The business school is usually filled with frantically studying students, not 40 rambunctious, excited people gathered to watch a film.
Yet that was the case on Tuesday at 8 p.m. when a group of students came to watch “On the Road to Equality,” a film many of them were in as well.
The short film was only 13 minutes long. It was co-created by Queer Initiative members Kyle Inselman and Spencer Watson. It followed a group of 26 CU students, some QI members and some not, as they traveled 1,704 miles to join more than 300,000 other people from all over the nation at the National Equality March in Washington D.C. last fall.
According to Hillary Montague-asp, a 19-year-old sophomore women’s studies major, the idea to create the film was actually spurred by the need to fund going to D.C. to join the National Equality March.
“Really the film idea came out of the fact that we needed money,” Montague-asp said. “I know that sounds kind of shady but we were looking for money and we were looking for it quickly, and the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program gives money to students to do creative things, and since Kyle’s a film major we were like ‘hey let’s make a movie out of this.’”
Inselman is a 20-year-old junior film studies major and a member of the QI. Inselman co-produced the film with fellow QI member 21-year-old senior MCD biology major Watson.
The short film was initially created to be entered in the Big Freakin’ Deal Film Festival that happens on campus; however their film was not able to be shown because the entry was too late.
“We’re going to make a feature length version and hopefully take it around, and if it doesn’t get shown into festivals at least lecture on it, that’s my ultimate goal,” Inselman said.
The film opened with the group marching in D.C. chanting, “Hey hey, ho ho, homophobia’s got to go.”
From there the film cut back to the group preparing to leave, and followed their journey in a chronological manner featuring interviews about why the students felt it was important during the driving scenes.
“I’m not marching for gay rights, I’m marching for human rights,” said one student interviewed during the film.
The film ends with the words, “Bring the march home, things you can do,” and follows with a list of advice for people looking to become active.
After the film had ended, people who had gone on their trip shared their thoughts on the film, all of whom only had positive things to say, and a Q&A session was opened.
The Q&A session didn’t last long, and most of the group of 40 filed out so that only the QI members and a few others remained.
“[There were] definitely more people here and definitely more unfamiliar faces here,” Watson said regarding the number of people who had come to see the film.
Inselman says the experience of creating the movie was a good one that taught him a lot.
“I learned way more than in any of my film classes doing this on my own,” he said.
For Watson, the movie was about bringing the experience of the National Equality March to everyone.
“This movie was designed to bring the march home for people,” he said. “To make it something they could experience and learn from and have a great time with, even if they did not actually go to the event themselves and so they could feel the impact of going to such a massive-scale march.”
Montague-asp says that she felt the film really managed to bring the feeling of being at the event to the viewers.
“It’s really hard I think in watching a movie to get the feel of how it was to be there,” Montague-asp said. “And it might be because I went but watching that film and watching the reactions of the people who weren’t there and having them talk about it, I feel like Kyle really was able to capture the essence and energy of what happened on that march and I definitely think it was inspiring.”
Contact CU Independent Breaking News Editor Ellie Bean at Beanee@colorado.edu.
