My Prairie Home (film)

My Prairie Home is a 2013 Canadian documentary film about transgender singer/songwriter Rae Spoon, directed by Chelsea McMullan. It features musical performances and interviews about Spoon's troubled childhood, raised by Pentecostal parents obsessed with the Rapture and an abusive father, as well as Spoon's past experiences with gender dysphoria. The film was shot in the Canadian Prairies, including the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Drumheller. My Prairie Home was produced by Lea Marin for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB).[1][2][3][4]

My Prairie Home
Promotional poster
Directed byChelsea McMullan
Written byChelsea McMullan
Produced byLea Marin
StarringRae Spoon
CinematographyMaya Bankovic
Derek Howard
Edited byAvril Jacobson
Music byRae Spoon
Production
company
Release date
Running time
77 minutes
CountryCanada
LanguageEnglish

McMullan has said she first found out about Spoon around 2007, when she was making a western-themed NFB film set in the B.C. Interior. She was searching for "subversive" country-folk soundtrack music when someone suggested Spoon.[5] According to Spoon, the idea for the documentary came out of a discussion with McMullan in 2010 about the musician's perceived lack of marketability, a criticism Spoon sometimes receives when applying for music video funding.[2]

Spoon has stated that it had initially been difficult for to open up so much about personal details, so McMullan suggested writing it down before they talked. Spoon did so, and ended up writing the book First Spring Grass Fire, which was published in the fall of 2012.[4] The book was a nominee for the 2013 Lambda Literary Awards in the Transgender Fiction category,[6] and Spoon was awarded an Honour of Distinction from the Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBT writers in 2014.[7]

Release

My Prairie Home premiered at the Vancouver International Film Festival in September 2013 and began a Canadian theatrical run in November of that same year.[2] The documentary debuted in the US at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2014.[8] During its Sundance run, the National Film Board also made the film available for free streaming to Canadian audiences.[9]

The film was a shortlisted nominee for the Canadian Screen Award for Best Feature Length Documentary at the 2nd Canadian Screen Awards.[10]

The film was accompanied by a soundtrack album, also titled My Prairie Home, which was a longlisted nominee for the 2014 Polaris Music Prize.[11]

See also

References
  1. Lederman, Marsha (28 September 2013). "My Prairie Home". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved 6 November 2013.
  2. Gillis, Carla (12–19 September 2013). "A revealing NFB doc and a heartbreakingly honest album explore an artist's roots and embrace new ideas about gender". Now. Retrieved 6 November 2013.
  3. McSorley, Tim (21 October 2013). "A beautiful, sometimes haunting, home on the prairies: Rae Spoon's My Prairie Home". The Media Coop. Retrieved 6 November 2013.
  4. Kelly, Brendan (13 December 2013). "Rae Spoon is different by nature, and proud of it". Montreal Gazette. Retrieved 13 December 2013.
  5. Takeuchi, Craig (27 September 2013). "My Prairie Home director finds a sense of place in Rae Spoon's music". Georgia Straight. Retrieved 13 November 2013.
  6. "Rae Spoon, Kamal Al-Solaylee among Canadian Lambda nominees" Archived 2014-01-06 at the Wayback Machine. Quill & Quire, March 6, 2013.
  7. Dayne Ogilvie Prize, Writers' Trust of Canada.
  8. Shelley, Darrell (4 December 2013). "Rae Spoon My Prairie Home". The Scene Magazine.
  9. "My Prairie Home at Sundance—and in your living room!". National Film Board, January 23, 2014.
  10. "Canadian Screen Awards: Orphan Black, Less Than Kind, Enemy nominated". CBC News, January 13, 2014.
  11. "Polaris Music Prize announces 2014 long list" Archived 2014-07-03 at the Wayback Machine. Aux, June 19, 2014.
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