UnLonely Film Festival 5
Factory Talk
Factory Talk is a spoken-word artist film exploring identity, sexuality and masculinity in a modern day working factory.
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Consider This
Talking with others about a shared arts experience can enrich our perspectives. Watch this video to explore the film’s meaning and major themes a bit more.
Meet the Filmmakers
What is their why?
“Factory Talk explores real, perceived and internalised homophobia in the modern working world, highlighting the interplay of masculinity, class and bisexuality on self worth and mental health.
Both of us identify as queer and bisexual, with working class backgrounds, and have lived experience of anxiety and other mental health issues. The piece is based on real life events, taken partly from Chris’ experience of working in a factory where he worked alongside other men and felt the impact of being closeted and the isolation within a masculine working class environment. For us on a base level, Factory Talk allows us to explore the moments where we notice our anxieties around our queer identities playing out in our everyday working lives, and how this impacts our self-esteem, confidence and self-worth. We want to highlight the prevalence of anxiety and imposter syndrome bisexual people experience navigating working class life. The expectation of rejection feeds an anxiety that filters through into every aspect of life.
Talking about queerness alongside class and ‘Britishness’ is something we are both passionate about, from growing up in rural towns where coming out isn’t the same as in the bigger cities. We hope that this film will continue dialogue about queerness and masculinity, intergenerational conversations about identity, and how socio-economic status can affect ability to openly talk about sexuality, gender and mental health.”
Lucie Rachel is an artist filmmaker whose work explores themes of domesticity, gender and sexuality. She has directed award winning short films with the Scottish Documentary Institute, Glasgow Film, Channel 4 Random Acts and Art with Impact. Lucie’s current work continues to focus on intimate subject matter through an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach, moving between artist film and documentary genres.
Chrissie Hyde is a queer, working class creative from Hereford, working in the midlands and the south west. Known for his poetry by the name of 1990sChris, he writes primarily for film and audio. He has been commissioned by BBC arts for a radio production on bisexuality as well as working on a number of projects for Channel 4’s Random Acts. His work hopes to start conversations around queer identity, masculinity and class.
Have you ever had the experience of not fitting in at a job or of needing to hide your true self? How did you navigate it and what lessons did you learn?
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Art and healing .org is forward thinking,,,,inspirational and determined to show all walks of life, people struggling then growing then struggling…with each movie i learn about others and learn to listen carefully …this makes sense…to understand others through our own prejudice lenses of our own life experience and then grow past ourselves towards others..I have always not fitted into my work places even with all my work of 38 years in schools and 45 in nursing homes…the struggle to fit in has never left me…
the day by day sameness brings anxiety rather than boredom because of the hidden meanings that fall out of small talk. beautifully filmed with words that flowed easily into my head. Thank you for bringing understanding.
factory chalk made me think of many things I have felt over the last year’s… No. Over 32 years since I was diagnosed as a child with Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus…
what I have come to realize overtime is that even when I am home and alone and now without a limb, my life is much bigger than I feel it is. So, in essence, in a metaphoric way we are so much larger then we feel we are. Only others can see our true shadows as only others, often it takes strangers, to reveal to us how special and important we are to them!
Like Oliver Sacks has written in awakenings, we are pulverized by medicine and it’s algorithms and numbers and statistics; and so, we are made diminutive by disease. Whereas, there are infinite ways to be healthy, there is a draining, lifelessness to chronic illness that is very much like the sameness of routine and powerlessness and futility that dirty such “disintegration. This can raise pulsating shock-waves of fear and tragedy and utter loneliness in the experience!
That was really beautiful!