Furtopia | Family Friendly Furry Forum and IRC Chat!
general furry discussion => general furry discussion => Topic started by: Iara Warriorfeather on July 03, 2020, 10:32:49 pm
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Hi all!
An awesome documentary made of, for and by furries, is out--it's called The Fandom, and you can watch it for free on YouTube!
Link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv0QaTW3kEY (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv0QaTW3kEY)
Enjoy! It made me tear up a bit, be prepared for tissues! :D
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I started watching the first 30 mins. of it last night and I was hooked. I'll probably finish the last of it later tonight. It looks really well researched and well put together. I'm impressed. ;) I would LOVE to have a DVD of this documentary. :) I hope at some future point there might be one. I was also particuarly interested in the early history of furry fandom from the 1970's to about 1990. That's a time period you don't get to hear much about.
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I was thrilled with it. Nice to learn a little bit about where we came from, and in a format I could share with friends and family (and I have!).
I also realized that Skiltaire is in the background of a few pictures I took at MFF last year. I had no idea who he was.
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Ok, this is the best documentary about fury I have seen!!
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Ok, this is the best documentary about fury I have seen!!
Would have to agree 100% watching it right now it’s very well filmed and made.
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I feel a duty to pop in and plug this documentary a bit more, especially since watching it was what inspired me to pop back into Furtopia in the first place (http://forums.furtopia.org/index.php?topic=51630.msg1071586#msg1071586)! It's so well considered from start to finish, neatly avoiding three potential traps:
1) It treats controversial topics within fandom history in a way that disarms the sensationalists by just giving frank explanations of how things came to be the way they were: even when the fandom was at its most messy and ill-considered and off-putting to outsiders, the film shows how all these things arose from inexperience, but with good intentions at heart.
2) It doesn't try to fight sensationalism by going too far in the opposite direction and turning itself into a mushy love letter wherein the fandom has no negative qualities, which is common among fan-led fandom projects.
3) It doesn't try to sanitize the fandom in an effort to place itself as A Film You Can Show Your Grandmother. We're just presented as we really are: as a group of ordinary humans who are maybe a bit nerdier and lonelier than average, who are not particularly diverse (aside from being generally super queer 8) ), but who have nonetheless found their way to furry down a thousand different roads and discovered happiness here in a million different ways.
Its focus on the early personalities of the fandom genuinely did a lot to teach me about the significance of early cons and media and people that I had only read about on a screen before. My only wish is that they'd had time to provide perspectives on the last two decades of the fandom's history, i.e. the stuff I was actually around to experience. ;)
It got me thinking a bit too. I first discovered the furry fandom back in 2002-2003ish, which in macro terms was... not a great time in the fandom, was it? Back then, Furtopia was almost the only place where I felt able to admit an interest in anthropomorphic animals. My first years coincided with a lot of pretty awful media coverage, which was so traumatic to the fandom and its reputation that for years afterward we could refer to it only in epithets ("that MTV piece," "that Vanity Fair article," "that CSI episode" and the like). Many voices in the fandom seemed to feel that the whole world was against us, and it seemed like few of us really felt comfortable in our own skin. Here on Furtopia, I remember thread after anguished thread in Life Problems and Help from people scared to "come out as furry"; on one hand, their utter lack of chill, and their use of a phrase almost offensive in retrospect, pointed to the fact that so many Furtopians were so young that they hadn't yet needed to grapple with "coming out" as anything more fundamental... but on the other hand, it pretty well captured the mortified unease that many new furries felt about the fact that they were furries at all. Yet in a way, I think that contributed to making Furtopia itself such a vibrant and fun place to be. For many of us, this was one of the few places in our lives where we could hang out with other people who got us, crack weird inside jokes, let loose a bit, role-play parts of ourselves we were scared to show anywhere else, and, having lifted off some of our shackles, discover some things about who we truly were when we could express ourselves and feel accepted for it.
Having not been actively involved in furry for years, there's a part of me that can't even process how far the fandom has come since then. Like, Pittsburgh! How on earth did furries work our way up to the point where an entire small city rolls out the red carpet for us once a year? Still, somehow, this doesn't seem real in my head.
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I almost wish that documentary was split up into a few more parts. Maybe something like:
Part 1 - 1970 to 1990
Part 2 - 1990 to 2005
Part 3 - 2005 and after.
Each part could be a little bit longer and more in-depth about the evolution of the furry fandom in those time periods
As I said before, I'd love to learn more about the early history from 1970 to mid 90's. It's a time period you don't get to hear much about since a lot of people are more focused on 2000 or afterwards.
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I would LOVE to have a DVD of this documentary. :) I hope at some future point there might be one.
Ask and ye shall receive! :)
https://store.thefandomfilm.com/
I'm not sure why it says "pre-order," as she's definitely been mailing them out to purchasers and Kickstarter backers. But yes! Support this amazing film!