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The LGBT Center at Ohio University in Baker Center during 2015. (FILE)

Ohio University LGBT Center film series to show harsher realities of queer issues

The LGBT Center is sponsoring a screening of A Place to Live — The Story of Triangle Square, which will be followed by a discussion with the producer.

In the past the LGBT Center has been known to show fun movies for its Queer Hollywood series, but this year the center plans to use these films to raise awareness for real-life queer issues.

“This movie is the beginning of Delfin (director of the LGBT Center) reaching out to other groups, using the movies as a way of showing intersections of queer issues and other social justice issues,” Sarah Grote, the LGBT Center’s projects coordinator, said.

The film is a documentary called A Place to Live — The Story of Triangle Square on Friday at 5 p.m. at the Athena Cinema. The center is teaming up with the College of Fine Arts and the Interior Architecture Program to present the movie.

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The film focuses on seven older individuals as they attempt to gain housing in Triangle Square, which is the country’s first affordable housing facility for LGBT senior citizens in Hollywood. The method for choosing residents is set up as a lottery system since the apartments are in high demand, but have limited space. The film shows how these individuals came to be in this lottery.

After the screening a discussion will be held with Cynthia Childs, the producer of the film.

By teaming up with different groups, the center hopes to show how queer issues relate in most situations and to raise awareness.

“A lot of LGBT representation and the way the struggle is portrayed is sort of glamorized (in films), and this shows real people, really struggling to live regular lives," Emma Holman-Smith, the community coordinator at the LGBT Center, said. 

Grote, a senior studying recreational management, said the senior LGBT community is often overlooked, and this documentary shows a different representation that isn’t usually discussed in queer narratives.

“LGBT individuals right now in America statistically own less homes, and things that adults would have financially and resource wise, a lot of LGBT still don’t have access to,” Grote said. “There are still LGBT seniors struggling.”

Grote said LGBT seniors did not have the same opportunities as younger LGBT groups do today, and this film portrays that.

“I hope (the film) gets into people’s minds,” Holman-Smith, a junior studying mathematics and Russian, said. “(It’s about) the issues faced by LGBT seniors, and what we all could be doing to be more inclusive.”

@lynanneclaire

lv586814@ohio.edu

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