Undressed for success

For documentary filmmaker Matthew Pond, the nomination of his first film, Undressing Vanessa, at this year’s IF (Inside Film) Awards has been something of a surprise.

It was pretty unexpected, the director told Sydney Star Observer. He was humble about his chances of taking out the prize for best short documentary at the awards, to be held on November 13.

I don’t think I’m going to win, he said. After the awards, I’ll continue to try and get projects up -” beg and grovel for funding.

The documentary focuses on Sydney drag queen Vanessa Wagner. Throughout a 20-year-career, Wagner -” aka Tobin Saunders -” has playfully subverted the traditional confines of drag. It was this subversion that first drew Pond to her as a subject.

Vanessa is not your typical drag queen. She’s a pretty counter-intuitive person -” someone once said she’s a man playing a man playing a woman, and I think that sums her up, with her sideburns and her hairy chest.

There is, of course, more to Wagner than a hairy chest and a face full of make-up. She’s also a political and social activist. This, too, attracted Pond to his subject.

Prior to [making the documentary], I was a lawyer in New York. I just got fed up with law, and I wanted something that was more creative, but still had an element of advocacy in it. Documentary is really the perfect form -” it embodies both of those things.

When making the film, Pond wanted to look more closely at the man behind the larger-than-life drag persona.

Although the film is called Undressing Vanessa, it’s really a portrait of Tobin Saunders. Tobin’s life is interesting for a number of different reasons, chief among them that he acquired HIV in the late 1980s, around the time of the Grim Reaper campaign. He was told that he wouldn’t live to his 30th birthday [Saunders is now 44]. I was interested in this idea of facing death; looking at what changes that enacts.

Many Australians’ first exposure to Wagner or Saunders was via his role on Celebrity Big Brother in 2002. No doubt hired to bring some colour and movement to the show, Saunders also used it as a platform to expose his life as an HIV-positive man to mainstream, suburban Australia. It was a brave move.

That’s emblematic of who he is, said Pond. It’s also a product of being told you’ve got two or three years to live -” it’s made him more fearless.

For now, though, both Pond and Wagner are looking forward to celebrating their success at the IF Awards. Pond insists that their night won’t be too debauched.

Being a struggling documentary filmmaker, I don’t have the resources to ride limos, snort cocaine off hookers’ arses, or any of that fun stuff, he laughed.