits.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: It was just about the same time,

because really, it was all sort of at the same time

that the city passed those domestic partnership

benefits at the city of Rochester,

which I was involved in also because I

was involved with the Caucus.

And Bill Pritchard was very involved in that

also at that time.

So the film festival from the get-go was largely successful.

But it also didn't--

I spent a lot of time in those early months between Pink

Flamingos conference and the Gay Alliance supported

film festival going out to community groups

and talking to everybody-- and out to bars

and like selling the story and say,

I want to do this, what do you think about this.

And there was a great deal of sort of skepticism that I met--

interest, but it's kind of like, can we do that here?

Can we do something that big here?

And so some of them were saying, well, I think we can,

we just sort of did this.

And I also said that we have a really strong community that

had organized so strongly and so dramatically

around the issue of HIV and AIDS just a decade earlier

or so, that we had a strong network of volunteers

and a strong sensibility of community involvement

and self-sufficiency, that the film festival was

able to build upon.

And that self-sufficiency is critical.

That, again, the community taking charge and control

of its own culture is similar to the community taking charge

of its own health issues.

And that has been a hallmark of our community

and of the gay community nationally

that we are able to do that.

EVELYN BAILEY: We take care of ourselves.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: We take care of ourselves.

EVELYN BAILEY: And our own.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: And our own.

And that, whether its cultural issues or political issues

or social issues, I think has been

the most critical component to the success

that we've had over the past few generations in securing

LGBT rights, is that self-sufficiency and mutual

support that we always ultimately come back to.

So Susan Soleil was one of the members

in the audience at that conference Pink Flamingos

and Purple Hearts and was extremely enthusiastic

audience member and early on became

one of the strong supporters and originators in the film

festival and workhorses of the film festival.

And at that time, it was like I didn't want to be--

we called them producers early on--

I didn't want to be the only producer,

and there wasn't a woman involved.

And I said, geez, would you want to be a coproducer?

So Susan came out as a coproducer

for when we worked with the Gay Alliance

and then for many years afterwards worked

in that capacity.

EVELYN BAILEY: Who were the members of the core group?

LARRY CHAMPOUX: Oh, gosh.

Well, I can remember some of whom were early on.

Scott McCarney was early on.

And Jamie and Sally Whitbeck have been there

from the beginning.

Interestingly, at the time that ImageOut was beginning,

Jamie was working on a film festival,

I think for the Unitarian Universalist Church,

or I don't remember what church and simultaneous to that.

And I was sitting up in Bill Coppard's office

making plans for the film festival.

And Jamie called up on the phone at the same time

asking Bill Coppard.

And Bill Coppard goes, well, maybe you

should speak to Larry Champoux.

And Jamie goes, huh?

Well, he's sitting right here.

So Jamie came in and has been a really a

vibrant, strong support.

Early on, David Emert, Susan Soleil, and many others.

And what happens is there's been such strong volunteers,

so many different volunteers have

come through the film festival at this point,

that there are audience members.

There are former board members.

There are former volunteers.

There are supporters.

So there's a whole, large, sort of inner-mixed community that's

emerged around the film festival.

EVELYN BAILEY: And how--

so the first film festival was held where?

I mean, where were the films shown, The Little?

LARRY CHAMPOUX: Most of them were at The Little, as I

recall, The Little.

And I think perhaps that first year, we also

had The Dryden as well.

So The Little was a major resource.

And I can't recall, we may have had some other locations

as well.

EVELYN BAILEY: How did you get the connection with The Dyrden.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: Gosh.

EVELYN BAILEY: Do you remember?

LARRY CHAMPOUX: That I don't recall.

But you know, interestingly, at that time, The Dryden's film

selection was a lot more spayed, if you remember back

a number of years.

EVELYN BAILEY: Yeah.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: They appealed to an older audience.

And so we came in with this OUTlandish Film Festival

early on and brought audiences in.

And I think it's part of the way that ImageOut has had a larger

impact on the larger film, the media community,

is that we sort of, I think, showed The Dyrden

and the Eastman that they can broaden out

their film selection and get audiences to come in for that.

They don't have to rely on all Fred Astaire films.

And so the ImageOut Film Festival

has had an impact, not just on the gay community,

but on the larger film and media community--

EVELYN BAILEY: Oh, absolutely.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: --as well.

And we continue to to this day.

And I think what's most notable is that it's been administered

so well, which is a skill Susan Soleil brought to the film

festival clearly with strong administrative skills

to develop the sort of structural components

that it could have some of that longevity.

EVELYN BAILEY: Who took over after Susan?

LARRY CHAMPOUX: Gosh, you know, I--

I don't have the whole history.

I don't recall then.

EVELYN BAILEY: It must have been Kevin.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: Because I sort of have come in and out of it.

I come in and mostly do fundraising

and some special programs.

And then I go away for a few years.

So I don't really recall.

I don't really recall.

One thing that Susan did and David did

is they created, which is a lot of work,

its own nonprofit organization.

And that's a monumental feat.

EVELYN BAILEY: So Susan was responsible for that.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: Susan and David, I think,

were responsible for creating it as an independent--

EVELYN BAILEY: 501(c)(3).

LARRY CHAMPOUX: --501(c)(3) organization.

And with that comes a whole range of responsibilities.

But early on, even from the first film festival--

I mean, I'd worked in nonprofit organizations

and had dragged Pyramid Art Center out of debt

to profitability.

And so from early on, there was an insistence

that it had to be financially successful also.

Because there are so many projects that look great

and people have ambitious ideas, but they--

EVELYN BAILEY: Fall short.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: --lose money.

And people, as soon as the money is, people lose interest.

So from early on--

and even the first one where we made money

for the Alliance and the Political Caucus,

there's been the intention that we

need to ensure that there's a positive bottom line, which

it has had almost every year.

EVELYN BAILEY: Yes.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: And because it has been successful,

people want to be involved with a successful organization.

And so it continues to attract really

a wide range of talented people who come through there

and contribute to it, a lot of time, energy,

and love and passion.

So I'm not sure who-- like, I don't recall exactly--

EVELYN BAILEY: Who.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: --who turned--

I don't recall all of that.

EVELYN BAILEY: Yeah.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: Susan will know.

Susan will know more of that.

EVELYN BAILEY: And Jamie Whitbeck.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: And Jamie would know that too.

EVELYN BAILEY: Larry, where do you get your passion?

LARRY CHAMPOUX: Well, I'm sort of the type that is--

I am sort of driven to kind of makes things happen.

I kind of like--

I sort of look for where is there a void,

and how can you fill it.

Because it sort of is like, when you begin to fill a void,

there's all sorts of energy that starts to formulate around it.

The film festival is kind of like that.

I'm sort of-- I like ideas and encourage and enthuse

people around ideas.

But I'm not the person to carry it through after that.

I like the spark.

I've always loved the spark and the spark of creativity

and the spark of the inspirational moment.

What I've always sort of beyond that have been interested in

is how does that play out in a community.

How do you-- like at Writers & Books, it was--

when I was there, working with poets,

it was like we generated a community of poets.

And there was like creating an energy around that.

So where does that come from?

I don't know.

I'm a Buddhist.

And I sort of like am driven in different ways

sometimes and sort of make different determinations

about what's success is or what is successful.

EVELYN BAILEY: Well, you certainly are a connector.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: Mm-hm.

EVELYN BAILEY: You present an idea or capture an idea.

And people tend to gravitate toward you

to initially get involved.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: You know what I think

it is, if it's a skill that I have,

it's because I have been a writer and a poet,

I'm an articulator.

So I think I bring words and voice to things that people

are already feeling.

And that's what it is.

It's kind of like--

this was precisely, I think, with the film festival,

it was like, don't we all sort of need this or really

want this?

And don't you see how this can sort of happen in this way?

So I don't think it's--

I think it's just articulating a community's needs

and bringing voice to them that then people respond to,

because there's words then that express something

that they might be feeling.

That's to me, if I'm looking at my own self,

if there's a skill I have, that might be it.

EVELYN BAILEY: Yeah.

Well, you certainly have it, because you've

been successful doing that in a number of endeavors.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: Yeah, mm-hm.

EVELYN BAILEY: What happened with Susan Soleil and you and--

LARRY CHAMPOUX: Oh, I think that I had sort of fulfilled

the part of--

I mean, I had been working for a number of years

on this sort of an issue.

It wasn't-- You know, I didn't sort of just like pop off.

I'd been supporting lesbian and gay artists

and doing many film festivals and organized this Pink

Flamingos thing and carried it through.

But then I sort of had done my component of that.

And David and Susan were very interested in formulating it

as a nonprofit at that point.

And that was not sort of what was most interesting to me.

And it was also kind of like, if you

want to encourage a community and teach a community how

to do a film festival, which was like here it is, here's

the tools to do it, here's the distributors,

here's how you get in touch with filmmakers,

here's how you present it in a theater,

here's the equipment that you need,

you lay that all out as I did, then it sort of was

important to me also, although difficult for me,

was just to step back.

And it's like, I'll let the community sort of do it.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: And I think it's been a hallmark of the film

festival that it isn't identified with leadership so

much as it's identified with community.

EVELYN BAILEY: I would agree.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: The community is the leader.

EVELYN BAILEY: Yeah.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: And so therefore,

as the founder of this film festival,

I thought the best thing in many ways to do

is to step back and let the community do it.

EVELYN BAILEY: Do it.

Who originally chose the films?

LARRY CHAMPOUX: I did originally.

And then we worked with a committee.

Earlier on, it's been sort of a committee of folks.

And then eventually, it became more specialized,

because the film festival grew and became more sophisticated.

But originally, I had been the person

that had had that experience.

But quickly-- again, it's not about--

it wasn't about a curator.

It was about community engaged in it.

So it was important for other people to do that too.

It wasn't about me being a power broker,

selecting films, as much as it is a community with programmers

and a committee of people sharing in that endeavor

and defining it themselves as much as possible.

And now Michael Gamilla has been the chair of that

and done such a wonderful job with that for several years

now.

But so many others, like Rachel Brister

did a wonderful job too.

And what's sort of interesting to note

is that the explosion of LGBT media

and film over the past 20 years is incredible.

The quality has risen dramatically.

The funding availability for films to be done,

the subject matter has broadened in many ways.

And earlier on, because it came from an avant-garde

garde and experimental background, a lot of it

was not as mainstream oriented as it has now, which

there's pluses and minuses too.

EVELYN BAILEY: Well, and there's a huge international thrust.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: Yes.

EVELYN BAILEY: It does appear that the energy has

broadened to the world.

And there's this desire or a need for everyone

to see on the screen who we are.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: Yeah.

And I think, you know, what related to that,

I think what's most important right now is for those of us

here in the United States to see the stories that are being told

in some other countries now, where the issues are far more

critical and life-threatening and dramatic and dire

than we face in the United States,

so that we don't become complacent with our own success

and presume the world is changing,

when only our neighborhood is.

EVELYN BAILEY: Yeah.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: And so that international focus

is really important to maintain.

And the film festival continues to do that.

EVELYN BAILEY: Yes.

Now, when we first talked on the phone or by email,

you said you really wanted the real story

to be told about ImageOut.

Have you told it?

LARRY CHAMPOUX: I think that the major point for the gay

community to understand always for the foreseeable future is

that our capabilities to have free speech are really tenuous

and to not take for granted that the opportunities we have,

like the ImageOut Film Festival, and not to presume that those

rights of free speech cannot be taken away in a second.

And while it may not be defunding of a film,

it may be legislation in the South demanding that

schoolteacher's cannot even say the word gay.

These issues of free speech, free assembly

continue to haunt us to this day.

And the film festival is a beacon, perhaps,

that can shine light on how tenuous that can be.

A change in administration, a change in Congress,

a change in the Supreme Court can dramatically

impact our current entertainments and enjoyments

and quality to organize.

So the film festival for me going into what is,

again, a way to provide a self-sufficient

means for the cultural community to tell

these stories to each other, to the world,

and to see their stories expressed on the screen.

And that can't be forgotten.

It can't just become an entertainment.

EVELYN BAILEY: Talk to me a little bit

about the forms of censorship.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: Well, in the era when the film festival was

created, that censorship involved pretty clearly issues

of defunding lesbian and gay artists or organizations,

like Pyramid Art Center, which didn't get defunded,

but similar organizations being defunded

for presenting these issues.

So one of the forms of censorship

is not only defunding, but not funding anyway.

Let me give you an example of how it is that defunding

is more dramatic.

But I spent a year--

and this was maybe seven years ago or more pretty recently--

doing development work for the film festival.

And I approached Monroe County to fund the film festival.

And at that time, the county had a category of mid-size arts

organizations with budgets over $100,000 that

could receive county funds.

And there was a pool of these organizations,

similar size to ImageOut, receiving this funds already.

And for a year, I spent contacting Maggie Brooks'

administration and was put off.

For a year, I pursued them, till finally I

had a meeting with a couple of her assistants,

where they said they just don't have the money

to do that though.

So we weren't defunded by the county,

but we were not funded, even though we

fit the parameters of other similar-sized arts

organizations.

So when you are a nonprofit organization,

funding or not funding is a primary means of censorship,

although legislatively, it can happen as well.

At the time of the NEA crisis, there

was a decency clause created about what

could be funded by the NEA.

So there was legislation that I think eventually the Supreme

Court shot down, because decency is such a broad term.

So legislatively, it can happen.

EVELYN BAILEY: What about the rating system?

LARRY CHAMPOUX: Rating sys-- well, ratings

are sort of an explicit way.

But the problem we are up against in our community

is that there are people who not only consider our movies to be

controversial or indecent, they consider our very lives

to be controversial and indecent.

So if you are up against individuals

who do not believe the integrity of your own being,

they are not going to be supportive of art

that expresses that either.

So the rating system--

our lives are always controversial on some level

and despite the fact for many of us our lives--

our watching our children, picking them up from day care,

taking them to soccer practice, going to work--

our lives are, for the most part, a moment to moment basis

are not controversial at all but our being is.

And so we are always up against that.

And we are always up against the argument

that our relationships are indecent

and our lives are indecent.

Now, with marriage equality, which many in the gay community

are supportive of and others are not,

one of the clear benefits of that is that it has given

our relationships credibility at a governmental level,

that our relationships are as decent as anybody else's.

And that is a major impact.

Regardless of whether you want to get married,

you like marriage, it is monumental, see change for us.

So when we have enemies who consider us indecent,

censorship as at every corner.

I'm particularly concerned about it

as it relates to young people, whether they can express

themselves as an openly gay, LGBT individual

in their school, or whether children can hear the word gay

and not presume, again, that it's

indecent or terrible or dirty, and that teachers have freedom

to say that word, to speak.

And we're not there yet.

EVELYN BAILEY: No.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: We're not there yet.

EVELYN BAILEY: No, we aren't.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: And it's not a proselytizing.

It's not, because it--

but it's to prevent young people from hurting themselves

and to give those young LGBT kids an opportunity

to grow to adulthood without any unusual fears about their world

that they live in.

It's a safety issue.

EVELYN BAILEY: Very much so.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: So censorship, bullying,

intimidation is a means to quiet someone in ways

that are almost so difficult. How do you tell a young lesbian

to not be so dykey or a young kid

to get punched or shoved because he's too faggy.

Where does that child go, except inside to a world of fear.

So currently, bullying is understood

to be bad because it's violent.

But bullying is an intimidation of young people

at a critical point in their age-- and adults, and adults.

So it happens on a lot of different levels.

But there's a connection there.

It's quieting.

It's putting people back into the shadows where you belong,

where I don't have to deal with you and your flaunting

of your life or whatever.

So the film festival is an explosion of celebration

in the opposite direction.

Publicly in our community at broad, we say, we're big,

we are diverse, there are many, many faces in our community,

and here's a whole bunch of them.

Some, you will agree with.

Some, you're going to hate.

Some, you're going to love.

Some, you're going to embrace.

Some, you're going to model your life after.

But here they all are.

Let's all look at it as a community at large

and as a LGBT community and move forward.

So the value of it, it brings it all wide open and out there.

And it's so beautiful, it's so gratifying to me

to see so many people work so hard in this festival

every year, looking back twenty years ago

and just see so many people embrace this now and embrace

that notion of let's celebrate this and hug each other,

when they see each other at the film festival and say,

I haven't seen you since last year, and here we are again.

I love that.

It's a wonderful celebration.

It sort of is a celebration that is an antidote

to that sort of hatred.

So I guess that's sort of what I wanted to say.

EVELYN BAILEY: Well, I have a couple more questions.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: Sure.

EVELYN BAILEY: One is, when you first began this work,

did you have any idea of the impact that it might have?

LARRY CHAMPOUX: I think so, yeah.

I think I sort of did.

I think I sort of read the tea leaves in the community.

And I thought, this is something that we are sort of really

ripe for and we have the skills here

to do that and the financial wherewithal to pull this off,

largely based, again, on the fact

that our community had organized so strongly

around HIV and AIDS.

I said, yeah, we can have an impact here.

We can take that further still.

There's more we can do with this.

And I think I did.

And particularly after Pink Flamingos and Purple Hearts

conference, I had a sense then that this could really happen,

that there could be something really good here that

could happen.

And I knew at that point I sort of

had enough knowledge on how to organize a film festival, which

was sort of a new skill for our community.

And so I thought that if enough people could be taught

how to do that, it could have--

If it had been sort of a leadership-driven organization,