Documentary screening: "Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution" with comedian Q&A

Festrogen Festival presents this screening of Page Hurwitz’s documentary "Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution".

Enjoy the movie with friends and free popcorn, and stick around to put your questions to Belinda Carroll, one of the comedians who features in it and will join us for a video call.

In this first-of-its-kind documentary, Hurwitz frames LGBTQ+ comedy as an irrepressible art form of resistance. It traces the evolution of queer comedy by way of major cultural milestones from the Stonewall uprising and Anita Bryant’s anti-gay activism to the AIDS crisis and DeGeneres’s “Yep, I’m Gay” TIME magazine cover.

Director Page Hurwitz, however, is well aware that there is a trove of stories still left to be told. “It’s very difficult when you’re in an underrepresented community, and everyone looks to one project to be the be-all and the end-all,” says the director.

Hurwitz’s documentary also addresses the current state of comedy, particularly the mainstreaming of transphobia in stand-up. As industry powerhouses like Ricky Gervais or Dave Chappelle suffer little to no consequences for their jokes, the film deliberately reminds the audience of the larger, real-world conditions that many in the community face today.

“In these conversations about transphobia in comedy, and the outrage or the backlash, we haven’t heard enough from trans comedians, trans comedians of color, and trans women of color, who are by far disproportionately the victims of anti-trans violence,” Hurwitz explains. “I really wanted to hear their voices and what they had to say.”

Q&A with Belinda Carroll

Oregon-based comedian Belinda Carroll was one of the first comedians in Portland to found and host a queer-friendly open mic, giving emerging voices a hate-free space to be funny. Today she is co-founder and co-director of the Portland Queer Comedy Festival and co-creator of the sex-positive comedy show SMUT and a writer for PQ Monthly. She mentors queer comedians in the US and Ukraine.
In an interview with CoHo Productions in 2018 available online, Belinda is quoted as saying: “I feel like one of my jobs, and I think this is the job of a lot of non-mainstream comedians who are either POC or queer, is that you’re a voice for the voiceless.
That’s really the jam. There is a prevailing need for those voices, and the thing is that a lot of
the population is in a situation where they can’t speak out... so people that can speak out
must. Comedy is a way to inset your rebellious progressive ideas on people in a way that
makes them laugh and then hopefully makes them think too.”

She is always the first to offer help and advice to newer comics and as an openly sober-from-alcohol comedian, she is a role model for those who question whether they can not drink and stay funny.

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