This is tiresome, but I am partially retiring from filmmaking right now. I am going to finish what I can of this trans climate documentary and try to scrape up funds for my film about trans poverty. But really I have been turned down four times for grants on major projects this year and I’m just tired of it. The only grants I’ve had this year is my Indigenous Screen Office grant for traveling to Lisbon and also the artist in residence position at the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity at U of T. But I have been rejected for all other project grants and another travel grant. This year I got Cows and Plows which helped me survive a bit (and get a guitar) and the other artist in residence position helped me in the winter/spring time this year.

I have a ton of ideas. I am not devoid of ideas. I could tell you any number of amazing and important stories about my community that I want to tell. But it doesn’t matter if I don’t get the funding to tell those stories.

I was thinking of maybe writing them down in prose and publishing them just so they exist in some form. I know that’s not what those stories were meant to be though. And it makes me feel like I’ve failed my ancestors because some of these stories are specifically about their lives and what happened when we were being colonized in Saskatchewan in the 1800’s. But people don’t want to support those stories. I have asked myself so many questions why it is so hard for me to get funded right now. I wonder if it’s because of the person who was slandering me last year (who I understand is now working and funded in the film Industry by the way). I wonder if it’s because I’m transgender and people don’t want my stories because of that. I wonder if it’s because people think I had too much of a good ride for too long and deserve to be humbled. I don’t know.

I do know I can’t afford to make the work I want to make. I had an idea for a three year trans climate project that I applied for a composite grant for, but I got such a laughably low score for it that I didn’t think it was worth taking it to a jury again, so it’s just going to be a feature documentary with a barebones budget. My film POOR which I shot this September didn’t get post production funding from Toronto Arts Council, which means I can’t edit it in time for the Telefilm deadline for production. And because Telefilm thinks I’ve made too many experimental films to be a worthwhile narrative director, I don’t have another chance to prove I can direct drama. So we probably won’t be applying for that deadline next year either.

I have so many ideas for films I mean it’s fucking crazy how many ideas I have. But they are worthless if no one believes in me enough to fund me. And no one believes in me right now, or that’s what it feels like considering all these arts council rejections.

I want to tell stories but I can’t without funding. And I could make scrappy punk videos again I guess but that’s not where my heart is.

I have to admit that I have to stop creating work. If there’s no money in it then I can’t tell my stories. I can still write here in this jack off blog and I probably will. But I can’t move forward on any projects except for limping along with this documentary that is never going to be what I wanted it to be, and this short film that doesn’t have funding to be finished in a professional manner so I can submit to festivals with confidence. It’s disappointing. I’m glad I got two teaching jobs next semester and hopefully if things work out I can someday get a full time teaching job and randomly make shorts in my spare time I guess.

There’s reasons my stories were important to a lot of communities. WERE. I guess they aren’t anymore. Maybe I’m too old and they want to support emerging artists. I’m not sure. I could come up with a list of 20 reasons I’m not being supported by grants right now, but I would never really know which ones were true.