Video Interview, Larry Champoux, November 1, 2012

KEVIN INDOVINO: (unintelligible) This is the tough question.

How do you want your name to be spelled out on screen?

First and last name. (unintelligible)

first and last name.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: Let's do Larry, L-A-R-R-Y, Champoux,

C-H-A-M-P-O-U-X.

KEVIN INDOVINO: So first thing we're

going to talk about, because you talked about

with Evelyn earlier is, is the gay rights

movement and the arts, it seemed to me, particularly

at the crux of the whole AIDS crisis

where we were really out there.

The whole gay rights movement kind

of (unintelligible) the whole AIDS awareness movement.

But we were also then getting attacked

from all different directions.

And you come from the many experiences,

you were with the Pyramid Arts Center at the time.

And we know of that whole Piss on Christ thing,

the controversy that that created.

Can you just talk to me briefly a little bit

about how even the arts were being attacked,

in regards LGBT issues, and that kind of thing.

CREW: Someone's phone is on.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Someone's phone is on?

LARRY CHAMPOUX: Oh, maybe.

CREW: (unintelligible)

KEVIN INDOVINO: (unintelligible)

LARRY CHAMPOUX: One of the things

that I think is really interesting about the 1980s

in terms of arts and art activism

is that when the AIDS crisis hit it required the gay community

to respond in some really unique and creative ways.

And when ACT UP started it was comprised

of a great many individuals from a community

and a great many artists.

And political activism at that time

sort of merged with performance art.

When you look at some of the actions

that ACT UP took in the streets and in the cities

across America, it was a very creative movement.

So throughout the 1980s, I think that the gay community

began to be infused with a political activism

and a creativity.

And that political activism and creativity

crossed over into arts organizations at that time.

Many of whom began to develop supportive mechanisms

for gay and lesbian artists because they were under attack.

And because they recognized that there

was something important creative happening here in this crisis.

At that time, I worked at an organization,

Pyramid Arts Center which is now Rochester Contemporary.

And we were an artist space in a multi art center what

that means is primarily we developed programs and support

services for a wide range of artists.

OK.

I'm going to pick you back up where you started with.

Don't worry about the camera.

Just talk to me.

OK.

At that time I was the executive and artistic director

of Pyramid Art Center and we were an artist space which

means we develop programs in support of artists

and we are multi arts organization, which

meant that we had programs in a wide range of disciplines

from theater and performance art, music, dance

as well as the whole range of visual arts.

And it was a great time.

It was exciting.

There was an explosion of creativity coming out

of the East Village in New York and there

was an emergence of performance art in ways that

had never been seen before.

And the hybridization of art forms

was a time for lots of invention.

And we were fortunate that we had mechanisms

at the New York State Council in the Arts

and the National Endowment for the Arts

that was supportive of this Avant-Garde experimental

components in our culture and also supportive

of lesbian and gay artists.

and diverse artists.

There were funding mechanisms in place in support of that.

So at Pyramid Arts Center we were

able to secure a lot of that funding

and I worked as a panelist at New York state

Council on the Arts and a consultant

for a few other programs there and also

a consultant for the National Endowment for the Arts

to develop a regrind programs for diverse artists.

So it was exciting to be in this mix and what opportunity that

provided for our community was we were able to bring

a lot of these artists into Rochester,

Artists' like Holly Hughes, lesbian theater

artist, and Karen Finley, not a lesbian herself, but sort

of a hero of the gay movement out

of East Village at that time.

And provide supportive mechanisms for these artists

as well.

We presented the early work of Todd Haynes

early in his career.

And even other wonderful groups like Blue Man Group,

we presented early on.

So it's an exciting time in our space there

and we had crowds of people that came in.

Unfortunately not everyone viewed this experimentation

with the same enthusiasm that we did.

In the beginning in the late 1980s,

there began to be a backlash.

Senator D'Amato of New York state

ripped up a catalog that contained Andre Serrano's work,

an infamous piece called Piss Christ,

which has gone on to be hugely misinterpreted

for political purposes.

And following up on that began to be

attacks from Jesse Helms regarding funding for lesbian

and gay artists and others associated with experimental

and Avant Garde art.

People like Holly Hughes, and Karen Finley, Tim Miller,

John flack were de-funded.

This created the need for all of us

within this artist's space movement in the United States

to organize around what can we do to stop this.

We believed that these artists deserved

to have their viewpoints known and that their work should not

be censored.

So it became a crisis of censorship

within the lesbian and gay community

starting in the late 1980s and proceeding into the 1990s.

KEVIN INDOVINO: So at some point, you and a couple

other people came up with an Idea

to confront censorship within the gay and lesbian art

community.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but that

led into what became pink flamingos and (unintelligible).

Can you kind of walk me through that a little bit.

What was your reaction to this attack and the idea that

came out of that?

LARRY CHAMPOUX: There are a few values

I think that we have within the lesbian and gay community that

are unique to our community because we love our country.

We love our communities.

We love our families.

But I think one of the values that we

have is a commitment to self-sufficiency

within our community.

We've been attacked for centuries.

And our response to that has been

to organize however we could to be supportive of each other.

So looking at how to respond to this issue of censorship,

in my own mind I'm thinking somehow we

have to develop programs that make use of that.

We had seen that throughout the AIDS crisis

as our community came forward in support of itself

when no one else was there.

When we did not have medical treatments, when we did not

have politicians backing us up, when there was not

money flowing for research or medicine,

we supported each other and organized

around that to change the environment

and to change policies.

So looking at the crisis in censorship

it seems like there are similar mechanisms that

could be put in place for that.

Within Pyramid Arts Center we had small lesbian and gay film

festivals of various kinds and had

had dialogues about lesbian and gay film

festival in a larger community.

It was a movement that was probably really only about

five years old at that time.

I don't think there's many film festivals of its sort

that are more than a generation old now.

And an opportunity for that arose when a couple of women

named Lee Andrews and Martha Leonard came up

with a wonderful idea to develop a convention for lesbian, gay,

transgender, and bisexual people who live in our community.

Sort of a multi purpose convention and conference

with workshops and great entertainments with some

of the top performers within our community at that time

like the Flirtations and I think Chris Williamson was there.

Martha Leonard was on our board at Pyramid Art Center

and she and Lee approached me about organizing a film

festival for as a test in a sense for Pink Flamingos

and Purple Hearts conference.

And this seemed like a good opportunity

because it was funded.

They were going to pay Pyramid Art Center to produce this.

And so the funding was in place for it

and it allowed us to move forward with plans

that we had wanted to initiate and it

seemed like we would have an audience built in for it.

The staff at an art center and myself

developed a film festival for this conference.

It was a small film festival.

Maybe I think maybe a dozen films set up just

in a room with a 16 millimeter projector

and I think with some video equipment

with chairs set up and promoted it at the conference

and had a wonderful response at the conference.

And it was such that we used it as a sort of focus group

essentially.

Because after each film, we would talk about the film

and with audiences we would also talk

about the possibility of creating a film

festival within our community.

How could that work?

Would you go to it?

What would you think would be barriers

to getting people to go to it?

Because the audience was not huge for it and so

it was manageable to have these sorts of discussions

about how a film festival could begin to function

within our community.

And it was great fun.

I mean, people couldn't make it to one screening,

so we just set the camera back up again at 11 o'clock

and showed films again as late as people

wanted to stay there and just show them over and over again.

It was pretty casual but very effective.

And so that became the first reckoning

of that we could, in fact do a film festival in our community.

We figured that this was a possibility, that there

were ways to figure it out, and people were ready for it

and they were interested in it.

KEVIN INDOVINO: So eventually this idea

really moved into --what was it-- the political caucus?

Kind of under their umbrella?

LARRY CHAMPOUX: At that point I left Pyramid Art Center

and had the opportunity and the time

to devote to development of the film festival.

And began pretty much that became the central focus

of what I did.

I had been on the board at the Gay Alliance of the Yangtze

Valley at that time and I was also

Vise President at the Rochester Lesbian and Gay Political

Caucus, which is sort of a local predecessor to the Empire State

Pride agenda.

So I approached the gay alliance about the possibility

of being a sponsor of the festival

so that funding could be, there was a conduit for funding

to happen.

And also because I was affiliated

with the political caucus approached them

about also co-sponsoring the film festival.

So the first movement in the film festival

is under the auspices of GAGV with some co-sponsorship

from the political caucus.

And there was skepticism.

It's like any sort of new idea.

So I really had to do my marketing and selling

for people to see that this was a possibility.

And had to ensure that it would not be a fiscal drain on either

of those organizations, which was very important from the

get go.

So I had to present a mechanism for actually

how this could financially work with earned and unearned

income, how I could survive from ticket sales

and from grant money.

Because I had been a panelist at New York State

Council and the Arts, I understood

the funding mechanisms that worked there and early on we

had support from New York State Council and the Arts.

They knew me they understood that I

had the skills to do this.

So fortunately we had that support early on,

which meant a great deal in terms

of giving the film festival credibility at that time.

So I, through the gay alliance, began

to do calls for volunteers to organize around us

and this was a new project, a new organization.

The only thing we had some semblance that this could work,

but we had a lot of energy within our community.

What we had here that makes our community so special I think

is we have a long history of strong volunteerism.

Again based on our self-sufficiency

within our community to be strong.

And we had come through and we're

still in the AIDS HIV crisis at that time

and had learned a great deal about organizing

on a large scale moving our community,

not just in a small way but in a big way politically.

Plus we had begun to be more politically organized

in conventional ways to support for openly gay politicians.

And so we had grown a great deal at that point which

helped to the early organizing of the festival

to attract some really talented folks.

KEVIN INDOVINO: So tell me, let's

just jump ahead over here.

Tell me about the first festival.

What was it like?

What are your most fondest memories

of that first Image Out?

Was even called Image Out yet, was it?

LARRY CHAMPOUX: No.

Early on the film festival was called

the Rochester Lesbian and Gay Film and Video Festival,

later changed to Image Out.

My strongest memories of the first film festival

was the overwhelming audiences that showed up for it.

And anyone that has been to the film festival

sees how great it is when the theater is full.

But in that first year, we had one of the smaller theaters

at the little and we had people sitting in the aisles even,

it was so full.

We were putting them in and we were like, I don't know.

What about the fire marshals?

And it was like there are controversy over them.

What do we do?

There's so many people here and we don't

have enough seats for them.

And it was like at that point, let's risk it.

It's important that we all stuff in here together to experience

this together and that added to the excitement of it

and the enthusiasm of it.

And I think early on was an indication

of the community's love for culture, and for each other.

It was a wonderful feeling to see all these people there

and was extremely exciting for us and was a success.

And we made money for the alliance

and made money for the political caucus.

And to give a sense of what it was

like at that time, the city of Rochester

was working towards trying to develop domestic denish benefit

partners.

To give you a sense of what was happening

in the community at that time, the gay community

was working with the city to develop domestic partnership

benefits for employees of the City of Rochester.

It was very controversial and took a great deal of convincing

of city council to go along with this

and we weren't sure what was going to happen.

But some of the money that was used for that

was film festival profits used for educational purposes

to promote the concept of the value of domestic partnership

benefits.

And we did succeed in getting domestic partnership benefits

for the city of Rochester.

So there was a whole lot of really exciting things going

on at that time and sort of a dynamic overlap of how

these things all came together.

So it was a benefit of good timing and good people

early on that help make it successful.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah, you just talked about something

that I want to explore a little bit more here.

Bringing people together for an artistic and cultural event

or activity, but still then tying that

into some sort of activism and, again,

using the arts and culture and using

that as a vehicle to then get legislation

passed or bring more awareness about gay and lesbian issues.

Thoughts on that?

LARRY CHAMPOUX: Well given that our community was under attack

in the 1980s and early 1990s, regarding our own culture

and we were facing censorship of our own culture,

it became imperative for gays and lesbians around the country

and in our own community to develop programs

where they took control of their own culture

so that it would be relatively safe from these attacks

on our culture, and would be free of censorship

as best as possible.

That self-sufficiency has allowed the film festival

to present a wide range of important topics

to our community.

The film festival has educated our community

about marriage, diversity, gender issues, women's issues,

children's issues, educational issues, all of which

have political and social components.

And so the film festival serves not just as an entertainment

vehicle, but a means for our community

to stay on top of what's happening locally, nationally,

and internationally.

Which is, to me, one of the most important components

right now is the international component to the film festival

because there are so many dramatic issues

facing our brothers and sisters around the world

that are largely invisible to us unless we take time

to learn about that.

And the film festival helps to make sure that that happens.

So culture and activism have really always probably

been connected.

But for us, it's intrinsic to our lives

right now that we need to maintain that activism

and maintain that cultural activism in order

to ensure that we aren't cast back into the shadows again.

KEVIN INDOVINO: So looking back at 20 years of ImageOut-- this

is kind of a two part question.

As a founding father of this festival, question A,

why do you think it's been so successful for 20 years?

And then adding to that, what are you most proud of,

in regards to what you did to get it started?

LARRY CHAMPOUX: I look towards--

I need to start again.

There's a lot of confusion about our community.

And we have been under attack for so many years

and have had so many misconceptions relayed

about who we are and what we do.

We have been conveyed as evil and bad influences

and have been denied rights of association, rights to speak,

rights to marry, for so many years

that the film festival, within our own community,

brings to light I think what is really

essential about our entire movement

is that it's not really about sexuality.

Our movement really is about our capabilities and freedom

to love each other, to love our families,

to be respected at our jobs, to respect each other,

and to live in a environment where

children can grow up in that same spirit of love

and acceptance.

It's a movement-- really, when you

look beyond the politics of it, and when

you look beyond the movements of it and the activism of it,

it's a movement founded in our love

for each other and our desire to ensure we have that freedom

to do that in the future.

So when we come together in the film festival,

I think we all know that when we're sitting in the audiences

and we're watching films and we're all together.

I think we know, really, what the movement is about.

And that's why we love it so much when we sit there,

because we know in that environment

we have the freedom to love each other any way that we want to.

And so when I look back at 20 years of the film festival,

to me that's what is most striking about that.

And that after the funding is done

and the ticket sales are collected

and all of the hard work the volunteers

have put forward and that--

for one more year we've all gotten together

to prove that one point one more time

and to express that to each other, to our community,

and to the world.

KEVIN INDOVINO: So let me ask you this.

From where it began to where it is now,

in those initial stages of putting this film festival

together, in 1990, 1992, '93, whenever it was--

did you ever imagine that, one, it would still

be here 20 years later but two, that it

would reach the heights that it has reached,

and reach the recognition that it has reached internationally?

LARRY CHAMPOUX: I think that one of the major reasons the film

festival has been successful is that it

has been, in many ways, a festival without a figurehead.

It has been a festival of our community.

It's been a festival of the volunteers.

It's been a festival of the audiences.

It's not been a festival of a hero,

or the big museum director, or the big boss.

It's the film festival that is about all

of us that come together around it.

And that is essentially what has made

it survive and be successful, because we

know we're all doing it.

Everybody is doing it, contributing money,

buying tickets, helping at the feeder, helping promote it,

seeing films.

All of that work is done by everybody in our community.

And so we all end up with an ownership over that.

And I think 20 years ago, I knew that was in our community

because I had seen that same spirit grow so strongly as we

fought to keep our community healthy during the AIDS

crisis in the early years.

But I don't think I knew that it would

grow to be this wonderful event that it has become today.

I was thinking in the moment, let's do it right now.

This is what we have to accomplish right now

and let's see what happens with it.

So it is gratifying to see that it is still here.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Let's switch gears.

Let's talk politics a little bit.

Talk to me a little bit about the Rochester Gay and Lesbian

Political Caucus.

What was it?

More importantly, what was the mission behind it?

LARRY CHAMPOUX: The Rochester Lesbian and Gay Political

Caucus was an organization that was largely

an early predecessor to what we call the Empire State Pride

Agenda.

And I think the Pride Agenda has supplanted the work

that the Political Caucus use to do.

But it was a local organization designed to support and educate

and politically influence candidates for office, locally.

And it was, statewide, as I recall, probably one

of the most successful of those sorts of organizations

around the state, which is why I think

we have always had a strong representation also

at the Pride Agenda.

It's because early on, we had some good strong political

organizing,

And so I'm not the expert on the origins of the Political

Caucus, but it was extremely valuable

and allowed us to begin to develop

our own strong political base.

Like Bill Pritchard was an early--

he was president of the Political Caucus

when I was there.

And Don Belack and Tim Maines and Sue Cowell.

And so a lot of the political powerhouses in our community

worked their way through their lesbian

and gay political caucus as I recall, as I remember that.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Talk to me about, you

know, we were in this period like, say, well,

from 1969 on, maybe even a little bit before that.

But you know, basically with the Stonewall event.

And we started to become a more visible community

but we were visible, you know, marching

in parades and picketing outside the city

halls and that kind of thing.

But at some point, the gears switched a little bit.

At some point, the gay community realized

it's not enough to just be marching outside of city hall.

That we have to get face time with political candidates.

We have to get in line and support

political candidates who were going

to support us as a community.

Can you talk to me a little bit about that?

Because to me, that seems to be kind

of the crux of where something like the Rochester Gay

and Lesbian Political Caucus came out of.

That there was this realization that we

need actually one on one time with these politicals.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: Yeah, I can speak about that some.

In 1993 there was organized a march on Washington

the 1993 march on Washington.

I went to it.

Several other folks affiliated with the film festival

went to it.

I went down with Scott McCartney who was, as he continues to be,

a valuable volunteer for the film festival.

And at that time, there were controversies over,

what are we going to do as a community nationally?

And there were components that wanted

us to organize nationally and have

a strong national presence.

There was another track that said no.

We're all coming in here to Washington

and we're going to have fun and RuPaul is going to entertain us

and we're going to all feel great here and it's a big party

and it's political.

But no, you're going to go back to your communities now.

It's, don't think up here about the national issues.

Go back home and work in your towns and your cities

and organize there and influence your politicians locally

and develop programs at your homes

and develop organizations in support

of your own communities.

So it was fascinating because really it was like, OK,

come to Washington and go home and do your hard work.

And the film festival benefited from that

because this is precisely what the film festival was about.

It was going home and developing a program

that would educate and motivate within our own community.

Associated with that movement, which I think was powerful

and I think was under the leadership

of Urvashi Vaid, who was the head of the National Lesbian

and Gay Task Force at that time.

But it was a powerful movement to go back

to our own communities and organize there.

And out of that, we actually were

able to have greater political influence locally.

In our own community we've seen that dramatically,

but in communities across the country.

Now, I think that that thrust has pushed us forward

for a generation and has helped where

we have been able to achieve marriage

equality in certain states.

It has all been based on that localization of our efforts

to bring about that change, with a parallel level

to influence things nationally where you see

repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell.

By that localization of our efforts is important.

That only was able to come about because of a demographic change

within our community.

After Stonewall, people began to realize

they did not have to move away from where they grew up

in order to begin to have an influence

or to change their lives.

As a gay person or a lesbian person,

you didn't have to move to New York anymore.

You didn't have to move to San Francisco.

You didn't have to move to a big city

in order to find the community where you belonged.

After Stonewall, you began to be able to find that community

where you lived, where you grew up, where your family may still

have lived.

And so that sort of demographic change within our own community

was really important because we were no longer isolated

within pockets anymore.

We were everywhere.

And we are everywhere.

And we always have been everywhere.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Well, speaking about the community

again and working locally, when you look at a city

the size of Rochester, you've got a Gay Alliance

Organization.

We have a film festival.

We have political caucuses.

We have 30 or 40 different gay organizations

listed in The Empty Closet.

What is it about Rochester that allows all that to happen here?

Because no other community is like this.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: In Rochester, we're

fortunate to have pretty rich history of support

for diversity.

Much of the time it's used purely

for advertising purposes.

We're the home of Susan b Anthony.

We're the home of Frederick Douglass.

Where the home of religious revivalism and diversity.

But for our community, it means something.

That is our local history, that diversity.

Our own movement within the LGBT community

is an outgrowth of the work that had

been done by women in the suffrage movement,

and the work that Frederick Douglass did.

We're the beneficiaries of that work,

though we do not always support that diversity as strongly

as we need to these days.

I mean, we have been able to grow because those

are early models of our community

that have been presented to us.

So our community has a rich history of diversity

that has allowed us to develop our own programs.

We're fortunate in many ways because we

have enough economic vitality that we can do this.

And we're fortunate in that way.

What's important is that we remember

that our origins within our community

are based upon diversity, women's movement, the movement

of African-Americans to gain dignity, the respect, the vote.

And we really need to pay that back as well.

And we need to honor the diversity

within our own community in order

to continue that legacy forward.

The film festival helps to do that.

But we always need to be reminded of that also.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Well, and that brings up

an interesting question that, it hasn't always

been a bed of roses and it will never be a bed of roses.

There's been some significant challenges

that we've had to face from year to year.

Being who we are as a community here in Rochester,

we do face those challenges and we do win the battles.

Your thoughts on regards to, where do we go from here?

OK, we've got marriage equality in New York state.

Rochester helped in a big part of getting that passed.

What are the challenges ahead?

Where do we go from here?

What do we need to be looking at from this point on?

LARRY CHAMPOUX: This is an exciting era

to be alive in if you are a lesbian, gay, bisexual,

or transgendered person.

We have seen a period of a change in world history--

not just our community's history, but a change in world

history.

And we've had success after success after success.

And we're winning these battles.

But all of that needs to be taken with a bit of caution

because we're still in a very tenuous position.

We still face significant challenges.

Marriage equality we have in New York state

and we got that by a very slim margin.

And we have to remember that.

And we're in an election year.

And we face significant barriers to a conservative movement

that would roll back any of these rights and privileges

that we currently enjoy.

And our biggest challenge isn't these conservative attacks

on our lives, or our being.

Our biggest challenge going forward

is our own complacency and sense of satisfaction

that we have achieved what we want to achieve

and turning our backs on our need to be cautious, and aware,

and active, and moving forward on behalf

of our own community and other communities

facing similar discrimination.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Let me just look at my stuff here.

See if I put this down here--

I think we did.

I'm just going to throw these names at you.

Just quick thoughts about these people

that you've worked with particularly with the festival.

Give me your quick thoughts on Jamie and Sally Whitbeck.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: Jamie and Sally Whitbeck

have been remarkable addition to the film festival.

And it's hard to imagine that it could not have a Jamie

and Sally Whitbeck.

It's hard to imagine that the film festival could not exist

without these two great folks.

Concurrent to when I was working on this film festival early on,

Jamie was working on a similar film festival.

And as the story goes, I was sitting

in the offices of The Little Theater arranging

for screenings of the first film festival to happen there

and Jamie happened to call up Bill Coppard who

was the owner of the theater at that time

to talk to him about the film festival that he wanted to do.

And Bill Coppard said, well, Larry Champoux

is sitting right here and handed the phone over to me.

And Jamie and I began to have a contact there about well,

should we do one festival or two festivals?

And Jamie came on board and has been a wonderful contributor

ever since, as well as his great wife Sally.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Interesting perspective, though,

that it was Jamie and Sally who were not gay.

They were married husband and wife.

They don't have gay children.

But yet here they are, getting involved with gay lives.

Here they are getting involved with the gay film festival.

And I want to say, I don't even know how to ask this,

but was there any point where you were taken back by that--

or skeptical of that?

I mean, knowing these two people as I do,

it's hard to be skeptical of them.

But did it surprise you at all that,

particularly in those old days in the 1990s that,

here's this straight white couple coming to our

(unintelligible).

LARRY CHAMPOUX: One of the great things about the film festival,

from its early days and it continues to this day,

is it's open door.

You want to volunteer?

Come on in.

We'll find some place for you to volunteer.

And that open door is incredibly important.

And when Jamie and Sally got involved,

that was just the door open further.

And to ensure anybody could come in and help us out.

And we've had them, through the years, a lot of straight film

lovers who have been involved and other folks who

have come to the films because they're interested in it

from the cinematic perspective.

So I wasn't taken aback by that.

I was grateful for any help that wanted to come in

and was extremely grateful for the enthusiasm

that they brought to the festival

early on, which was really encouraging.

KEVIN INDOVINO: David Emert, big part

of getting the jump up and running.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: David Emert early on was--

starting out in the film festival,

I was sort of a driver.

I bring the ideas in.

I'm a marketer.

I'm an advertise.

I try and bring people around together.

And David Emert and Susan Soleil had organizational skills

that I didn't have That was sorely needed within the film

festival.

So their early involvement was immensely

helpful toward ensuring that it had logistical success.

And that it could happen without a hitch,

that it ran as smoothly as it could.

And their lessons in that early on I

think continue to this day.

I think some of the flawlessness that the festival

has this day, this sort of flawless execution

that the film festival enjoys, is largely due to Susan Soleil

and David Emert's administration of it,

and administrative design of it.

KEVIN INDOVINO: I need a quick soundbite from you

that helps me set this up.

Something in the line of, early on two key people

that really helped me (unintelligible)

success were David Emert and Susan Soleil.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: OK, OK.

Early on in the film festival, there

are some individuals whose help and experience and knowledge

and enthusiasm made the film festival successful.

Two those individuals, Susan Soleil and David Emert,

who brought administrative know how to the film festival.

And to this day, I think some of the flawless execution

that the film festival enjoys is because of the groundwork

that those two individuals did.

And the pride we take in terms of how well organized

and how well oiled a machine it is,

is because of the hard work of those two folks.

KEVIN INDOVINO: (unintelligible) In the early days of the film

festival, trying to get audiences to a film festival,

there was risk for a lot of those people showing up

to those movies.

There was a risk of being exposed.

Not so much today.

I think today it's almost a sense of, this is who I am

and I'm taking pride in going to this film festival.

But was there any sense of that in the early days about trying

to get those theatres filled with people who may not be

completely comfortable being out and associated with a gay

event?

LARRY CHAMPOUX: I think the film festival happened

at a cusp of movement within our community.

There was a time previous to the film festival

when it was very risky for us to associate with each other,

to be exposed as part of our community.

But I think the film festival is an indication of sort

of the sea change that we underwent in the 1980s

and into the 1990s, where we stepped out publicly,

not only within our own community but publicly.

And the film festival itself was and is a very public display

of our lives also.

We are not only getting together to enjoy these films

but we are broadcasting the stories of our lives

to our entire community.

And so the film festival was part of and was at the moment,

I think, when we fully wanted our stories to be told.

So we weren't fearful of that.

We thought we need to be courageous

on all levels of this.

Our stories are valuable.

Our stories need to be told.

Your stories are valuable.

My stories are valuable.

And our community needs to learn about these.

KEVIN INDOVINO: In the same notion of risk,

was there any risk in say, the film festival

becoming too political, in regards to legalities

of a non-profit organization can become too political or being

looked at as a political lobbying effort

or anything like that.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: The film festival early on

walked a fine line between culture and activism.

And it's never overtly activist.

It is largely, and has always been, mostly educational.

And that educational component of it

has been a very important survival mechanism for it

as well, because we're educating our own community,

we are educating our larger community, even

when those subjects are very difficult and controversial,

even when they're not just politically

controversial but perhaps even in terms of the imagery

and the aesthetic notions of it, and when

they may depict images of sexuality

that people are not comfortable with.

But part of the purpose of culture

is to shed light in dark areas.

And that more than in other ways,

that's important for our lives since we have

had to come out of the shadows.

So that openness is really important

because we don't know what is going

to be the controversial subject matter next year.

We don't know who's going to object to something the year

after next.

So the film festival has always had to proceed forward,

even from its early days with, we

know some people are not going to like this

but we need to move forward with a sense of pride in who we are.

And we don't have to, even as individuals,

accept everything that's on the screen,

agree with every story that is told,

but use those stories as benchmarks for our own lives

no matter who you are.

KEVIN INDOVINO: One question just because it comes to mind.

I usually have this question for everybody.

How do you want history to reflect

upon Larry Champoux, as regards to who he is

and what he's done?

That's a tough question.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: Yeah.

I never really thought about that.

I would want-- looking back on the film festival, what

I hope most people would remember from that,

or my involvement with it, or any of the volunteers

involvement with it is that it was happy and fun.

I want people to remember the joyfulness of being together

and how exciting that is and how great

it is for us all to have opportunities

to get together and enjoy each other and our lives

in this beautiful media of film and video,

and to embrace that and exult in that joy.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Can I ask the same question?

Because I don't think we want to just focus on ImageOut.

LARRY CHAMPOUX: OK.

KEVIN INDOVINO: You did more than just ImageOut.

I mean, you were with--