My Prairie Home

Invited

Transgender singer-songwriter Rae Spoon (who uses the gender-neutral pronoun “they”) embarks on a tour across Canada. Their genre-defying music, a combination of folk, country, indie rock, and electronica, is as impossible to categorize as their sex. On long Greyhound bus rides and in drab motel rooms, Spoon shares details about their childhood and family—an evangelical upbringing, abuse by a schizophrenic father, first-time love with a girl in high school. Punctuating these musings are director Chelsea McMullan’s quirky, stylized music videos, in which Spoon wields their voice and acoustic guitar at an old-fashioned diner, in a John Hughes–style prom scene, and alongside dinosaurs at a history museum, among others. Surreal, poetic, and entertaining, this impressionistic musical documentary is a simultaneously playful and revealing portrait of a talented, untraditional artist.  EM

Director

Chelsea McMullan

Producer

Lea Marin

Editor

Avril Jacobson

Cinematographers

Maya Bankovic, Derek Howard

Release Year

2013

Festival Year

2014

Country

Canada

Run Time

77 minutes