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The budget was tight, especially given our expansive vision for the film, and the timeline was even tighter, but I had no idea at the time just how lucky we were. Jessica called me in the summer of 2020 to tell me that the film had finally found funding through Telus Originals. We knew that we had a one-of-a-kind person to share with the world, a remarkable untold story, and a treasure trove of never-before-seen archival material. His work took our breath away, and co-editor Hân Phạm scanned over 8000 photos of his photographs from 1981.
We learned that talented photographer and artist Oraf Oraffson had skillfully photographed Oliv every single day leading up to, and during her reign in 1981. Little did we know that this search would become a two-year long rabbit hole obsession that would uncover thousands of photographs and never before seen films from the era. This was a fair thing to worry about - it was illegal to take photos in gay bars in the 1980s. We started to dig into the archive, at first worried that there would be little visual material to support the telling of this story.