May 11, 2022
No labels please, we’re LGBTQIA++
The producer of a new Māori Television show about Aotearoa’s LGBTQIA+ community says it’s full of people who don’t want to be pigeonholed.
Queer and Here follows Aniwa Whaiapu Koloamatangi from the bilingual soap series Ahikaroa, as he talks to LGBT advocates young and old to find how queer Kiwis view themselves.
Producer Nicola Smith says it looks at the history of gay liberation, how it has affected society, and how attitudes within the community have changed over the years.
“The more we started talking to people the more resistant they were into being pigeon-holed, so it was ‘I’m in a relationship with a woman but I don’t actually see myself as lesbian, I see myself as queer,’ so we were putting people into a binary when a lot of people these days are going ‘I don’t want to be part of a binary, I’m non-binary, I don’t identify as trans, I identify as queer,'” she says.
Queer and Here premiere May 19 on Māori Television.