SHIFT Blog Bridging Worlds: Director David Charles Rodrigues on Gay Chorus, Deep South

Filmmaker David Charles Rodrigues Born in Boston but raised in Brazil, activist, ad man, and director David Charles Rodrigues has never felt completely steeped in any one culture or community. His debut documentary, Gay Chorus, Deep South, hasn’t had that problem. It's been accepted into festivals around the world and has already taken home a slew of audience awards since its premiere at Tribeca this spring. The documentary follows the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus as it sings its way across the five states with the most discriminatory laws against the LGBTQIA community: Mississippi, Tennessee, the Carolinas, and Alabama. The palpable rift that the 2016 election elicited nationwide, along with a wave of anti-LGBTQIA laws in the South, inspired the chorus’s journey, with members hoping they could use music to connect with people most fired up against them — and they were right.