"Identity Richmond" Helps City Find Itself

Richmond is suffering from an identity crisis.

Underneath its conservative, ex-Confederate exterior lie numerous different subcultures that rarely see the light of day.

Filmmakers Jon Headlee and Sera Tabb are looking to change that.

For the last three years, Headlee and Tabb, along with editor Ben Muri, have been following various subcultures that exist right underneath people's eyes.

The project, entitled "Identity Richmond," is a documentary that explores the identity conflict of Richmond through its subcultures and countercultures set within the environment of a conservative southern city.

According to the documentary, Richmond has much identity conflict coming from a growing resentment toward its status as the former capital of the Confederacy and adjustments to civil rights movements. Various groups have emerged that go against hundreds of years of conservative, traditional values.

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"We wanted to look at what makes up our individual and collective identity, and how we describe our social role in society, but we knew it wouldn't be visually interesting unless we followed people around and documented their transition into these cultures," Tabb said.

The subcultures Headlee and Tabb documented include the Roller Girls, drag queens, fire throwers, live action role playing groups, bike crews, BD S&M/Fetish groups and Civil War re-enactors, among many others.

"If you live in an urban environment, it requires you to have multiple identities," Headlee said. "Your work identity … your home identity … there are so many choices for us in an urban environment."

"What makes these cultures so interesting in the Richmond context is that they're forced to be underground," Tabb explained. "If you're connected to them then you know there's this whole world you have access to, but if you're not a part of it, you'd have no idea it even exists. When I would go to work in a corporate environment, nobody I worked with knew anything about them."

The film started as Headlee and Tabb's undergraduate research grant program at VCU. Using social media, they identified some groups, met with people and started building a network.

"As we were working with one subculture, we would learn about another one and we'd go check that out," Headlee said.

"What we found was that everyone in that culture knew people in another culture," Tabb continued. "The people in the fetish culture knew members of the roller girls who in turn knew a few drag queens."

"It was like a domino effect," Headlee said. "Once you get the ball rolling, it keeps going until you have this cohesive picture of what Richmond is."

When footage was turned in for the grant program, the response from VCU was ‘we can't believe this was shot in Richmond,' according to Tabb. The project was then extended and more funded to further explore the city's subcultures.

Not that the project didn't have any setbacks, which the filmmakers discovered when shooting certain groups.

"It was hard filming certain groups like the fetish or gay communities because some of the people worry about being exposed," Tabb said. "There are a lot of weird archaic Virginia state laws that have to do with sexuality that make a lot of the things we're trying to document illegal — even though they are completely consensual and don't even involve sex.

"There are also a lot of ABC laws that have been difficult for us to work around," she continued. "We had to work closely with different bar owners, who were all extremely supportive of the project."

Even though the film is centered in Richmond, these groups are everywhere. And one of the things they are most excited about with this documentary is that it's a conduit for social change.

"We have all these different groups in our city, but there's no real communication between them." Tabb said.

"We want to encourage people to get out there and see things that they wouldn't normally see," Headlee continued. "As people get informed, they'll start seeking it out and that's where the communication between them happens."

The two plan to have a finished project by next year and move it on to various festivals and screenings. They hope the documentary forces people in Richmond to open their eyes to others around them.

"It's so fascinating and exciting working on a project like this, because you get to learn so much about people, but it's also very fun to watch," Tabb said. "You have the Lucha Libre guys throwing each other on beds of tacks and kicking the crap out of each other, and the drag queens are showing us how they're modifying their male bodies to become female by spray mounting and applying foam."

"We called it social traveling," Headlee said. "We would get the chance to go from culture to culture every week. We have entire circles of friends now that don't know our other circles of friends."

And keeping with the theme of different cultures, Headlee and Tabb are also crafting a local soundtrack to add to the local feel of the film. Since Richmond has such a diverse music scene, they are looking to feature as many different artists as possible.

"It's going to be such a schizophrenic soundtrack," Tabb said, with a laugh.