Saving Etting Street
Dena Fisher invites us into her neighbourhood. Police sirens, rushing ambulances, gunshots and rows of deteriorating vacant properties shape the landscape of Etting Street in Baltimore, Maryland. Here, we meet Shelley: a driven, hardworking queer carpenter with high standards. She envisions a world where Black women's safety is never in question and self-sufficiency builds lifelong confidence. As Shelley and the women build each house, Shelley's impact reaches far beyond the technical skills. For participants like Bryanna, Shelley becomes a possibility model and proclaims “I want to be just like her”. Saving Etting Street opens a conversation about gender roles in trade work, redlining, systemic racial inequalities and the barriers and benefits of home ownership. The women of Black Women Build Baltimore take us through the triumphs and challenges of saving homes in the community of Etting Street.
- 82 minutes
About Vancouver Queer Film Festival
The Vancouver Queer Festival is a vibrant space for queer arts, culture, and community. Each year, the Festival showcases dynamic and thought-provoking films from British Columbian filmmakers as well as other Canadian and international directors and storytellers.
The Festival curates films which contextualize and celebrate queer lives and experiences, and which foreground diverse identities in our communities, including narratives by, for, and about Black people, People of Colour, Indigenous people, and folks from across the spectrums of ability, gender, sexuality, and expression. The VQFF is Western Canada’s largest queer arts event the second-largest film festival in Vancouver, and a safer space for 2SLGBTQIA+ people.
