This year the economy has affected the festival and my attendance. Their funding dropped precipitously so that they couldn’t really keep staff on — the board has stepped up, with board member Lesli Klainberg doing heroic duty as acting executive director. The schedule was shortened because they couldn’t afford to rent the theaters over two weekends. But on the plus side, the festival has moved to the SVA theaters in the heart of Chelsea — avoiding the multiplex crush. Of course, there’s no popcorn, but I always bring my own food anyway.
My own tenuous employ has also meant that as a freelancer, I don’t walk away from work when it comes. So this year, unlike previous years, I haven’t taken the week off to live in the theater. Still, by the time the festival is over, I will have seen 13 of the 20 programs I had scheduled to see. Working late and fatigue kept me from the 7 I wanted to get to, but overall, it’s been a good program so far.
The opening night however, was a major disappointment: Mr. Right, a British soap opera masquerading as a full length feature, was as superficial as it gets. That’s not the usual fare to open the festival, and I was worried.
Next day, I caught City of Borders, a top notch film about which I’ve written extensively in the last couple of days, along with Tongzhi in Love, a run-of-the mill documentary about young gay men in China.
Smile ‘Til It Hurts was a winner. This documentary followed the story of Up With People, a singing group that had its origins in an organization that feels like a precursor to today’s Christian right groups. However, that is an oversimplification. Because Up With People was integrated racially in the 60s, and performed in places where this wasn’t welcome. All the more so because the singers boarded with local families wherever they performed. One of the more compelling stories in the film is the recollection of an African-American woman who faced a shot gun toting man when she was brought home by his wife to board with the family. At the same time of course, racial identity was erased in a kind of homogenization that seemed more appropriate to the 50s than the 60s or 70s.
Then there’s the gay thing. Oh yes, there were lots of gay men in Up With People. After all, you just have to watch all the guys dancing to know. But only one of the alums spoke about it on camera. So the gay content of this film was slight. And in fact, the first question from the audience was not to the director, but a challenge to the festival programmer why the film was chosen for an lgbt festival. His answer was that the sensibility throughout was queer. A poor answer I thought. However, I agree with him that the film belonged in the festival line-up. It has a lot to say about the relationship between religion, politics and business interests — and what that meant for marginalized people in a particular time and place. And it has a lot to say to us today about how business is happy to co-opt and tame an image in order to neutralize its revolutionary power and use it to sell consumerism instead.
This was commented on in last night’s film about Quentin Crisp’s final years, An Englishman in New York. John Hurt reprises his role from The Naked Civil Servant almost 40 years ago, and so we see Hurt as an old actor get to play Crisp in his 70s thru to his death at age 91. And it was a great film. One of the best scenes is towards the end as Cynthia Nixon, in a star turn as downtown performance artist Penny Arcade, takes Crisp on a tour of the new gay world of gym toned, waxed consumerists — gay men who are less interested in being politically correct than in being demographically correct for marketers. Of course, this will get a wider release than most films at the festival, and you should be able to see it somewhere soon. If not, Netflix will get it, and it is very much worth seeing.
Watercolors is worth mentioning for two things: the love scene shot under falling water that was exquisite, and the young Tye Olsen, who was also in a festival film last year, Tru Loved. Like many films about first love, it was over-indulgent and not very insightful. It did have Karen Black and Greg Louganis though. But Tye Olsen should get some more roles — and I hope he manages to break out of being typecast as a fey boy in coming out genre films.
The best film of the festival so far was the Centerpiece film, Rivers Wash Over Me. Directed by John Gilbert Young, whose film Parallel Sons just blew me away at a festival several years ago, Rivers Wash Over Me is an important film about race, class, and sexuality that is gripping. When a gay teenager from New York City has to move to a small Southern town the results are explosive. Written by Young, with Darien Sills-Evans who also appears in the film in a key role, the movie had the sold out crowd deeply moved. First time screen actor Cameron Mitchell Mason had a tough role, and he managed to communicate desire and lust, sadness and vulnerability, self-loathing and hatred all within seconds — he’s a major talent in the making with a strong screen presence. This is all the more amazing because he’s not the hero — he’s one of the bad guys. But one of the strengths of this film is that every character is nuanced with shades of grey. Nothing is black or white.
One of the more interesting issues in the film was the fact that the nominal power structure in the town was black, but seemed to be without real power in certain situations. The sheriff, new to the town and unaware of this situation, pushes up against the real power structure. It raises uncomfortable questions for our own local and national politics.
This was a rich and deep film on many levels. But the story of the young gay man, Sequan, as an outsider just as much because he is intelligent and a reader, is the central story of the film, and I hope this film gets the distribution and wide release it truly deserves.
If you missed it, it will be repeated Thursday night at 5:30. And it’s the star of the festival this year.
Like the narrative film about Quentin Crisp, there was a documentary about restaurateur Florent Morellet, and his eponymous establishment that captured a time in New York City that is gone. Florent, Queen of the Meat Market is about so much more than a restaurant, the film captures the gay community and AIDS activism, the downtown performance art scene (yes, we see the real Penny Arcade in this one), the go-go real estate market and the transformation of the meatpacking district from butcher, prostitutes and back room bars to rich and trendy boutiques. This was a work in progress screening, and I look forward to the final product.
Of course, the shorts programs are always a mixed bag, but I love them more than perhaps any other part of the festival, since most of the shorts will never get distribution. Today, with Logo as a major sponsor of the festival, some of them will turn up as programming on Alien Boot Camp, but I prefer the experience of watching them in a theater with an audience. However, I can’t complain, since these directors get a wider audience through Logo than they would have ever found otherwise. The Comedy and Musical shorts programs were great fun.
My own tenuous employ has also meant that as a freelancer, I don’t walk away from work when it comes. So this year, unlike previous years, I haven’t taken the week off to live in the theater. Still, by the time the festival is over, I will have seen 13 of the 20 programs I had scheduled to see. Working late and fatigue kept me from the 7 I wanted to get to, but overall, it’s been a good program so far.
The opening night however, was a major disappointment: Mr. Right, a British soap opera masquerading as a full length feature, was as superficial as it gets. That’s not the usual fare to open the festival, and I was worried.
Next day, I caught City of Borders, a top notch film about which I’ve written extensively in the last couple of days, along with Tongzhi in Love, a run-of-the mill documentary about young gay men in China.
Smile ‘Til It Hurts was a winner. This documentary followed the story of Up With People, a singing group that had its origins in an organization that feels like a precursor to today’s Christian right groups. However, that is an oversimplification. Because Up With People was integrated racially in the 60s, and performed in places where this wasn’t welcome. All the more so because the singers boarded with local families wherever they performed. One of the more compelling stories in the film is the recollection of an African-American woman who faced a shot gun toting man when she was brought home by his wife to board with the family. At the same time of course, racial identity was erased in a kind of homogenization that seemed more appropriate to the 50s than the 60s or 70s.
Then there’s the gay thing. Oh yes, there were lots of gay men in Up With People. After all, you just have to watch all the guys dancing to know. But only one of the alums spoke about it on camera. So the gay content of this film was slight. And in fact, the first question from the audience was not to the director, but a challenge to the festival programmer why the film was chosen for an lgbt festival. His answer was that the sensibility throughout was queer. A poor answer I thought. However, I agree with him that the film belonged in the festival line-up. It has a lot to say about the relationship between religion, politics and business interests — and what that meant for marginalized people in a particular time and place. And it has a lot to say to us today about how business is happy to co-opt and tame an image in order to neutralize its revolutionary power and use it to sell consumerism instead.
This was commented on in last night’s film about Quentin Crisp’s final years, An Englishman in New York. John Hurt reprises his role from The Naked Civil Servant almost 40 years ago, and so we see Hurt as an old actor get to play Crisp in his 70s thru to his death at age 91. And it was a great film. One of the best scenes is towards the end as Cynthia Nixon, in a star turn as downtown performance artist Penny Arcade, takes Crisp on a tour of the new gay world of gym toned, waxed consumerists — gay men who are less interested in being politically correct than in being demographically correct for marketers. Of course, this will get a wider release than most films at the festival, and you should be able to see it somewhere soon. If not, Netflix will get it, and it is very much worth seeing.
Watercolors is worth mentioning for two things: the love scene shot under falling water that was exquisite, and the young Tye Olsen, who was also in a festival film last year, Tru Loved. Like many films about first love, it was over-indulgent and not very insightful. It did have Karen Black and Greg Louganis though. But Tye Olsen should get some more roles — and I hope he manages to break out of being typecast as a fey boy in coming out genre films.
The best film of the festival so far was the Centerpiece film, Rivers Wash Over Me. Directed by John Gilbert Young, whose film Parallel Sons just blew me away at a festival several years ago, Rivers Wash Over Me is an important film about race, class, and sexuality that is gripping. When a gay teenager from New York City has to move to a small Southern town the results are explosive. Written by Young, with Darien Sills-Evans who also appears in the film in a key role, the movie had the sold out crowd deeply moved. First time screen actor Cameron Mitchell Mason had a tough role, and he managed to communicate desire and lust, sadness and vulnerability, self-loathing and hatred all within seconds — he’s a major talent in the making with a strong screen presence. This is all the more amazing because he’s not the hero — he’s one of the bad guys. But one of the strengths of this film is that every character is nuanced with shades of grey. Nothing is black or white.
One of the more interesting issues in the film was the fact that the nominal power structure in the town was black, but seemed to be without real power in certain situations. The sheriff, new to the town and unaware of this situation, pushes up against the real power structure. It raises uncomfortable questions for our own local and national politics.
This was a rich and deep film on many levels. But the story of the young gay man, Sequan, as an outsider just as much because he is intelligent and a reader, is the central story of the film, and I hope this film gets the distribution and wide release it truly deserves.
If you missed it, it will be repeated Thursday night at 5:30. And it’s the star of the festival this year.
Like the narrative film about Quentin Crisp, there was a documentary about restaurateur Florent Morellet, and his eponymous establishment that captured a time in New York City that is gone. Florent, Queen of the Meat Market is about so much more than a restaurant, the film captures the gay community and AIDS activism, the downtown performance art scene (yes, we see the real Penny Arcade in this one), the go-go real estate market and the transformation of the meatpacking district from butcher, prostitutes and back room bars to rich and trendy boutiques. This was a work in progress screening, and I look forward to the final product.
Of course, the shorts programs are always a mixed bag, but I love them more than perhaps any other part of the festival, since most of the shorts will never get distribution. Today, with Logo as a major sponsor of the festival, some of them will turn up as programming on Alien Boot Camp, but I prefer the experience of watching them in a theater with an audience. However, I can’t complain, since these directors get a wider audience through Logo than they would have ever found otherwise. The Comedy and Musical shorts programs were great fun.
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