Talent Search For New Gay Film

Director Nicole Conn talks about her new film project “She Walks in Beauty” based on her bestselling 2001 novel with Emmy Winner Charlotte Robinson, host of OUTTAKE VOICES™. The story is about two women on two continents across two eras addressing love, lust and betrayal. Conn has teamed up with Executive Producer Elaine Sturgess to launch a search for a new movie star to be featured in the film. The brainchild of Elaine Sturgess, the iConn Casting Quest offers the chance for anyone, whether they have any acting experience or not, to apply for the opportunity to attend a casting session for the new movie. Nicole stated, “We are literally opening the casting process up to anyone worldwide who believes they have the talent to make it on the big screen. It doesn’t matter even if they have no acting experience at all, we’ll consider anyone as long as they can tell us a bit about who they are and why they think they have what it takes to feature in “She Walks in Beauty.” We talked to Conn about her ambitious global movie star talent search and our LGBT issues.

When asked what her personal commitment is to LGBT equality Nicole stated, “The LGBT equality issue for me is sort of a double edge sword. From a civil rights issue we should have all the rights that anybody has, we’re humans and it’s a human rights issue. One of my feelings is that the more equally we become the more invisible we’ve become on some levels because our community is primarily connected by only one thing, the fact that we love the same sex but we don’t pull the same traditions, social backgrounds, cultural backgrounds, any of those things. So there’s the one piece that binds us together and so I sometimes worry about when we are mainstreamed we lose ourselves as we have seen has happened in the past twenty years. There were bookstores, newspapers, there were magazines, coffee houses that were all dedicated to our community so you knew where to find our community. Now in the time of the internet I think it’s very difficult to find our community and so from that stand point it’s sort of a bittersweet passage. However I believe the time has come to merge LGBT with the rest of the universe especially in terms of our storytelling, our books, all of our films, you know we want our own library yet our library speaks to everybody. Our stories are human stories; they transcend LGBT and so it’s a very dicey question because the fact once mainstreamed we sort of disappear.”

Since Nicole Conn released her landmark lesbian-themed movie “Claire of the Moon” in 1992 her films have included “Cynara”, “Elena Undone” and last year’s “A Perfect Ending” now the best selling lesbian movie of all time. The first iConn Casting Quest live event will take place in Brighton, UK in January 2014 where applicants will have the opportunity to read opposite well known actresses, including the lead from “A Perfect Ending” Barbara Niven. Further events will follow in the US. Currently Nicole is directing Jen Foster’s new music video “She” that addresses marriage equality.
For Info & Applications: shewalksinbeautymovie.com

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