By Anna Burns, special to the North Delta Reporter
The city is hosting a North Delta screening of a documentary that shares what it’s like to be Queer in the local South Asian community.
On Saturday, Aug. 13, the city will be hosting a screening of the award-winning documentary Emergence: Out of the Shadows at the North Delta Centre for the Arts, followed by a Q&A with the film’s producer, director and cast moderated by Dr. Satwinder Bains, director of the South Asian Studies Institute at the University of the Fraser Valley.
Produced by Sher Films, a division of the North Delta-based Sher Vancouver LGBTQ Friends Society, Emergence shares the stories of Kayden, Jag and Amar, three now-adults who grew up in conservative South Asian families.
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Alex Sangha, the film’s producer and founder of Sher Vancouver, said the film shows the experience Queer people often have in the Punjabi Sikh community.
“We wanted to save lives, to create safe spaces and to educate the community on some of the struggles our communities face, in terms of being queer and being South Asian in our community,” Sangha said.
Sangha, who is also featured in the film, said that most Punjabi Sikh homes have a collective structure, with many members of the extended family living under one roof.
When individuals in this community come out as Queer, “you can’t really fit into that model, that traditional model, and you very often are rejected or marginalized, or you find yourself, being disowned by your own community,” Sangha said.
The film also showcases what the parents go through when their child comes out.
Director and editor Vinay Giridhar said what makes the documentary different from other coming out stories is “the fact that we’ve involved the parents in the discussion, and then [shown] how parents can deal with this.”
The showing starts at 6:30 p.m., with doors opening at 5:45 p.m. Tickets cost $8 for adults, $4 for students/seniors, and can be purchased at delta.ca/emergencefilm.
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(Editor’s note: A previous version of this story incorrectly spelled Bains and Sangha’s names. The North Delta Reporter regrets the error.)
editor@northdeltareporter.com
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