Summary

Graham Kolbeins and Jonathan Andre Culliton, founders of the 29 Queer Film Fest, discuss their backgrounds as filmmakers and the inspiration behind the festival. They talk about the films being showcased, including world premieres and queer horror shorts. The festival is designed to create a space for queer stories and foster the filmmaking community in the high desert area. They also discuss the acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community in the area and the support they have received from local businesses and organizations.

Visit the webiste HERE

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Background 04:10 Inception of the 29 Queer Film Fest 06:01 Film Highlights and Gala Events 08:35 Festival Schedule and Venues 11:31 Attending the Film Fest: Tips for Newcomers 13:46 Future Plans and Fostering the Filmmaking Community 15:01 Acceptance and Support in the High Desert 17:28 Closing Remarks and Event Details

Danny (00:01.779) All right, Graham Cole Beans and Jonathan Andre Coliton. Coliton, thanks for being on the Highway 62 podcast. How are you guys today?

Graham Kolbeins & Jonathan Andre Culliton (00:02.208) Yeah.

Graham Kolbeins & Jonathan Andre Culliton (00:10.902) Thank you for having us. great. Yeah, we're doing good.

Danny (00:16.915) Awesome. And you guys are the founders, right, of the first ever inaugural 29 Queer Film Fest that's happening in September the 20th and 22nd. Before we get into a little bit about the actual Film Fest and kind of what it's all about, give me just a brief little background on each of you.

Graham Kolbeins & Jonathan Andre Culliton (00:24.214) Thank

Graham Kolbeins & Jonathan Andre Culliton (00:40.758) Sure. So we're both filmmakers and I'll just start talking about myself. I'm mostly a documentary filmmaker though I've recently started doing some narrative filmmaking. I shot a short film here in 29 Palms in June called Outage that I'm currently in post -production on.

Danny (00:50.707) Ha

Graham Kolbeins & Jonathan Andre Culliton (01:07.688) I'm pretty deeply involved in film and when we came out here... Can I roll that back a little bit? Okay, great, I just lost my train of thought. Sorry. Yeah, so I'm a filmmaker, a videographer.

Danny (01:20.669) Sure. I can edit anything too, it's fine.

Graham Kolbeins & Jonathan Andre Culliton (01:33.654) and I'm a queer person in 29 palms and those all informed co -founding this festival. I'm also... Sorry? Where are you originally from? I was born in Vancouver, Canada.

Danny (01:43.315) Where are you originally from?

Danny (01:48.648) Where are you originally from?

Danny (01:53.467) Okay. Right on. I love Vancouver. I was just, I was just in, I've been to Canada a lot lately. I was in Toronto last weekend and the weekend before I was in Edmonton. So I spent a lot of time in the Kenyatta.

Graham Kolbeins & Jonathan Andre Culliton (01:57.504) Yeah, that's a great place.

Graham Kolbeins & Jonathan Andre Culliton (02:06.143) I'm cool.

Graham Kolbeins & Jonathan Andre Culliton (02:10.142) Nice. What were you doing in Toronto?

Danny (02:13.043) I play in a band, so we're playing some festivals up there. But yeah, we do a lot of Canadian shows. Graham, what about you?

Graham Kolbeins & Jonathan Andre Culliton (02:16.319) Awesome.

Graham Kolbeins & Jonathan Andre Culliton (02:21.11) me? You mean Jonathan, yes. That's okay. No, I'm a born and bred Bostonian with all the details. But yeah, I'm also a filmmaker. Currently I'm rolling out a couple of films.

Danny (02:24.967) Jonathan, I'm sorry, your buys are both Canadian.

Graham Kolbeins & Jonathan Andre Culliton (02:43.542) Spookable which played at the Maryland Film Festival in frame 48 and is about to play at Prism 37. And then I have Will It Justice Drag Queen Private Eye which is showing, both of those films are showing actually at the 29 Queer Film Festival and that film stars Lady Shalane who is the premier high desert drag queen of our current timeline.

Danny (03:12.083) Yeah, Yeah, she was one of my first guests on the podcast, like second or third episode ever. Right on. How did you guys how did you guys end up settling in the 29 Palms area?

Graham Kolbeins & Jonathan Andre Culliton (03:13.462) Amazing. She's really special.

Yeah, so I moved out here four years ago from Los Angeles. It was during the pandemic. I had lost work and I had always wanted to move to the high desert but never really thought that it was feasible. But in that moment an opportunity became available. A friend said, hey, I have a cabin that just opened up and I moved into that cabin in July 2020. And I've

just loved living here ever since. Yeah, and then I followed Graham because I fell in love with them so I just followed. I just came out here to be closer to them.

Danny (04:01.949) Right on.

Danny (04:10.449) Very nice, very nice. So tell me about kind of the inception and the idea and how it came to be that you put this film festival together.

Graham Kolbeins & Jonathan Andre Culliton (04:20.438) Yeah, well we both were mentees in Workshop 29, which was a program out of PAC, the Arts Council here. And we both were encouraged to do programming. They wanted people to think about all ages programming and

programming for different identities basically. So we were encouraged to do some sort of event which isn't really natural to our filmmaking careers except for film festivals. know, that's sort of the place that Archive gathers. So we thought, you know, this is an opportunity not only to make an event here, which is the first of its kind here.

but also to create a film festival from the perspective of being filmmakers who have been at film festivals and had varying experiences. And as you know, we have such a beautiful place to offer, but no movie theater here. the idea of sharing film...

Danny (05:36.326) Yeah, right.

Graham Kolbeins & Jonathan Andre Culliton (05:40.678) and making a place for it, a literal physical place where you can sit in a comfortable chair and watch it in a dark room as it's intended is something we thought was really special that we could give the entire community.

Danny (06:01.023) on. Sounds great. What tell us a little bit about some of the films maybe I know there's quite a bit on the agenda there I read through the press release but maybe give us what you think is going to be a few of just sort of the highlights of the you know the Cup multi -day event.

Graham Kolbeins & Jonathan Andre Culliton (06:16.182) Yeah, so we're showing 30 films over three days, including three feature films. Yeah, the features are sort of can't miss. You've got a world premiere of Poppy's Pregnant, which is the story of our friend, trans -MAC non -binary person getting pregnant. Then you've got People's Joker, already an iconic film from Vera Drew.

And then we've got Off Ramp to Cabot Off, which is a film with a trans actor, but it's about juggalos, if you know anything about insane clown posse. So these are unusual queer stories. So the features are really can't miss to me. And then what else do we have? We have a queer horror program full of shorts from around the world. We have

Danny (06:59.955) Yeah, yeah.

Graham Kolbeins & Jonathan Andre Culliton (07:11.104) Bears, Lesbians, and Queers, My, which is an eclectic program with all kinds of different representation. And one of our other gala events is the premiere of Willa Justice Drag Queen Private Eye, along with a performance by Lady Shalane and Drag Bingo, which she does all around the high desert. And Free Eye Fall to Pizzas. Pizza.

Danny (07:37.247) yeah. Give us a little bit of just kind of like the schedule, because I know there's different events. There's a couple different venues involved. I've attended a film festival. went to the Yucca Valley Film Festival this year. you know what, it's something that I'm really enjoying about living out in the area there is, I mean, first of all, when I moved out there,

Graham Kolbeins & Jonathan Andre Culliton (08:04.115) It was.

Danny (08:06.463) I just didn't expect there to be so much arts going on. know, even though I knew like other drummers and other musicians that had moved out to the area, but it's been so great to just kind of get involved with, you know, the community. And I think because it's a little bit smaller area, it's easier to attend these different events and, you know, versus like going to like a big film festival in Austin or in L .A. or, you know, any of those kind of things. So I'm really enjoying that. And

Graham Kolbeins & Jonathan Andre Culliton (08:22.602) you

Danny (08:34.451) If you've never been to a film festival, I mean, I've been a movie film fanatic ever since my cinema study class in high school in 1984 back in Chicago. And I never went to a film fest until I went to the Yucca Valley one this, this year, you know, so it's a really cool experience. And if you haven't been to one before, I would just really recommend people to, to check something like that out. But anyway, give us kind of a rundown. Where is it happening?

Graham Kolbeins & Jonathan Andre Culliton (08:35.871) you

Graham Kolbeins & Jonathan Andre Culliton (08:43.722) Thank you.

Graham Kolbeins & Jonathan Andre Culliton (09:02.186) Anyway.

Danny (09:04.347) a little rundown of like the schedule and how it all works.

Graham Kolbeins & Jonathan Andre Culliton (09:07.51) Sure, yeah, to your point we're making it so it's like everything's within like 10 minutes of each other and that makes a really great film festival experience and in my experience so yeah we have theater 29 as the main hub of the festival 99 % of the...

29 Palms Queer Film Festival