Genevieve Simms

In Were the World Mine, a gay teenager cast as Puck in a high school production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream discovers a way to create the potion that, in the play, makes the unwitting drinker fall in love with the first person they see. He uses the elixer to turn the inhabitants of his small redneck town gay, opening their eyes in the process.

The plot for Tom Gustafson’s film might sound light-hearted for an award-winning movie, but it’s an apt metaphor for Calgary’s queer film festival. Fairy Tales kicks off its 10th year with a showing of Were the World Mine on Tuesday, May 27. In its decade as the only such annual festival in Canada’s most conservative province, Fairy Tales has grown from a weekend event to a 10-day festival boasting over 30 films. Despite growth, festival director Matt Salton says he still encounters some resistance to the festival from mainstream Calgarians, including stores that refuse to display posters for its screenings.

“There was one case where someone said ‘that’s not the kind of thing we support,’” he says. “I’ve had a real ambivalence towards the festival from mainstream media.”

However, the festival is in good shape financially and has a solid audience. Since taking over Fairy Tales two years ago, Salton, a veteran of Kingston, Ontario’s Reelout film fest, has tried to expand the audience by getting community members to work the festival and help select the movies it screens.

“I try to get as many people involved in the festival as possible,” he says. “There’s no reason you can’t go out and rip tickets or watch films for consideration. We’re not just programming for artists. We’re not just programming for film snobs.”

Salton is looking to attract a bigger heterosexual audience this year by screening three films that highlight common issues between queer and straight communities — including health, family and spirituality — and holding group discussions after each one. The festival is also branching out to cover female-driven content that was formerly the preserve of the now-defunct feminist Herland Festival, which collapsed from a lack of funding.

In a final twist, the film’s programming committee has upped the number of documentaries being shown, led by the Oscar-winning Freeheld, which documents the struggle of a New Jersey cop to leave her job benefits to her partner before she dies. As luck would have it, Fairy Tales had already discovered the film last year when Salton noticed it was nominated for an award.

Despite renovating the festival, Fairy Tales will remain true to its roots and its mandate of breaking down stereotypes and trying to open the eyes of Canada’s most conservative big city.

“My mom used to watch Queer as Folk religiously, and it appalled me to think she thought that’s what my life was like,” Salton says. “If only it was that glamorous.”