Filmmaker Brandon Cordeiro was in New York the day after the massacre at the Pulse Club in Orlando and immediately on hearing the news, he became one of organizers of the spontaneous Vigil held later that day outside the Stonewall Inn. Later back home in Provincetown he decided that an appropriate way to both memorialize the innocent victims and to help raise funds for the survivors was to form a special Team to participate in P Town’s Annual Swim For Life.
For Cordeiro it marked a full circle as earlier that year he had released his first short movie called Ribbons which was about him as a young gay boy growing up in P.Town and witnessing the growth of the Swim For Life which had started 29 years ago to raise much needed funds for people with HIV. The AIDS pandemic had greatly impacted the town’s significant LGBT population, but it’s very crucial legacy from that difficult era was the way it brought the community together as a whole.
Each of the seemingly endless yards of strings of colorful ribbons that flutter in the wind at every Swim For Life bares a personal dedication to someone’s memory. This year the Event’s Director Jay Critchley decided to add one black ribbon for each of the people who lost their lives at Pulse, and in moving ceremony they were tied on to the display after each name was read out loud. Cordeiro was one of the speakers there and he announced plans to not only swim himself this year but to form a group with other swimmers specifically to honor the 49 innocent people.
queerguru talked to Cordeiro as he was donning his wetsuit just about to start the swim ….. and waited there to make sure he got back safely !
To read more about Cordeiro’s movie, check out our interview with him for PTV earlier this summer https:// queerguru.com/2016/06/brandon-cordeiro-talks-ribbons-piff16
P.S. Provincetown’s annual SWIM FOR LIFE is now 29 years old, and has raised over $4million to help AIDS, Women’s Health and the Community. http://swim4life.org/
Labels: 2016, Provincetown Culture
