Pat Leezy wrote, produced, directed, edited and personally funded “Standing In Shadows” while he was in Seoul, South Korea.
On January 5, Pat Leezy, a 24 year old Korean-American director residing in Los Angeles, released “Standing In Shadows”, a gay rights Public Service Announcement (PSA) filmed in Seoul, South Korea “because Asia has been completely intolerant towards the LGBT community, and I wanted to shed light on that”.
This “intolerance” is as apparent in the Philippines, of course. In an earlier article, Outrage Magazine reported the now defunct Philippine LGBT Hate Crime Watch’s report that since 1994, when the group started recording LGBT-related crimes in the Philippines, over 130 LGBT-related hate crimes have been reported in the country as of end-2011, with 37 of these happening in 2011 alone. Outside of Metro Manila, in fact, LGBT-related abuses have similarly been noted – for instance, Iwag Dabaw Inc. in Davao City reported that “several accounted cases where gays have been physically abused – thrown with stones and doused with water as they walked along the streets, being slapped in the face by family members, and verbally abused in public places by being called mean names like bayot, panget, bakla, bayot di madawat sa langit, punyeta, buti pa di pinanganak, and many more. (And when) the group tabulated the summary of human rights violations committed against gays in Davao, out the 97 respondents, 76 (or 78% of total) have been abused… And an abused gay normally experiences more than one form of abuse.”
Leezy’s move is but a step to put focus on this.
And with “Standing In Shadows”, K-Pop takes a pink turn.
Interestingly, Leezy – who admits to “honestly not (be) very plugged in to the LGBT community at all – “just really made this video for my friends,” he said to Outrage Magazine. “I made it for two of my closest friends who are gay and who struggle with coming out and living their lives. I just wanted to give them some more courage to be themselves and forget what people say.”
But then “I decided I wanted to share with the larger community because my friends were really touched (by it),” Leezy said.
Leezy wrote, produced, directed, edited and personally funded “Standing In Shadows” while he was in Seoul, South Korea.
The dialogue in “Standing In Shadows” is in Korean, but there are subtitles available in English, French, Japanese, Chinese and Spanish. Just click the Closed Captioning (“CC”) Button and select the preferred language.
More information about “Standing In Shadows” is available at its Facebook account.
