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Saturday, Nov 21, 2009
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Bits & Bytes |
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| Seattle's 12th annual Lesbian & Gay Film Festival opens tonight with The Walker | |
| by Milton W. Hamlin -
SGN A&E Writer Once or twice a season, Seattle's GLBT community disappears from the bars and baths or the couch potato lives of the rest of the year and spends a week or so in darkness-but with cinematic enlightenment. Yes, it's one of those weeks. The 12th annual Lesbian & Gay Film Festival opens tonight with the all-star The Walker at the Cinerama Theatre and ends next Sunday with the tongue twisting (pun intended) Itty Bitty Titty Committee, an "ode to freedom, rebellion, sex and grrl power." Produced by Three Dollar Bill Cinema, Seattle's year-round cinema team, the Lesbian & Gay Film Festival is one of the largest in the country. Dozens and dozens of films screen in the 10-day orgy of GLBT films that has the proverbial "something for everyone." TV EPISODES, CHARACTERS, RESTORED PARTING GLANCES, BEARS & CHRISTIAN RIGHT This year, the "everyone" includes nostalgia buffs revisiting classic television Gay and Lesbian characters and episodes (including the cleverly packaged Gay TV Dinners series) and/or a beautifully restored edition of the iconic 1986 Hollywood classic, Parting Glances. Nonfiction highlights include a new 80-minute documentary on Bears, co-presented by Northwest Bears and Born Again, with a woman director chronicling her Lesbian self-discovery and the challenge of accepting herself with her evangelical Christian upbringing background. FUN IN BOYS SHORTS, GIRLS SHORTS, LOCAL & INTERNATIONAL SHORTS For many GLBT film fans, the various collections of shorts-as in short films-are "must see" highlights. Many of these collections and/or individual titles will never return to commercial screens. BUTT: Shorts, an international collection of short films from Europe and the USA, is clearly a "must see" event. Ditto, for many, Girls Shorts, Boys Shorts, Gender Blender: Shorts (yes, the Blender spelling is punfully correct), The Erotic Films Of Peter De Rome, First Timers: Shorts (a collection of coming out tales, not necessarily works by first time directors), Local Produce: Shorts (all all-Seattle collection of GLBT-In-The-Emerald-City tales by local filmmakers) and Music Box: Shorts, another international collection (including the irresistibly titled "Boot Scootin' Beauty" and "A Bear, Where?"). NAKED BOYS SINGING, The Walker, SECRET ALL 'MUST SEE' TITLES Major films-likely to return (but often for only a week at the Varsity Theatre on its Film Calendar series)-include tonight's gala opening, the all-star The Walker (already open in other major film cities), the closing night gala, Itty Bitty Titty Committee, tomorrow night's "Centerpiece" selection, Shelter, Monday night's "International Centerpiece," The Witnesses, and Sunday's Naked Boys Singing!-a new film edition of the long, long running off-Broadway musical revue. Tuesday night's "Secret Screening" is a must for many Festival fans. Past sold-out titles (the event always sells out-procrastinators be warned!) include Boys Don't Cry, All About My Mother and Ma Vie en Rose (not the recent Edith Piaff biographical film but a sweet tale of a boy who wants to dress as a girl). SGN'S BITS&BYTES GOES DAY-BY-DAY THRU OPENING DAZE The following is the "must see" calendar of your humble scribe for the Festival's opening days/daze. It is an intensely personal series of GLBT film choices. (Buy this journalistic sailor a drink, and he'll be glad to explain each selection.) TONIGHT/FRIDAY The Festival makes this an easy choice-The Walker and the Opening Night Gala are the only choices on the calendar. Woody Harrison stars in the title role, an underground phrase once used for "The Gay Best Friend" who escorts socially prominent married women to gala affairs that their husbands don't want to attend. (In the Camelot years in the JFK White House, Jackie was seen more often with "walkers" than with her husband&.) Lily Tomlin, Lauren Bacall and Kristin Scott Thomas (three film divas with strong, strong GLBT fan clubs) co-star as Washington (D.C.) wives who depend on Harrelson's closeted Carter Page for escort service. A murder, political scandal and a whole bunch of other stuff turn this new film into a "must see" for Bits&Bytes-and most Festival fans. It screens at 8 p.m. at the Cinerama. TOMORROW/SATURDAY Screenings start at noon, but B&Bytes will join the Festival at the Cinerama for Boys Shorts at 4 p.m. (A free-as in free--screening of Anyone & Everyone, a "coming out" documentary, at 2 p.m. at the downtown Central Library might lure this scribe away from the brunch table early, but&.) The Festival's "Centerpiece" screening of Shelter follows at 7 p.m. at the Cinerama. The Gay-surfing-buddy romance, on "the sun drenched shores of Southern California" has Festival HIT written all over it. A Gala Reception follows, but few will resist a Xanadu Sing Along! at 9::30 p.m. Now an unlikely campy hit on Broadway, the historic 1980 Xanadu is often considered the "Worst Film Musical Of All Time" (a dubious tie with Can't Stop The Music-which turned the Village People straight!). A chance to sing-along with Olivia Newton-John and the rest of the Xanadu gang-can't resist this. A late night screening of The Erotic Films Of Peter De Rome will keep this scribe up very late. The "artful and very arousing" films of the legendary Gay "pornography pioneer" should be a terrific late night draw. Starting at 11:45 p.m., the 90-minute documentary collection will include scenes from Adam And Yves, The Destroying Angel, Hot Pants, Second Coming (not a religious film) and other 1970 classics. Rarely has the historic Cinerama hosted a film which includes scenes of "subway sex" and "monstrous members." SUNDAY/ DAY 3 Sunday will start with Tell, a documentary exploring the military's misguided (perhaps "monstrous") "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy at noon at the Cinerama. I Want My Gay TV, the 2 p.m. title at the new SIFF Cinema at the Seattle Center, is the "must see" in that time slot-but it screened at the Festival's "Press Lunch and Launch." (And it deserves to be the "must see" of the day.) So, this scribe will pick (on the spur of the moment) between The Railroad All-Stars (a documentary about "$2 a trick" sex workers in Guatemala who start an all-woman soccer team and fight for acceptance and social justice or This Kiss, an Australian Lesbian tale played out against a 10th year high school reunion. Jack Mitchell: My Life In Black And White, a documentary about the famed, openly Gay, celebrity photographer (his early shots of Barbra Streisand, Angela Lansbury, Meryl Streep, Truman Capote are world famous) might lure this writer to the Harvard Exit at 4:30 p.m. But, The Chinese Botanist's Daughter, a Chinese-Canadian-French coproduction (talk about cultural diversity), is the more likely choice. The Lesbian romance is set in the lush "earthly paradise" of rural China in the 1990s. Bears, 6:45 p.m. at the Cinerama, will find this founding member of Northwest Bears looking for friends on screen and off screen at this documentary premiere. The 2004 Mr. International Bear competition is the setting for this long-in-production 2007 documentary. Mr. Northwest Bear, Alan Matthews, is featured on screen. "Woof!" is the only possible reaction to a screen full of (often naked) "burly men." Naked Boys Singing, the film version of the long running off-Broadway hit, screens at 9 p.m. at the Cinerama. An expanded cast (literally and figuratively, it seems) brings the musical revue to the Silver Screen. Songs celebrate "Gratuitous Nudity," the joys of masturbation, circumcision, locker room hard ons and every other possible Gay or straight subject that Naked Boys can sing about. Not to be missed. MONDAY--AND BEYOND Monday starts the first of a series of three Gay TV Dinners-three 5:30 screenings of 1970 TV series with GLBT characters or plot lines-or both. The Monday, Wednesday and Friday 5:30 screenings at the Central Cinema invite you to bring your own dinner and watch classic episodes of All In The Family, Police Woman, Maude and other 1970 hit series. Each program runs about 90 minutes-which means a quick run to the 7 p.m. selections at other theaters. The Trouble With Gay Jocks, episodes from All In The Family and The White Shadow, starts the series Monday night. Bits&Bytes will see you there. TICKETS AND STUFF The handsome 80-page Film Festival brochure is available "all over town." Cinema Books, in the University district, is a sure fire choice-and it will give you a chance to browse through the new and classic film titles always in stock. Advance ticket sales for the Festival-always a good idea and often a "must"-are available at 325-6500 or www.ticketwindowonline.com. Most of this scribe's friends just arrive early for most screenings and buy tickets on site-but many buy ahead for the obvious sell out events. See you at the movies&. |
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