Directed by Toronto-born filmmaker Jen Markowitz, this documentary aims to preserve a historical record of the camp experience for queer kids
By Mariana Schuetze
Camp fYrefly is a national leadership retreat for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans-identified, two-spirited, intersexed, queer, questioning, and allied youth (Courtesy of TIFF)
"Have you ever been in a space that is all queer people?," a voice from behind the camera asks a few young campers. They're all still sitting in their own rooms, getting ready to go to camp. This time, a camp for queer, trans and non-binary teens.
Premiering at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival, Summer Qamp is a documentary about the experiences of a group of kids attending Alberta's Camp fYrefly for LGBTQ2S+ youth. Beautifully brought to screen by Toronto filmmaker Jen Markowitz and their amazing team, the movie follows the lives of these kids as they make life-long memories in this safe space– surrounded by people who accept them for who they are.
Right from the start, this film will tug on your emotional heartstrings. Markowitz perfectly captures such small and specific moments in these campers’ lives; their feelings, wishes, sorrows, laughter, cries… It's all present throughout Summer Qamp, making it incredibly touching and relatable to many queer people.
CanCulture's editor-in-chief, Mariana Schuetze, had the amazing opportunity to talk to Summer Qamp director Jen Markowitz about their work on the film.
Lots of life-long memories happened during this week’s stay at Camp fYrefly (Courtesy of TIFF)
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
I just want to say again, what a beautiful film. It was really amazing to watch. I cried a lot. It was very beautiful. You have probably been asked this many times, including a bit yesterday, but I still wanted to ask you, how did Summer Qamp come about? Why did you feel like you needed to tell the story?
Well, I've always prioritized queer stories in my work. And in the past few years, I've been lucky enough to have the chance to pretty much work exclusively in queer storytelling. So, even though this film had the wheels rolling before I became a part of it, I signed on to direct it. This is very much exactly the type of story that I would want to tell. I've always really cared about seeing images of queerness that normalize it, it does not make the queerness part of the story. Having said that, I know that their queerness is a very key part of this story, but you know, I really tried to bring in a lot of just like kid images of kids doing regular kid stuff in that way too. So, this is a dream project. Even though I was not there at the genesis of it, it really feels like something I've been working towards my entire life.
You're from Toronto, right? What does it feel like to have the film premiere here?
I don't think I could have imagined how it would feel prior to the festival. Since I got the news that we were premiering here, it really didn't click in until probably after our premiere, prior to our second screening. When I could see on people's faces how they felt about the film. The faces of the audience walking out, and hearing the moments where they were responding to the film while it was playing, it's been very impactful and affirming for me as somebody from Toronto, as a creative, as a filmmaker. I was at a dinner last night, and before we ate, everybody stood up and told a little anecdote about themselves, and mine was that I used to work at a video store called Review Video, and a number of the people in the room had rented videos from me when I was a teen and I was always so blown away when they would walk in and so nervous and in awe of them and I never in a million years thought that I would be seated across the dinner table from them. So, it's huge in so many ways. It's very affirming, very humbling. It feels like a real moment in my life that I don't wanna forget.
That sounds very incredible. I think you're just talking about it now, and you talked about it at the Q&A, about how there weren't really a lot of queer stories when you were growing up to look up to. And today, being someone making it, what kind of message do you want people to take away from this film? And how does it feel to be the one making something that already is so life-changing and will live forever for queer kids to see?
Although a number of different intersections of people will undoubtedly see this film, the ones that I made it for are the ones that are portrayed in it. My only interest in crafting this film was to give queer young people a positive, joyful image of themselves and of who they could become as they age. My only intention with my work is to see queer and especially trans people grow real. And I don't have much to say about myself in the process. That is the only thing I care about, and I will continue to push that forward. What's been really nice about doing press for this film is that I think out in the world, I am quite modest about exciting things happening in my life and this is an exciting thing happening in my life, and I'm able to sit in that joy because I'm able to talk about the intention for the positive impact that it is having on people already. I'm able to talk about the need for more material like this. I could talk about this film forever because I want as many people to see it as there are in this world.
That's what I wanted to say. Yeah. I think someone said this at the screening, that this film is something that everyone will learn and get something out of seeing it. So, that was one of my questions. What life do you want this film to have in an ideal world?
I think I'd like to see it continue to have a life for the people who need to see it for years and years and years. I'd like to see it become a part of a historical record of what queerness looks like for teens in 2023. And I'd like for people, for young queers in the future to be able to look back and know their ancestry in that way. I wish I had things that I could look at from my youth that could have shown me where I came from, where I was headed, etc. I think, yeah, I would really like for it to… exist as a historical record of today's queerness.
I think that's one thing I noticed when watching the film, and I think you nailed it, the Gen Z queer experience. As Gen Z, a lot of things that we watch today are very not like our generation. So it was so relatable and interesting. And I was wondering, how was it to work with these kids?
They are a very different generation from me. But I don't know, I bring a lot of my own like youthfulness and brattiness andmischief when I direct. If there's a game to be played, if there's an arrow to be shot, if there's an art and craft to be done, I will always be the first one to pick it up and try it. I think that they sense that in me. I became just another kid at camp when I was there. And I also, I really approached them like, because I wanted to hear where they were coming from. I let them decide what they wanted to talk about, what they wanted to say, what they wanted to avoid. I think that when you're a teen, it's easy to allow yourself to be interrupted. And when you're an adult, it's easy to interpret teen hesitancy as something that needs to be interrupted. So, I really just gave them the floor. I trusted them. I did not care what aspects of their lives they wanted to talk about. I just wanted to get to know them. And I don't think they get that space too often in the world. So, in having approached it that way and they, having maybe not been given that opportunity too often, created a lot of very relaxed trust with a lot of space around it, with a lot of safety around it. I really wanted to get to know who they are. People don't really wanna know that about most age groups. But, I think because I look back on my teen years and wish that I had experienced so much more than I had because I was afraid. I've always been really interested in revisiting that side of myself and getting to know these kids was sort of part and parcel of that.
During their stay at Camp fYrefly, the kids enjoyed many different activities, including dancing, archery and theatre (Courtesy of TIFF).
And they certainly had something to say. I was watching it and I just kept thinking, they're so wise and life has made them grow up so much. They're still so young, but so wise. I was wondering, what was the editing process like? How did you know what to put in and what to not put in? I imagine there's a lot more stuff, right?
We didn't have to cut too many scenes. Instead of that, we just made the most of the scenes that we really wanted to prioritize. A lot happened every time the camera was on, but it was not so much a matter of picking specific scenes, it was a matter of crafting those scenes down to a condensed story. Editing was a long process. It was the first time I'd taken on a project of this scope. So, your guess was as good as mine in terms of how to get the ball rolling. And I was really fortunate to be working with a team of executives that had a lot of patience when it came to discovering, or when it came to crafting these scenes and finding the tone that fit. We tried a lot of different things in post-production before we landed on what you saw in the film. It was such a rigorous nonstop process. I questioned myself so many times that once we got to the finish line. You know when they say that when people give birth, they're like, ‘I'll never do this again,’ and then they forget about the labour process. I think it was a bit of that. It was such labour. I swore I would never wanna do it again. And now here I am writing.
I can only imagine. But this was also another one of my questions, what is next for you? What other stories do you want to tell, do you have anything lined up?
I'm really living in this moment with this premiere and want to think hard before I commit to the next project. The one thing I can assure you is that it will be queer. Those are the only stories that I want to talk about. So every project you ever hear me taking from now until the end of time will be about queer people, trans people, non-binary people.
Where can people watch the film?
We have distribution in Canada with Super Channel and TVA. One of the things that we are hoping falls into place while we're on the festival circuit is in America and beyond, where it'll land on a streaming service or something of the like at some point. I have no doubt in my mind that this film will become available to those who want to see it.
And to just wrap it up, what would you want to tell people before going into this film?
I want to tell people to remember their kid selves, watch it as your kid self, watch it as your teen self. Yeah, I think that's what I want to tell people.