Queer icon Carole Pope's Antidiva documentary will screen at the Rio Theatre

Carole Pope's life is put through cinematic scrutiny in the documentary Antidiva: The Carole Pope Confessions. The front person for the Juno-award-winning Rough Trade became an iconic figure for the queer community beginning in the 1980s. Photo by Gay Agenda /Gay Agenda

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There are a few good reasons why you won’t find iconic musician Carole Pope resting on her laurels.

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First, she’s an artist that is driven to create. Second, she needs to make a living.

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Both those points are made abundantly clear in Antidiva: The Carole Pope Confessions, the documentary about the lead singer and co-songwriter for the game-changing Canadian band Rough Trade.

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The film, which opened this year’s Hot Docs festival in Toronto, is screening at Vancouver’s Rio theatre on July 22 and 23. Both screenings will include a live Q&A will Pope and the film’s director, Michelle Mama. Get tickets HERE.

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“This is the glamorous rock star life,” Pope says dryly in the film, adding a wink, as she surveys the very small, very sparse Los Angeles apartment — cardboard boxes doubling as nightstands — where she was living at the time. “I’m now just a struggling artist.”

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The documentary traces Pope’s legacy as she shattered taboos with Rough Trade’s music and her defiant sexuality. It highlights Pope’s lifelong creative drive, which was truly put into high gear when she met her late bandmate Kevan Staples in the Yorkville, Ont., art scene of the 1970s. The pair built a creative and romantic partnership as they blended music, art and fashion into a powerful pop/rock outfit that wasn’t afraid to stomp all over social norms.

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Led by Pope’s distinct and powerful voice, the Juno-winning band delivered the hit songs All Touch, Crimes of Passion and most notably High School Confidential, which became an anthem for young lesbians everywhere including k.d. lang and Peaches, who both appear in the documentary singing Pope’s praises.

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“There would be no Rough Trade without Kevan, had I not met him,” said Pope over Zoom from New York, about her best friend who died last year from cancer. “It was just kind of a cosmic meeting of two minds, and we just loved making music. We loved performing. I’m still devastated by his illness because he suffered so much.

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“He was this magic being. There was nobody else like him.”

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Both Pope, whose memoir Anti Diva came out in 2000, and Mama said that people, after seeing the film, often comment on the relationship between Staples and Pope.

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“I just got a note from a straight man who wrote to say how much he enjoyed the movie,” said Mama, who produced the film under her Gay Agenda production company banner. “He said the, ‘Love story between Carole and Kevan made me cry, and it’s the most beautiful love story I’ve ever seen onscreen.’

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“It wasn’t necessarily my intention, but I do believe the film stands as kind of the ballad of Kevan and Carole too.”

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Packed with archival footage, the film isn’t just a nostalgic journey. It’s also a continuing road trip with a gigging Pope — she does about 30 shows a year.

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In the documentary Antidiva: The Carole Pope Confessions, Pope addresses her hallowed position as a gay icon by saying: ‘I’m like the godmother of all you bitches.’ Photo by Gay Agenda /Gay Agenda

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Pope’s creative wheels are always turning. Right now she is busy in N.Y trying to get funding for a musical she has written. Set in the mid-’80s, the musical blends the iconic music of Rough Trade with the true story of Pope’s late brother Howard, an indie musician and ACT UP activist who died from AIDS in 1996.