Two local young gay talents, Wesley Meirick and Elijah Chhum, are on the fast track to creating a film about what it was like to be gay and coming of age in 1968. The “Gay Filmmakers,” as they like to be recognized, are both attending the film school at the Metropolitan Community and Technical College (MCTC). Chhum told TheColu.mn: “our parents would like it if this (our being gay) was just a phase.”  It certainly does not seem as though this is how others will perceive their dedication to the topic of being gay in an era that existed over a decade and a half before either was born.

Chhum is the older of the two and is the cameraman of the project.  Meirick is making his directorial debut but is quick to assert that they are really co-mingling roles and responsibilities to where he considers them both to be co-producers and co-everything.  The filming will take place locally in Minneapolis at an artist studio downtown.  The talent consists of five lead actors and somewhere around 20 stand-ins.  Meirick is originally from Iowa and Chhum from Rochester, Minnesota.  Both are gay men who are out at MCTC and cited that it is sometimes a difficult thing to deal with at school.  Yet this did not dissuade them from setting out on this courageous endeavor to portray a young gay man in his coming of age.

Loosely based on their own experiences, they have shared the script and it is a powerful story with all of the drama one might expect from being identified as LGBT in the late 1960’s.

Chhum currently works for Vision Management Group where he has managed Meirick as a model.  This is their first collaboration as filmmakers although they have worked together in such local runway shows as Voltage and the recent Vita.mn poolside fashion show held at the Calhoun Beach Club.

The leads in the upcoming film are Faith Udeh, originally from Nigeria and a singer in a Christian Hip Hop group, Valarie Falken, Shawn Maguire (the main character), Elliot Graber (his love interest) and D.C. Diltz who plays a homophobic fifty-something cop.  Diltz is himself a retired ex-cop who was shot in the line of duty.  The main character and his love interest are, themselves, not gay but the Editor is gay and the Assistant Director asserts that she is queer identified.

1968 is the “working title” of the production which will be entered into the Minnesota History Center film completion.  The deadline for submission is September 10 so the project is indeed ambitious.

As for what the future holds for the two talented young men who set to graduate the program at MCTC soon, Chhum says he believes he remain in Minnesota making more movies and Meirick is hoping to be accepted for Fall 2011 to the University of his choice. One thing is for sure, their stars are rising!