Second Eulogy: Mind the Gap Screening

February 6, 2020

On Thursday, February 6th, the Center for Collaborative Arts and Media hosted a screening of Billy Gerard Frank’s 40-minute long film Second Eulogy: Mind the Gap, which had been featured in the 2019 Venice Biennale. Both Billy Gerard Frank and producer Lauren Beck attended the event and followed the screening with an intimate Q&A session in which they shared some details regarding their filmmaking process.

Second Eulogy: Mind the Gap had been inspired by Billy Gerard Frank’s own experiences growing up queer in Caribbean nation of Grenada. Following his estranged father’s death, he discovered a suitcase containing physical mementos of his life: maps, letters, and stamps. The film served as a reconstruction and deconstruction of Frank’s father’s life that had been extrapolated from these objects. Frank describes his motivation for the film: “Apart from telling the story of my father’s life, I wanted to explore personal experiences of growing up as a gay teenager in Grenada: the ridicule; the sexual molestation; the trauma.” The main character, then, in many ways mirrors Frank himself.

 During the Q&A session, Frank and Beck shared some of the incredible details surrounding the conception and execution of the film. It was shot over a five-day period in Grenada, using equipment, crews, and actors primarily found and hired on site. During the Q&A session, Frank revealed that he used the app Grindr to advertise the project and ultimately cast the lead actor in the film, and Beck described the difficulty they had faced in trying to find the necessary equipment after arriving in Grenada. The audience responded warmly when Frank asked if the film had resonated with any of them on a personal level.

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