Laudation – Christine Vachon – Pink Apple Festival Award 2018

Pink Apple presents its Festival Award for merits in gay and lesbian filmmaking for the fourth time. After former winners Lionel Baier, Léa Pool, and Rob Epstein & Jeffrey Friedman, producer Christine Vachon from New York is this year’s winner.

To date, Christine Vachon has produced more than one hundred titles, amongst which are many milestones of LGBT film history. Starting with POISON, the first film by Todd Haynes, a colleague from student days and friend of Christine Vachon’s, for whom she produced all his following films. But also SWOON by Tom Kalin, the lesbian classic GO FISH by Rose Troche, STONEWALL by Nigel Finch, BOYS DON'T CRY by Kimberly Peirce or I SHOT ANDY WARHOL by Mary Harron. All of these movies are elements of New Queer Cinema, the LGBT cinema of the nineties, which reflected the growing emancipation of the gay and lesbian movement at the time. Thus Christine Vachon is rightly called the "mother" of New Queer Cinema. But she is also called the "godmother" of independent films. Her illustrious filmography includes titles such as HAPPINESS by Todd Solondz, ONE HOUR PHOTO by Mark Romanek, I'M NOT THERE and STILL ALICE. Of course, FAR FROM HEAVEN, SAVAGE GRACE and CAROL must not be missed, either.

In her book, "Shooting to Kill", Christine Vachon writes that she usually replies to the question "What do producers actually do?" with a counterquestion: "What don’t they do?". And she specifies: developing screenplays, searching for funding, making budgets, negotiating with stars. Connecting directors with camera people, camera people with production designers, and production designers with location managers. Making sure that the shoot is on schedule, does not exceed the budget, and makes progress. Taking one person by the hand, stroking another’s ego, and sometimes getting actors out of jail - where they have found themselves momentarily. Yes, that is what producers do as well. But Christine believes that her function as a producer is primarily to relieve the author of everyday technicalities, so they are free to create their story exactly as they imagined it.

Christine Vachon began her career in the nineties with low budget movies, but nowadays she handles budgets in the double-digit millions. Christine regards her company - Killer Films, named after the first film she and business partner Pam Kofler produced together, OFFICE KILLER by Cindy Sherman - as a "catalyser" to turn visions into images and stories. Whilst other producers, particularly in Hollywood, often only see quotas, franchises and dollar signs, she repeatedly takes risks, working on stories that in some ways can be contradictory and rough-edged, but also have gloss and glamour, and with filmmakers that not uncommonly are making their film debut. Because she finds that debut films are a matter of heart, and their stories are often all the more convincing. She learnt her trade on the set and knows it inside and out – however, she claims she honed her skills at multitasking when working at a fast-food restaurant during her student days, where she could remember up to fifteen different orders at a time. A very useful thing for a producer!

For Christine Vachon, film is more importantly art, not only a form of entertainment. Her films have won prizes at Sundance, in Cannes, in Venice and in Berlin, in short, at all the important festivals worldwide. And they have been nominated for Oscars and won them. With her work she has helped many unusual and especially also queer stories meet a broader audience and gain greater visibility, which, in the nineties, over the millennium and up to this day, has contributed to the growing acceptance of LGBT in our society. With one per cent gay and lesbian films in our official cinema programme per year here in Switzerland, and with the widespread view that the label "gay" or "lesbian" is "box-office poison", this certainly cannot be taken for granted.

In one of her books, which reads like a novel from the bowels of film business, Christine Vachon says that in the entertainment-crazy US she is often "accused" of following either a "political" agenda, a "gay" agenda, or an "aggressive New Yorker" agenda. She can easily live with this fact. However, the lively producer dislikes being pigeonholed. Rather her strategy is to remain a "moving target", never predictable, but always relevant. So up to this day she has succeeded in making films work their magic and enchant us, the audience, again and again.

We are very happy that she has accepted our invitation. We would like to express our appreciation and deep respect for her work, for her persistence with "edgy" topics, but also for her inquisitiveness and instinct for relevant stories. We hope that, with her commitment, she will produce many more works – also for our queer film history.

In honour of her outstanding work as a producer and for her merits in LGBT filmmaking, we present her with the Pink Apple Festival Award 2018.