Friday, June 15, 7:00pm, Roxie
Wednesday, June 20, 7:00pm, Elmwood (Berkeley)
- Many Loves, One Heart, dir. Sarah Feinbloom, 2017 USA/Jamaica, 19 minutes, also screens as part of “Up Close & Personal,” Fri. 6/22, 1:30pm Castro 👏 WORLD PREMIERE
- Darío, dir. Manuel Kinzer & Jorge A. Trujillo Gil, 2018 Germany/Colombia, 15 minutes, in Spanish with English subtitles, also screens as part of “Coming Up Queer,” Sun. 6/17 1:45pm Victoria WORLD PREMIERE 💖
- Two Men (两个人), dir. Yuanhao Zhao, 2017 China, 9 minutes, no dialogue 👏 BAY AREA PREMIERE
- Happy Birthday, Marsha!, dir. Reina Gossett & Sasha Wortzel, 2017 USA, 14 minutes, also screens as part of “Transtastic,” Mon. 6/18 7:00pm Roxie 💖 BAY AREA PREMIERE
- The Things You Think I’m Thinking, dir. Sherren Lee, 2017 USA, 15 minutes 👏 WEST COAST PREMIERE
- Masks, dir. Mahaliya Ayla O, 2018 USA, 22 minutes, in English and in Farsi with English subtitles 👏 WEST COAST PREMIERE
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| Many Loves, One Heart |
Jamaica is predominantly fundamentalist Christian, with a lingering colonial legacy of institutionalized homophobia, including a 19th-century law banning “the abominable crime of buggery,” still on the books. It is not a society that fully embraces the LGBTQI people among it. When the police are called to an incident of homophobic or transphobic violence, they may not only do nothing to protect the victim, they may join in with the assailants. However, a few LGBTQI people and their allies courageously stand up and speak out for full equality.
This documentary presents interviews with a few of those people, including the first openly LGBTQI police officer in Jamaica, the pastor of a church that openly embraces LGBTQI congregants and has ministered to the HIV-positive community for a quarter century, and the director of J-FLAG, the Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals and Gays. It’s a profoundly hopeful story of trying to move the country beyond the patrimony of intolerance and violence to perhaps one day soon being a beacon of hope for the 21st-century Caribbean. Well done, highly recommended.
This documentary presents interviews with a few of those people, including the first openly LGBTQI police officer in Jamaica, the pastor of a church that openly embraces LGBTQI congregants and has ministered to the HIV-positive community for a quarter century, and the director of J-FLAG, the Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals and Gays. It’s a profoundly hopeful story of trying to move the country beyond the patrimony of intolerance and violence to perhaps one day soon being a beacon of hope for the 21st-century Caribbean. Well done, highly recommended.
• IMDb • (also appears in the “Up Close & Personal” shorts program)
Darío • WORLD PREMIERE
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| Darío (Javier Alberto Bula García) |
Darío [note the accent on the i: it’s pronounced da-REE-o, not DA-rio] (Javier Alberto Bula García) lives to dance, and he’s good at it, but his mother expects him to be a responsible man and work after school to help pay the bills. He’s been rehearsing to perform in a Carnival parade, and there’s another boy who’s been watching him in rehearsals; his mother forbids him to dance, but he will not easily be deterred. Beautifully filmed, with talented dancers; an all-around well-made short, sure to be a crowd pleaser. Oh, and the stills they made available don’t do it justice. MUST SEE.
Just one beef: at least on the advance screener, the subtitles are occasionally a bit difficult to read. I’ve said it before, but in the 21st century there is no possible excuse for plain white subtitles. We have the technology to make subtitles legible against any background; use it!!
Just one beef: at least on the advance screener, the subtitles are occasionally a bit difficult to read. I’ve said it before, but in the 21st century there is no possible excuse for plain white subtitles. We have the technology to make subtitles legible against any background; use it!!
• IMDb • official website • Facebook: @DarioTheMovie •
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| Two Men (两个人) |
Essentially a black-and-white film of an interpretive dance performance, exploring the sexual connection between two men and the concept of masculinity. It’s a beautiful dance performance, and even though I’m sure I missed most of the allegorical substrate, it was still worth seeing. Highly recommended.
Perhaps the greatest revelation for me was in the credits: I didn’t even know that there was such a thing as the Beijing LGBT Center (北京同志中心) (Facebook: @BjLgbtCenter. (Note to hearing impaired viewers: there is only a music track with no dialogue or narration, thus no subtitles are needed.)
• IMDb •
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| Happy Birthday, Marsha! |
Marsha P. Johnson, an African American drag queen, was one of the instigators of the anti-police riots at the Stonewall Inn in 1969. This short dramatizes the days just before the riot, interspersed with archival footage of Marsha on stage, giving us a sense of who Marsha was and what motivated her. It’s well done, with the actress Mya Taylor doing a spot-on impression of Marsha so that the dramatizations and the archival footage blend almost seamlessly. Very well done, MUST SEE. • IMDb • official website •
The Things You Think I’m Thinking • WEST COAST PREMIERE
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| The Things You Think I’m Thinking |
Sean (Prince Amponsah) is a black male burn survivor and amputee, just turned 30. He goes on a date with Caleb (scriptwriter Jesse LaVercombe) and brings him back to his apartment, where Sean has to confront his own projections of what Caleb is thinking about being on a date with a man with skin grafts on his face and no hands. Is Caleb just feeling sorry for the disabled guy, or somehow fetishizing Sean, or is he really there because he likes Sean?
It’s uncomfortable watching Sean confront his demons, and it also forces the viewers to confront their own thoughts about how they would feel in the place of either of the main characters. It’s all well and good to say that it’s what’s inside that counts, but would you really be comfortable dating someone who is far outside the mainstream ideals of beauty? Well done, highly recommended.
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| Masks |
Saba, an Iranian-American medical student, is not ready to come out to her conservative parents, but her girlfriend Maya chafes at the confines of Saba’s closet. When Saba’s parents and younger brother Jacob return home early, the closet becomes more of a fig leaf. Saba and Maya decide to let off some steam by going dancing at a club, but a masked gunman opens fire in the club, in a scene evoking the Pulse nightclub in Florida. threatening to remove the fig leaf by forcing Saba to explain why she had been there that night. It’s a well-done look at coming out issues from the perspective of the daughter of immigrants. Highly recommended.
Warning: although the mass shooting scene skirts the graphic images of people being hit, we do hear the gunfire and see some of the bloody aftermath.
Warning: although the mass shooting scene skirts the graphic images of people being hit, we do hear the gunfire and see some of the bloody aftermath.
• IMDb •
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