The Pinco Triangle

The Pinco Triangle
Directed byPatrick Crowe
Tristan R. Whiston
Written byPatrick Crowe
Tristan R. Whiston
Produced byKeith Clarkson
StarringMichael Fitzgerald
Lorraine Segato
CinematographyYves Simard
Edited byCathy Gulkin
Music byAlan Moon
Production
company
Upper Canada Moving Picture Company
Release date
  • 1999 (1999)
CountryCanada
LanguageEnglish

The Pinco Triangle is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Patrick Crowe and Tristan R. Whiston and released in 1999.[1] A profile of LGBT life in Sudbury, Ontario, the film mixes interviews with past and present LGBT residents of the city with vignettes depicting aspects of the directors' own childhoods in the city, acted by a cast including Michael "Bitch Diva" Fitzgerald and Lorraine Segato.[1] The film takes its name from blending the pink triangle, a common LGBT symbol, with the INCO Triangle, the former employee magazine of INCO's mining operations in Sudbury.[2]

The interviewees included Michael Boyuk, a performer now associated with The B-Girlz drag comedy troupe, and Paulette Gagnon, an arts administrator who was previously profiled in the documentary film Mum's the Word (Maman et Ève) in 1996.[3] The film's climax is a drag production number staged in front of the Big Nickel.[4]

The directors started making the film in 1992, while Crowe was working for the National Film Board of Canada; it began when Crowe made a "pinco triangle" to carry with him at that year's Toronto Pride Parade, and conducted "person on the street" interviews with former Sudburians he met while displaying the symbol.[5] Due to limited financing, the film was not fully completed until 1998.[2]

  1. ^ a b Gordon Bowness, "Steelworkers, miners & faggots. Oh my". Daily Xtra, May 19, 1999.
  2. ^ a b "Queer North film provides a satirical look at life as a gay person in Sudbury back in the 80's and 90's". Morning North, June 14, 2018.
  3. ^ "The Pinco Triangle (1998)". BFI Film & TV Database.
  4. ^ Waugh, Thomas, Romance of Transgression in Canada: Queering Sexualities, Nations, Cinemas. Carleton University Press, 2006. ISBN 978-0773530690. p. 122.
  5. ^ "How times have changed; The pINCO Triangle, a film shot by Tristan Whiston and Patrick Crowe, will be screened for the first time in their hometown of Sudbury on Sunday". Sudbury Star, June 14, 2018.