Reverend’s Previews: Outfest 2010 Celebrates LGBT Diversity

This year’s Outfest, the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, will boast 60 LGBT-themed feature films and 87 shorts from 23 different countries. The 28th edition of the oldest film festival in LA and the leading LGBT festival in the US will run July 8th-18.

Having had the opportunity to preview a number of the movies to be shown, I can attest that this year’s Outfest selections are generally more thoughtful and of higher quality than those I saw the past two years. As Outfest’s Executive Director, Kirsten Schaffer, rightly proclaimed, “This year’s incredible line-up celebrates all of the forward-thinking artists that push the boundaries for LGBT rights and equality.”

One such artist was the poet Allen Ginsberg, who is the subject of the Outfest Opening Night Gala film, Howl (the movie also opened the prestigious Sundance Film Festival earlier this year). James Franco of the Spider-Man series plays Ginsberg. Howl is the first dramatic feature from veteran documentarians Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, who made The Times of Harvey Milk and The Celluloid Closet among several acclaimed prior films.

The opening night festivities will kick-off at 8:00 PM on July 8 with a special presentation of the annual Outfest Achievement Award to lesbian actress Jane Lynch. Currently enjoying huge success as the domineering cheerleading coach, Sue Sylvester, on the Fox TV series Glee, Lynch has also given memorable performances in such diverse films as The 40 Year Old Virgin, Best in Show and last year’s Julie & Julia.

Each year, Outfest features a foreign film as its International Dramatic Centerpiece. Contracorriente (or Undertow) will be this year’s selection on July 13. It is set in an exotic Peruvian fishing village where love between two men is forbidden. The film was a rare gay-themed winner of the Sundance Film Festival’s World Cinema Audience Award in January.

There are too many movies that I’d recommend to list here, but a few highlights are:

The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls, an insightful and thoroughly enjoyable documentary about New Zealand’s legendary yodeling lesbian twins. Jools and Lynda Topp have been performing together since the 1970’s, and were pivotal figures in the 1986 passage of their country’s pioneering gay rights bill. If you want to learn the hysterical punchline to the twins’ joke, “Why can’t lesbians wear make-up when they go to Weight Watchers?,” see the movie!

Grown Up Movie Star, written and directed by the talented Adriana Maggs, is a smart, observant study of a teenage girl in rural Canada’s coming of age. Living with her closeted gay father doesn’t make things any easier for her. The movie also benefits from an excellent cast (newcomer Tatiana Maslany is a revelation as the teen, Ruby) and great, naturalistic — if dysfunctional — family rapport.

Children of God utilizes overlapping storylines and characters in its expose of closeted homosexuality and religious hypocrisy in the Bahamas. An attractive, interracial gay couple run afoul of the local fundamentalist pastor, who at one point privately sums up the motivation behind his anti-gay campaign thusly: “You have to give people something to hate; it brings them together.” The film is also worth seeing for its beautiful photography of sun-bathed, seaside locales.

Forever’s Gonna Start Tonight, with its title taken from Bonnie Tyler’s hit song of the 80’s, “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” is an admirably unsentimental documentary that turns its lens on 75-year old, transgendered drag performer Vicki Marlane. Still performing today after 59 years as a drag artist at Aunt Charlie’s in San Francisco, Marlane speaks candidly of her upbringing, legal run-ins, ill-fated love affairs and addictions. Marlane and the film’s producer-director, Michelle Lawler, are scheduled to appear at the Outfest screening.

Role/Play, the latest from Rob Williams, director of past gay hits Back Soon and Make the Yuletide Gay. It is a smart and sexy account of what might happen if a closeted gay soap opera star (hunky Steve Callahan) and an outspoken gay activist with marriage troubles (Matthew Montgomery, Callahan’s real-life partner) were to meet at a Palm Springs resort.

A Marine Story is timely to say the least, what with the current debate over revoking the US military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. Based on actual events, the film focuses on a recently-discharged lesbian (a dramatically and physically strong performance by Dreya Weber) who discovers her troubles are just beginning once she returns to her hometown. Written, directed and even edited — all very well — by Ned Farr.

Standouts among the numerous recommended short films to be shown during Outfest are the cute and funny Go Go Reject, which features the adorable Heath Daniels as a stripper hopeful who is labeled as too skinny but who isn’t going to take “No” for an answer; Last Address, an unusual, quietly devastating travelogue of the final residences inhabited by New York City-based artists who died of AIDS; and Public Relations, an upbeat romantic-comedy in which two female personal assistants meet and fall in love.

For me, Outfest wouldn’t be complete each year without its Sing-Along Musical night at the Ford Amphitheater. The 2010 winner of the annual online vote by Outfest fans is Grease 2, the campy 1982 sequel to Grease. Hardly as well-received as its predecessor, Grease 2 is still entertaining and somewhat underrated. It stars Michelle Pfeiffer in her first big-screen lead role, as well as then-pretty Maxwell Caulfield, a then-hot Adrian Zmed and Judy Garland’s daughter, Lorna Luft. What’s not to enjoy? It will screen at 8:30 PM on July 15. Feel free to dress as a T-Bird or Pink Lady!

The hilarious-sounding new comedy Spork will wrap up Outfest during the Closing Night Gala on July 18. For a complete listing of films or to purchase tickets for screenings and related events, please visit the Outfest website or call (213) 480-7065.

Preview by Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and the Orange County and Long Beach Blade.

Reverend's Reviews: Los Angeles Film Festival 2010

After a rocky opening night, during which jubilant post-screening lesbians and rioting Lakers fans threatened to collide on the downtown streets, the 2010 edition of the Los Angeles Film Festival rebounded (no basketball pun intended) and made ten days in a controversial new location an exciting celebration of independent movies.

The fest began on June 17 (which was also the night the LA Lakers won their second straight championship at the neighboring Staples Center) with the Los Angeles premiere of Lisa Cholodenko's lesbian dramedy The Kids Are All Right. Stars Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo attended, as well as Jane Lynch (Glee) and other celebs. Conspicuously absent was co-star Annette Bening, who also cancelled a press conference I was scheduled to attend the following day without explanation. Several online sources reported on June 18 that Bening's and Warren Beatty's oldest daughter had announced she was planning to have gender reassignment surgery, and that Bening and Beatty were "devastated." May they get over it soon.

Apart from The Kids Are All Right, only a few movies screened during the fest were specified as being of LGBT interest: Eyes Wide Open, the extraordinary Israeli story of two orthodox Jewish men who fall in love with each other (previously reviewed here); Dog Sweat, an illegally-shot Iranian film detailing the romantic/sexual travails of six young people, including a gay man; and Family Tree, which explores a dysfunctional French clan gathered at a sprawling country estate for a funeral.

However, other LGBT-friendly screenings included the LA premiere of All About Evil, a campy horror spoof starring Joshua Grannell (a.k.a. drag diva Peaches Christ), Mink Stole and Cassandra "Elvira" Peterson, and Pee-Wee Herman himself, Paul Reubens, presenting a 25th anniversary edition of his now-classic Pee-Wee's Big Adventure as well as a film he defined as most inspirational to him, 1938's You Can't Take It With You.

The standout film of the festival for me, though, was the eye-opening, heart-wrenching documentary, Lost Angels. Director Thomas Napper follows a number of inhabitants of downtown LA's Skid Row, composed of approximately fifty city blocks (ironically, the festival took place just a stone's throw away). As narrator Catherine Keener informs viewers, "About 11,000 people live on Skid Row, and two-thirds of them have mental illness." Another speaker pointedly states, "We don't institutionalize the mentally ill (in the United States); we criminalize them." Late ex-President Ronald Reagan receives special condemnation for cutting funding to hospitals and other mental illness treatment facilities.

One of the subjects of Lost Angels is Albert "Bam Bam" Olson, an honest and outspoken inhabitant of Skid Row who also happens to be transgender, bipolar and living with HIV. Bam Bam was in attendance at the film's June 25 world premiere (as was Keener, who is gracious and lovely in person) and told the sold-out crowd, "Making the movie gave me a purpose." Napper treats all those he caught on film with respect and dignity, and the result is most affecting.

As I'm a sucker for movies about animals, I also found the festival doc One Lucky Elephant fascinating. Ten years in the making, it recounts the saga of circus producer and ringmaster David Balding to find a suitable home for his aging pachyderm star, Flora. Balding adopted the orphaned baby elephant and cared for her for 16 years. But as she matured, Flora lost interest in performing and Balding was compelled to search for a place where she could live more freely with other elephants.

This proved to be no easy task. After numerous safari programs and zoos fell through, Balding found what seemed to be the perfect sanctuary for Flora in Tennessee. No sooner did Balding leave Flora then she became increasingly anti-social and violent. A self-professed elephant psychologist declared Flora suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder related to the violent separation from her mother and her subsequent circus training. The baffled Balding was barred from ever visiting Flora again, and the film raises interesting questions and concerns not only about the ethical treatment of animals but of the people who devote themselves to their care.

Another standout movie about animals at the fest was Cane Toads: The Conquest. Presented in 3-D, no less, it is director-producer Mark Lewis' follow up to his acclaimed 1988 short film about Australia's non-native amphibians. Introduced from South America in the 1930's in an effort to control sugar cane-destroying beetles, the poisonous toads have multiplied from an initial 100 to nearly 2 billion today. They continue to march their way west across Australia, and no attempt to halt their progress has been successful.

The film takes a tongue-in-cheek approach to what is apparently a serious problem, and one can't help but fall in love with the doggedly persistent creatures of the title. The 3-D effects are unnecessary but fun. Lewis proudly announced during the Q & A after the screening that his film had been dubbed "Avatoad" after its US premiere at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year.

One other movie at this year's LA Film Fest made a significant impression on me: Hello Lonesome. A semi-autobiographical story by writer-director Adam Reid, it conveys six unique individuals' struggles to make a connection with someone else. The relationships forged are surprising, amusing and ultimately moving. One of the characters is based on Reid's sister, who died of breast cancer in 2003.

The cast of Hello Lonesome (which includes James Urbaniak, who voices Dr. Venture on the campy cartoon The Venture Brothers) is excellent, and they were deservedly honored with the festival's Jury Award for Best Ensemble Performance. Other award-winning films were Denmark's A Family (Best Narrative Film), Make Believe (Best Documentary) and Wonder Hospital (Best Animated Short).

This was the first year that the LA Film Festival was moved from its traditional, trendy Westwood location to the new LA Live complex downtown. Despite a few logistical bumps and a bit of initial culture shock (especially for opening night attendees), I thought the new venue worked very well. Also, the film selection, largely overseen by former Newsweek film critic David Ansen, was diverse and of almost-uniformly high quality. I'm already looking forward to what next year will bring!

Review by Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and the Orange County and Long Beach Blade.