Bay Area Buffet

Bay Area Buffet (shorts program),
Sunday, June 17, 11:00am, Victoria, BAYA17V

Disaster (a personal geography), dir. Laura Green, USA, 2011, 9 min., S330, 
America’s Most Unwanted, dir. Shani Heckman, USA, 2012, 21 min., S307, 
Love is Not Enough, dir. Bryan Darling, USA, 2011, 12 min., S367, 
The Bears of San Francisco, dirs. Mike Agnew, Samantha André, Eunice Lai, Sabrina Tan Fen Yi, USA, 2012, 8 min., S311, 
ub2, dir. Dan Goldes, USA, 2011, 5 min., S417, 
Off Castro, dirs. Kay O. Anderson, Rudy Lona, Ashmita Nair, USA, 2012, 10 min., S381, 
Queers on a Boat, dir. Dara Sklar, USA, 2011, 3 min., S392, 
Dyke Central Pilot, dir. Florencia Manovil, USA, 2011, 22 min., S335, 
Blood Flow, dir. Jimmy Defebaugh, USA, 2011, 6 min., S314, [not reviewed]

Laura Green in Disaster

Disaster is a personal exploration of the filmmaker’s feeling of obsession about disasters after watching the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, moving from her concern about her brother living in Tokyo to preoccupation with local disasters past and future. It’s a reasonably engaging, if somewhat slow-moving, look at our propensity to lose our sense of proportion and fixate on things over which we have little or no control. Recommended.

America’s Most Unwanted

America’s Most Unwanted is a story about several foster kids and their struggles with homophobia, violence, and the foster care system itself. Life as a foster child holds enormous challenges, but even moreso for gay foster kids. Unfortunately, America’s Most Unwanted doesn’t engage well with the viewer in seeing the world through these kids’ eyes, giving us a glimpse but only barely scratching the surface. Recommended.

Love is Not Enough

Good news: you’ve got a boyfriend! Maybe bad news: he’s just told you that he wants to be polyamorous.... Can your boyfriend love two people at once? Will you be a third wheel in your own relationship? Should you just break up now and get it over with? In the end, what if love is not enough? Well done. Recommended.

The Bears of San Francisco

The Bears of San Francisco is a peek into the wild world of bears, gay men who fall outside the stereo-types of drag queens, twinks, and gym-obsessed circuit-partiers. We see the bears in their natural habitat, exploring a variety of interests, even including show tunes. It's a pleasant, if perhaps a bit mundane, perusal of  a major gay subculture. Recommended.

ub2

If you peruse gay men’s online personal ads, you will often see coded requests like “ddf ub2,” which stands for “drug- and disesase-free; you be, too.” The film ub2 goes beneath the surface of these glib shorthands: for example, what is the difference between an ad saying “HIV-negative seeks same” and an ad saying “clean and disease-free ub2”? In one sense, they convey the exact same meaning, but they feel very different, particularly to an HIV-positive man reading the ad. I found the pull text (as, for example, in the screen grab shown here) annoying, but the film is otherwise pretty well done. Recommended.

Off Castro

Off Castro takes us into the world of a few of San Francisco’s drag queens. It’s an entertaining glimpse, but doesn’t really take us beyond peeking in the window. It’s okay, but not great. Recommended.

Queers on a Boat

Queers on a Boat is a parody of the parody song and video “I’m on a Boat” by The Lonely Island with T-Pain. It’s an entertaining three minutes of a bunch of queers lip-synching to save their life jackets. Recommended.

Dyke Central Pilot

Dyke Central Pilot is the pilot for a series about lesbians in Oakland, California. Butch roommates Alex and Gin are scrambling to find a third roommate, and Fabiana is exploring the real Oakland. The characters feel incomplete, and I had difficulty relating to their situation, but the sometimes painfully amateurish acting was what really left me not wanting more.

Blood Flow

Blood Flow wasn’t included in the screener for pre-review, but here’s a screen grab from the press kit. Frameline says, “A young man’s emotional attachments are put to the test after discovering his lover’s lifeless body.” [not reviewed]