HARTFORD, Conn — Picture this: your parents have sent you to a tennis camp and the main instructor has a rigid view of what it means to be a boy or a girl. So you and your fellow campers set out to change that.
That’s the premise of the short film ‘Bay Creek Tennis Camp’ that will play at the upcoming Out Film CT.
The film, by writer-director Michele Meek, was shot last summer.
“I was coming at it from a standpoint of really wanting to give voice to youth because a lot of the scholarly research that I've done has been about youth," Meek said, "And I'm interested in presenting their point of view as much as possible. And there are many youth who feel that there could be better ways of dividing children's sports other than gender.”
Meek, who is an assistant professor in the communication studies department at Bridgewater State University, said she feels that the issue often plays out in smaller, more personal stages.
“It’s not only children who don't identify, as they were assigned at birth, it's other children as well," she said. "I mean, it's children who are boys who would like to not check in hockey or, you know, play with aggressive lacrosse rules, and they get kind of weeded out because there's no place for them to play.”
She added: “I was very interested in what young people had to say about the topic, what a coach might say, what the children might say to each other."
Meek funded the short film through a grant from the Rhode Island Council of the Arts, private donations for the film, and a university grant.
"I partially funded it as well," Meek said. "Rhode Island production company, Animus Studios, joined as a partner, and they provided equipment, including the RED camera, and some of the crew."
Meek hopes that in the future, people will be more accepting of change, even for things they don’t readily understand.
“I think that as adults who grew up in a certain context with certain messages, you know, we don't always understand, but we also know that when we were youth, we had ways of seeing the world that were different than the adults around us," she said. "And we were going to meet remake our world in our vision.”
Bay Creek Tennis Camp will be shown Sat, Oct 14th, at 3:00 p.m. at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford. It will also be available streaming online from October 6 to October 23. For more information, go to Out Film CT .
Doug Stewart is a Senior Digital Content Producer at FOX61 News. He can be reached at dstewart@fox61.com.
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