22nd Calgary Underground Film Festival

April 17-27, 2025

13th CUFF.Docs Documentary Film Festival

November 19-23, 2025

Keyboard Fantasies: The Beverly Glenn-Copeland Story

United Kingdom, 2019: 63 minutes: Alberta Premiere
Archives 2021
keyboard-fantasies

description

After his 1986 album "Keyboard Fantasies" is rediscovered, a black transgender musician emerges from years in isolation to an enraptured crowd.

As a sci-fi obsessed woman living in near isolation, Beverly Glenn-Copeland wrote and self-released "Keyboard Fantasies" in Huntsville, Ontario back in 1986. Recorded in an Atari-powered home-studio, the cassette featured seven tracks of a curious folk-electronica hybrid, a sound realised far before its time. Three decades on, the musician – now Glenn Copeland – began to receive emails from people across the world, thanking him for the music they’d recently discovered. Courtesy of a rare-record collector in Japan, a reissue of Keyboard Fantasies and subsequent plays by Four Tet, Caribou and more, the music had finally found its audience two generations down the line. KEYBOARD FANTASIES: THE BEVERLY GLENN-COPELAND STORY is an intimate coming of age story spinning pain and the suffering of prejudice into rhythm, hope and joy.

OFFICIAL SELECTION
Göteborg Film Festival 2020
International Film Festival Rotterdam 2020
Hot Docs Film Festival 2020
Melbourne Queer Film Festival 2021

DIRECTOR'S BIO
What started as a personal infatuation with a record spiralled into a debut feature from director Posy Dixon as she developed a close friendship with Glenn over Skype three years ago. The experience of co-creating such an intimate personal history has done nothing but compound her interest in archives, aural histories and intergenerational exchange.

CJSW Playlist Created by Megan, host of Lush Life, Fridays, 5:30-7AM

Closed captioning is available for this film. Find Out More >

press for Keyboard Fantasies: The Beverly Glenn-Copeland Story

"This film, this artist, this music, this story: all rare gems…see this film."
- Film Threat
"Beverly Glenn-Copeland’s life and music come to light in this illuminating doc about the cult avant-garde musician."
- The Spool

details

Documentary / Female Filmmaker / LGBTQ+ / Music / Biography / First Feature

English
63 minutes

credits

Director
Posy Dixon

Official website:
https://www.keyboardfantasies.movie/

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/luca.earth/

community

awards

WINNER: Audience Award: Best Documentary Feature

Community Partners

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