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The 38th annual Reel Q film festival wraps this week, and — alongside the screenings of feature films from around the world — there’s a tribute to a notable local character.
Mara Rago first encountered Carla Beck in the 1990s, when Rago was a fledgling photographer working in a tanning salon with a habit of taking a camcorder with her everywhere.
“I saw this woman that was on a scooter riding around Shadyside,” said Rago. “Something about her, she was just so unique looking.” She remembers thinking, “I want to know her.”
The result, many years later, is “Carla,” Rago’s 48-minute documentary portrait of the woman who grew up in Beckley, W.V., as Carl Beck, and went on to a career as a touring rock musician before transitioning.
In the film, which is mostly an extended sit-down interview, Carla says she knew she was a girl from childhood, but was confounded by society’s gender expectations. “I didn’t know if I wanted to date girls or be girls,” she tells Rago.
For some 25 years, starting with a teenage Beatles infatuation, Carla (then living as a man) worked as a professional singer, songwriter and guitarist, most prominently with her prog-rock band Rubaiyat.
Carla’s later-in-life partner, Pam, says Carla in those days bedded “hundreds” of women. Carla, who lived much of her life in Boardman, Ohio, says she was married four times before she began to transition, around 1990. She calls her surgery, in the late ’90s, after she moved to Pittsburgh, “the final curing of the long soul’s sickness that I had.”
When Rago, speaking of the surgery, asks on screen, “Did it hurt?” Carla responds, “Life hurt worse.”
Rago has a photography studio in Braddock, and her work has been exhibited in venues from Pittsburgh’s old Blue Ruin gallery and Unsmoke Systems Artspace to a show by the Westmoreland Cultural Trust, in Greensburg. Rago was also a longtime staff photographer for Out Publishing, and now shoots for QBurgh.
While she had the footage that would become “Carla” for years, Rago was spurred to complete the film (with help from producer Jim Towns) by witnessing transphobia by someone she knew. Rago considers the film educational as well as an introduction to Carla’s vivacious personality.
“It’s not only about Carla, it’s about understanding the whole trans process,” she said.
Rago’s first audience for the film was her 92-year-old mother, two of her mother’s friends, and one of the friends’ devoutly religious daughter.
Rago believed the crowd was not initially a trans-friendly one. But afterward, she said, “They were all like, ‘Wow.’ My mom looks at me and says, ‘I understand now, honey.’”
“Carla” screens at The Andy Warhol Museum on Fri., Oct. 13; the evening features a special performance by vocalist Phat Man Dee singing some of Carla’s music.
Reel Q continues through Sun., Oct. 15, with screenings of five feature films at Row House Cinema, in Lawrenceville. More information is here.
