Mississippi Queen
Screens Saturday at 5:00 pm and Sunday at 11:00 am at the Oxford Film Festival
Interview by Sarah Reddick
Screens Saturday at 5:00 pm and Sunday at 11:00 am at the Oxford Film Festival
Interview by Sarah Reddick
Mississippi Queen, a documentary by Paige Williams, filmmaker and native of Mississippi, discusses having to work hard to have a relationship with her parents after a big life issue caused their paths to diverge. Williams’ parents, conservative Southern Baptists, discovered that she was gay when she was a teenager, and a few years shortly after that they started their own ex-gay ministry. Queen is about being gay, being Southern, and it’s about being a Christian, but ultimately it’s about love and family, or as the film’s tagline puts it “This isn’t about God, it’s about y’all.” Mississippi Queen will be showing Saturday, February 6 at 5 pm and Sunday, February 7 at 11 am.
Have you ever been to Oxford? I haven’t been to the film festival before. This will be my first time, so I’m pretty excited about that. I went to Oxford a few times in ‘98 and ‘99 because I had friends in law school there, but I didn’t really get to do much.
You were born and raised in Mississippi? Oh yeah, I was born in Hattiesburg and then when I was in the second grade we lived in Greenwood for just a stint. We moved to Clinton when I was eight and I left after I graduated from Millsaps. I moved to Montana in ‘99.
Can I ask why Montana? Sure. Everybody asks me that. I had friends who’d moved here from Mississippi and they told me I would really like it. I just wanted to get out of Mississippi for a little while. I’ve since really fallen in love with this state. But it’s tough. We’ve thought about moving back, and it’s been up in the air whether that’s the right thing for our family or not. I love Mississippi, I love the South, and I really miss it.
What do you miss about the South? You know I think that from oppression and repression come great culture and art that you don’t find anywhere else. It’s unique and specific to the South. I miss crawfish, and the hospitality and the people. I miss people asking me, “How’s your mom and them?”
The great thing about that question is they really want to know! Yeah! You forget people can be like that when you’re away from it.
In the film, did you say that you came out to your parents in high school? They found out when I was a Senior in high school. They didn’t find the ex-gay ministry stuff until…I think they started going to a support group my last year of college. But it wasn’t till I moved to Montana that they really got into it and started their own ministry.
So they’ve known for a while. What prompted you to make the film now? I graduated with an MFA in filmmaking, and had begun to write a narrative, a fiction piece about an ex-gay ministry. Then I thought, a lot of times reality is a lot more interesting. People have always been really curious about my relationship with my parents and how we still loved one another. My mom asked me to shoot my cousin’s wedding. So I went down there and I took some of my buddies and decided to do the work we were just taught. When I went down there, I didn’t think that I would learn anything. But I was wrong. I learned a lot, and some of the things were not very good. When I got back to Montana, I sat on it for awhile because I was so hurt. But things continue to shift, and my parents continue to learn and I do too.
Can you tell me about experiences you’ve had at festivals so far? The first time my parents saw it with us was at the Crossroads Film Festival in Jackson. It was me and Amelia [Paige’s partner], and my mom and my dad. The theater was packed and it was a great experience, but also terrifying…feeling the audience watch us watch ourselves. I sat in and watched the film at the Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in Spokane, Washington, and had a totally different experience. It wasn’t in the South and people don’t have the same types of experiences when they’re not in the Bible Belt. To tell you the truth, during the first 20 minutes I thought, people are going to get up and walk out, because it felt so conservative in that environment. But by the end of it, people were on their feet, they absolutely loved it, and Mississippi Queen won the only award at the gay and lesbian film festival, the Audience Award. Even though it’s a queer topic, it’s really about families, and how we love one another when we don’t agree.
Are there any projects you are currently working on? In 2009 I went to Haiti to shoot a film about an agroforestry project that’s going on there that works out of a hospital. We were supposed to be in Haiti doing a film about the hospital when the earthquake hit, but we had delayed it till February. The hospital survived and it’s one of the only hospitals with a surgery unit. It’s about 45 miles from Port Au Prince. We’re going back at the end of February. I’m also working on a documentary called From Place to Place about America’s foster care system, and how it has been failing. Basically we followed six young adults, three girls and three boys, as they aged out of the system and turned 18. We’ve been following them for a year and a half. That film should be finished by the end of the year. There is also a Eudora Welty novella that I really love and I’ve wanted to film that and produce it in Mississippi. That would also give me a reason to come home and be there for a while.
You can purchase Mississippi Queen on the film’s website at www.msqueenmovie.com and also at www.indyflicks.com
