Image+Nation film fest: Iconic gay club was 'the Studio 54 of the Prairies'

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Matthew Hays has attended Montreal’s LGBTQ2+ film festival Image+Nation more times than he can count as a journalist and audience member but never, until now, as a filmmaker. 

It’s a full-circle moment this year as the Marianopolis College film teacher and his brother Peter bring their documentary Flashback to the 37th edition of Image+Nation, which runs Nov. 20 to 30. Hays is quick to point out that he was a consultant on the film, which Peter directed. 

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“My brother is straight, but he’s not narrow,” Hays quipped. 

When Peter asked Matthew if he had any ideas for a documentary a few years back, he suggested Peter tell the story of what was once the coolest club in their old hometown, Edmonton’s Flashback, dubbed by one of the film’s interviewees as “the Studio 54 of the Prairies.” 

If it seems like a stretch to imagine New York’s iconic, gay-friendly disco mecca plunked in the middle of oil-digging Alberta, you’re starting to understand what an anomaly Flashback was in its heyday. There was simply nothing like it, in Edmonton, Canada or perhaps North America. 

Dance clubs have long been a joyous convergence point for the gay community, but while Montreal had an array of gay clubs and bars to choose from in the 1970s, Edmonton had next to nothing. 

“Flashback had to be an all-purpose rumpus room,” noted Hays, who remembers first attending the club with his best friend as a nervous, closeted 17-year-old high school student. “It had to be open to everybody. There were lesbians there, gay men there, bisexuals, straight people, the drag community and trans people — though that was not spoken of as an identity back then.” 

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Hays tracked down and pre-interviewed former Flashback staff, patrons and owner John Reid, who all testify on camera to the club’s transformative role in their lives. He also travelled to Edmonton to help with the re-enactments in the film, shot at Edmonton’s Evolution Wonderlounge. 

“It was a surreal trip down various memory holes,” Hays said. “It reminded me of that time in my life, which was a very contradictory time. We were partying and having fun, but there was also a lot of anxiety about being gay, there was the AIDS crisis. We were seeing friends getting sick and dying.” 

Homophobia, AIDS and the legal repression of gay people are all broached in the film, filtered through the lens of the club where the community came together and found a sense of solidarity to help deal with these issues. 

Alberta’s first openly gay politician, Michael Phair, who is interviewed in the documentary, held gatherings on various issues at Flashback after being arrested in a 1981 police raid on the nearby Pisces Health Spa bathhouse. 

“Alberta was the unofficial capital of homophobia in Canada,” Hays explained. “Growing up there was not always easy. Then there was this club where we could go that was full of colour, zaniness and fun. It wasn’t utopia, it wasn’t perfect — it was a nightclub; there was judgment and clique-iness. It was like high school at times. But it’s remarkable that place even existed.” 

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Ultimately, Hays believes, Flashback — like gay clubs in Montreal and other cities around the world — played a key role in forging gay identity, and in creating a safe space where being gay could be more than a reason for shame or discrimination, or making one the target of physical violence. 

“It was a beacon of hope,” he said. “For the gay community, it provided a source of solace and strength. It was edifying for people to go somewhere where it was fine to be gay and it was fun to be gay. That in itself is radical when people are telling you you’re going to be miserable because you’re gay.” 

The 37th edition of Image+Nation includes more than 150 films from 27 countries. Among the highlights is the opening film, Queer, an adaptation of the William S. Burroughs novel by Italian director Luca Guadagnino (Call Me by Your Name), starring Daniel Craig as a gay expat in Mexico City in the 1950s. Opening night is sold out, but the film screens again Sunday, Nov. 24 at 7:30 p.m. at Concordia University’s Sir George Williams Alumni Auditorium. 

Also of note is Sandi Dubowski’s Sabbath Queen. Produced by Darren Aronofsky, the decades-spanning documentary is a profile of gay Israeli-American rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie, who settled in New York in the 1990s. Screens Sunday, Nov. 24 at 1 p.m. at UQAM’s Salle de projection Jean-Claude Lauzon.  

And Canadian filmmakers Michael Mabbott and Lucah Rosenberg-Lee’s Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story looks at the life of the late Nashville-born trans soul singer (who lived briefly in Montreal, then Toronto, in the 1960s). The documentary, which was executive produced by Elliot Page, screens Friday, Nov. 29 at 5 p.m. at the NFB’s Alanis Obomsawin Theatre. 

AT A GLANCE

The Image+Nation film festival runs from Wednesday, Nov. 20 to Saturday, Nov. 30. Flashback screens Saturday, Nov. 23 at 3 p.m. at Concordia University’s Sir George Williams Alumni Auditorium. For tickets and more information, visit image-nation.org.

tdunlevy@postmedia.com

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