Story Synopsis | Interview Roster | Community Relevancy | Production Design | The Team

The overall concept for Unmasking the Pastie is born directly out of my intimate connection with Montréal’s LGBTQ+ community.  As a queer, white, cis-male identifying filmmaker, I have dedicated my professional efforts to bringing an affordable, higher quality standard of live filming to the local burlesque and drag communities. The filming of live performances is pivotal in allowing performers to be booked for a variety of gigs as well as applying to compete at international arts festivals. This intimate connection with those communities was first born out of a respect and love of the art forms and body-positive sexuality, along with the innate queerness that was often expressed by those artists, as an enthusiastic spectator.  As I got to personally know many artists and was invited to participate in their world through collaboration with my own art form, the intersection between the queer Montréal performance art scene and documentary film-making has become a significant point of personal and professional interest. Unfortunately, due to the preventive measures in place against COVID-19, the vibrant queer burlesque and drag communities within Montréal have had to face unique challenges for their livelihood and art. Through my intimate connection with the queer Montréal performer community, I am pained by the hardships many of my cherished close performer friends have experienced as well as amazed by their resiliency and ingenuity.

It is because of my unique connection within this diverse community that I am positioned to tell their story.  Letting the Canadian people hear about not only the challenges these amazing artists and friends are experiencing which may be unique to their communities, but also the amazing ways they are coming together as a whole.  How they are not only coming together to support each other, but also utilize technology in innovative ways to continue their art forms during this lock-down.  As we look towards a world where many in society will begin to see a return to some normalcy with the easing of social restrictions in the coming few months, performers in these communities will not be seeing the same without a vaccine.  With the economic impact to so many businesses, especially performance spaces which often already operated on razor thin margins, there is a strong likelihood that this pandemic will permanently reshape what it means to be a burlesque and drag performer in Montréal for years to come.

Exact featured burlesque and drag personalities are to be determined after greenlight, however some examples of members of the Montreal community with whom I am both connected and have made innovative contributions to their communities during COVID-19 are as follows:

As a special developed under my Queer Horizons documentary project concept that celebrates powerful queer individuals in Canadian society, Unmasking the Pastie has two main communities that it aims to reach. Firstly, Unmasking the Pastie targets reaching out to the LGBTQ+ community as the fundamental audience for the Queer Horizons documentary project as a whole.  Unmasking the Pastie also targets all of Canadian society as a whole who wish to better understand how different parts of our society are affected and coping with the COVID-19 economic shut-down.  As we all shelter at home for the greater good, we are also consuming more entertainment content than ever before. Yet many people in the entertainment industries have been disproportionately hit the hardest by the shut-down, especially in the world of live performance. Additionally, despite trends towards inclusion, the LGBTQ+ community still experiences prejudices and lingering social injustices, which leaves many queer-identified burlesque and drag artists facing additional emotional and financial hardships. Queer performers fight to practice their transformative art in ways that both respect physical distancing and help others escape the challenges, stresses, and anxieties of our unprecedented times.  As a society, we need art now more than ever and yet, many of us are unaware of the staggering amount of challenges queer performers are having to overcome just to continue to live their lives.  This documentary will shine a spotlight on the tenacity and resiliency of accomplished queer Montréal performers who have created innovative ways to overcome challenges and adversity, as well as uplift their community as a whole.  Beyond being a story of hope, this documentary will also educate many Canadians on the variability of queer experiences and what it truly means to be a queer performer in 2020.

Queer Horizons: Unmasking the Pastie will be using existing and new footage shot in DCI 4K on Sigma Art lenses in 10bit 4:2:2 ARRI Log-C colour that I have access to from my own company archives as one of the primary filmmakers who has been capturing live performances in Montréal for the past five years.  This archival footage will be utilized whenever possible along with making use of the newest technologies for implementing virtual interviews.  Virtual interviews will be shot remotely using a small delivered-to-door camera package that I have developed through my custom camera rigging work from the cinema world.  This package plugs directly into the interviewee’s computer to allow for live interaction between the cinematographer and interviewee with full physical distancing during production as required, while still maintaining a high standard of quality of production.

All footage will be edited using the new Hollywood standard ACES colour management workflow with an intended Rec.709 final colour space and stereo audio edit for web consumption as well as potential Rec.2020 and DD5.1 surround audio edit for later high-end broadcast and festival use as desired by the rights holders.

The style of the documentary’s production design and colour grading will be for rich colours and tones that aim to match and invoke the costumes of the communities for which it aims to capture, using a large format style and look.

Sean Coulton

Director & Cinematographer

I am a budding documentary filmmaker who has been shooting in various capacities in the industry for over a decade with it becoming my full-time focus for the past four.  I have had the honour of working along side and learning from some of the greats in the Canadian documentary field, working directly under both John Westheuser and Peter Raymont with White Pine Pictures in association with the CBC as a camera operator on the feature length documentary MARGARET ATWOOD: A Word after a Word after a Word is Power which premiered at the 2019 Hot Docs film festival and also aired on CBC in a shortened TV edit under the title Margaret Atwood: Encounters.

In late summer of last year I was cinematographer for episode 2 of the Channel 5’s show Kids in Drag: We’re Fabulous when the series came to visit Canada.  Later that fall I joined the crew with Great Pacific Television on the full upcoming season 5 of Discovery Channel’s Heavy Rescue: 401 as a camera operator, safety coordinator, and time-lapse specialist.

This spring I had the honour of being featured in an article by Radio-Canada on the feature film The White Goddess in my first roll as co-director and cinematographer for a full feature film that I shot with an international cast this spring over the course of a week and a half in Saguenay - Lac-Saint-Jean.  This experience caps off a year and a half of time that I have spent previously working on five different narrative feature films in both Québec and Ontario in various rolls on set ranging from a gaffer and daily electric, to transportation captain, to digital imaging technician on features ranging in crews from 25 to over 150 and in budget from $700,000 to $10 million.

Thanks to this experience and my deep connections within the queer, burlesque, and drag communities within Montréal, I feel I am uniquely placed to bring these stories from beyond the headlines to the Canadian public.