Retablo

Retablo, dir. Álvaro Delgado Aparicio L., 2017 Peru/Germany/Norway, 95 minutes, in Quechua and Spanish with English subtitles 👏
Friday, June 15, 7:00 p.m. Victoria • BAY AREA PREMIERE
Wednesday, June 20, 1:15 p.m. Castro

Retablo

Director Álvaro Delgado Aparicio L. had a short film, El acompañante (The Companion) in Frameline 37* (2013); I was decidedly unimpressed, finding it a pointless exercise in characters I didn’t care about and into whom I gained no in­sight. Aparicio is back this year with his debut feature, re­turn­ing to the Quechua culture and the retablo art form, small figurines arranged in a diorama as an altarpiece, but with much more interesting characters and some actual plot and dialogue. Noé (Amiel Cayo, pictured left) is teaching his son Segundo (Junior Béjar Roca, pictured right) the craft. Unfortunately, Segundo discovers that Noé is also fooling around with some of the men in their village, something unacceptable in the brutish macho culture around them. Segundo struggles to reconcile his love for his father with the shame, os­tracism and violence Noé has brought upon the family.

Quechua is the third most widely spoken first language in South America, behind only Portu­guese and Spanish, but estadounidense audiences know little or nothing about the people or their culture. For that reason, I bumped this film up to highly recommended, despite its shortcomings, particularly the fact that Noé’s inner life is left unexamined, but it is Segundo’s coming of age at the focus of the film.

• IMDb • trailer with English subtitles (YouTube) (Vimeo) •

Note: this film contains scenes of homophobic violence, more graphic in sound than in images.

*Technical Note: the Frameline web archive has a configuration error. Although the website is not secure (i.e., it should use http, not https), it automatically redirects to the secure URL, which fails due to an invalid security certificate. You must set a security exception in your browser to view the site. Alternately, you can view the Frameline 37 Festival Guide here.

Frameline37 2013 alpha cross-reference

Alphabetical list by title of films reviewed here in Film Queen Reviews from the 2013 Frameline37 International Lesbian/Gay Film Festival, San Francisco, California. All in all, I reviewed 21 narrative features, 12 full-length documentaries, 5 short documentaries, and 33 narrative shorts, for a total of 71 titles this year.

Click on “Read more” below for the full list.

Frameline 37: That’s a Wrap!

Ten days and eleven nights, a total of 38 screenings, plus one on my TiVo thanks to HBO. It’s taken longer to get all this fabulosity up on the blog than it took to watch the actual festival, but I’m finally all caught up. I saw some life-changingly wonderful films, and only one pure stinker. Partly from being a little less adventurous in my selections this year (just say NO!! to “experimental” films), partly from having some years back shed my inhibition about walking out of a film I really don’t like, but mostly from the strong upward trajectory of all corners of queer cinema, the average quality of the works I saw was impressive. I’ll just wrap up with a couple of cross-reference postings, and then begin my long winter’s hibernation until it is again time to spend the sunniest days of the year cooped up in a darkened movie theater.

Frameline award-winners:

• Best Feature Film (audience award): Reaching for the Moon
• Best Documentary (audience award): The New Black (not reviewed)
• Best Short Film (audience award): dik
• Best First Feature (jury prize): Out in the Dark; honorable mention: Concussion
• Outstanding Documentary (jury prize): Valentine Road (not reviewed); honorable mentions: The New Black (not reviewed), Big Joy

My own favorites:

• Best feature film, drama: Out in the Dark
• Best feature film, comedy: G.B.F.
• Best feature-length documentary: Codebreaker; honorable mentions: Gore Vidal, Big Joy
• Best short documentary: Queen of the Desert; honorable mention: Matt Alber with Strings Attached
• Best short drama: Kiss Me Softly; honorable mention: Happy Birthday
• Best short comedy: Spooners; honorable mentions: dik, Jackpot

One other odd little sidebar: I only saw one program at the Roxie this year, an all-time low for me, and only five at the Victoria. That means that 32 of the 38 screenings I attended were at the Castro, and that’s only partly because of its monopoly on the weekday afternoon screenings.

G.B.F.

Tanner (Michael J. Willett) in the
bedroom of some girl whose name
is right on the tip of my tongue....

G.B.F., dir. Darren Stein, 2013, USA, 94 min. 
Sunday, June 30, 7:00 pm @ Castro (closing night film)

What is the fashion accessory that every teenage girl needs to be totally au courant? Why, of course, she needs a G.B.F., a Gay Best Friend! I was in my twenties when John Hughes chronicled every aspect of high school life, but from Sixteen Candles to The Breakfast Club to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, we never once had the popular girls catfighting for the companionship of a G.B.F. Degrassi has had a number of gay characters, but never commoditized as social accoutrements. Not even Glee itself has answered the challenge, despite Tina’s efforts with Blaine. It’s about time to set the record straight — er, um, or something like that.

He’s Way More Famous Than You

He’s Way More Famous than You, dir. Michael Urie, 2013, USA, 98 min. 
Saturday, June 29, 8:00 pm @ Castro

Halley Feiffer portraying herself
as a whiny, drunken loser.

Halley Feiffer, daughter of satirist and cartoonist Jules Feiffer, had a small role in the 2005 indie film The Squid and the Whale. Despite about 20 acting credits since then, her career hasn’t exactly been a rocket to stardom.  In He’s Way More Famous than You, we meet a (hopefully heavily) fictionalized caricature of Halley, writing a screenplay as a vehicle for her comeback. She ropes in her (fictional) brother Ryan and his boyfriend Michael Urie (a real person, playing his caricatured self), plus an impressive list of Hollywood stars in cameo appearances. The caricature Michael Urie directs the film-within-a-film, while the real Michael Urie directed the whole thing.

Rebel

Rebel, dir. María Agui Carter, 2013, USA, 72 min. 
Jeanne sous la pluie (Joan in the Rain), dir. Julie Meitz, 2012, France, 6 min., in French with English subtitles and English with French subtitles  [click “Read more” below]

Loreta Velázquez/Harry Buford
(fictional re-creation)

Rebel is the true story of a woman, Loreta Janeta Velázquez, born to a prominent family in Cuba, who moves to the southern United States just in time for the Civil War. Not content to sit on the sidelines while her husband went to war, Loreta created Lieutenant Harry T. Buford, a male soldier who fought in the battles of Bull Run, Ball’s Bluff, Fort Donelson, and Shiloh, and also worked as a spy behind enemy lines, although she may have been a double- or even triple agent. She wrote a memoir after the war, although Confederate General Jubal Early denounced it as utter fiction, so it was not until many decades later that many of her claims were corroborated. The true story of Loreta/Harry is fascinating, but the documentary not quite as much so. In particular, many of the dramatic recreations run quite slow. Highly Recommended for Civil War history buffs and aficionados of real-life 19th-century drag kings, but a more equivocal Recommended for general audiences.

Burning Blue

Burning Blue, dir. DMW Greer, 2013, USA, 96 min. 
Saturday, June 29, 4:00 pm @ Victoria (world première)

Lynch helps Stephensen
after their plane goes down

For nearly 18 years, from 1993 until 2011, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) was the official policy of the United States military. In theory, a gay man or a lesbian could serve, as long as he or she did not tell anyone, except, of course that if you came out publicly for the specific purpose of getting out of the military, then you would be forced to stay in. Also, in practice, the military completely ignored the “don ’t ask” part of the policy, and actively pursued its witch hunt of more than 13,000 homosexuals in the military, including more than 3,000 from the U.S. Navy. That’s the backdrop for the story of former naval aviator DMW Greer’s Burning Blue, although he wrote the stage play on which it is based back in 1992.

Out Here: A Queer Farmer Film Project

Out Here: A Queer Farmer Film Project, dir. Jonah Mossberg, 2013, USA, 72 min. 
Lovely, dir. Jennifer Maurer, 2012, USA, 17 min.  [click “Read more” below]
Saturday, June 29, 1:30 pm @ Victoria

As the small family farms of the 18th and 19th centuries gradually give way to the giant factory farms of the 20th and 21st, there is a small but notable counter-trend of small groups returning to the land and finding niche markets. These new farmers include new immigrants, women, people of color, and all flavors of queer people. Perhaps surprisingly, in many rural farming communities, the folks who have been doing this for generations are more pleased to see someone (anyone) carrying on the work of the land, than concerned about their other unaccustomed ways. Increasingly, though, small farms are sprouting and flourishing in or near big cities. Out Here: A Queer Farmer Film Project visits a smattering of farms from the Bronx and West Philly to rural Kansas and Alabama to a tiny goat farm right here in Berkeley. It’s an engaging story of another facet of the diversity of our LGBT family, and, to borrow a line from Stephen Colbert, Out Here provides food for thought as it encourages us to give a thought for our food. Highly recommended.

I Come from a Land Down Under (shorts)

“I Come from a Land Down Under” (shorts program)
Saturday, June 29, 11:00 am @ Castro

• Summer Suit, dir. Rebecca Peniston-Bird, 2013, Australia, 15 min. 
• Gorilla, dir. Tim Marshall, 2012, Australia, 13 min. 
• dik, dir. Christopher Stollery, 2012, Australia, 9 min. 
• Kitty, dir. Cindy Dodkins, 2012, Australia, 6 min. 
• Queen of the Desert, dir. Alex Kelly, 2012, Australia, 28 min. 

Out in the Dark (עלטה • ظلام)

Out in the Dark (Alata/Dhalam) (עלטה / ظلام), dir. Michael Mayer (מיכאל מאיר), 2012, Israel, 96 min., in Hebrew and Arabic with English subtitles 
Friday, June 28, 9:30 pm @ Castro (U.S. west coast première)

It’s a bit confusing if you say that Out in the Dark is a “smash hit,” because a different Michael Mayer is also a director on the U.S. TV series Smash, as well as having directed A Home at the End of the World [Frameline28, 2004, avail. on DVD]. Perhaps one day Frameline will have them both on stage at once, if only to prove they really aren’t the same person.

Roy (Michael Aloni, left)
and Nimr (Nicholas Jacob)

Out in the Dark (in Hebrew, Alata or עלטה) (in Arabic, Dhalam or ظلام) is the story of Roy (Michael Aloni • מיכאל אלוני), an Israeli lawyer, and Nimr (Nicholas Jacob • ניקולאס יעקוב), a Palestinian student, who meet in a Tel Aviv bar. Nimr snuck across the border from Ramallah for a taste of gay life, but he soon gets a permit to study at a university in Tel Aviv. Unfortunately, the conflict over the Israeli occupation puts pressure on Nimr from all sides, with his brother preparing to defend his homeland while the thugs of the Israeli security apparatus try to blackmail Nimr into becoming an informant. Of course, Nimr’s family is obdurately anti-gay, as Nimr finds out to his horror one night, but Roy’s parents, while they’ve gotten past his coming out, don’t exactly rush to embrace Nimr. Roy gets upset that Nimr is keeping secrets from him, not understanding that Nimr genuinely has no choice. Although Israeli law and society are far more accepting of homosexuality than the Palestinians, the Israeli security police cynically blackmail gay Palestinians and then out them to their families as gay collaborators when they are no longer of any use to Israel. If Roy and Nimr are to stay together, they’re going to need a miracle.

Out in the Dark gives a nuanced portrayal of the two characters and their story, while pulling no punches in shining its light into some of the dark recesses of the injustices of both Israeli and Palestinian society. It’s a moving story, beautifully written, acted and filmed, and definitely worth seeking out. Highly recommended, a Must See.

• IMDb page • Official website • Facebook page • trailer •

Reaching for the Moon (Flores Raras)

Flores Raras (Reaching for the Moon) (Você Nunca Disse Eu Te Amo), dir. Bruno Barreto, 2013, Brazil, 118 min., in English without subtitles and in Portuguese with English subtitles 
Friday, June 28, 6:45 pm @ Castro • U.S. west coast première

Elizabeth Bishop (Miranda Otto)
at Lota’s home in Brazil

The opening title sequence of Reaching for the Moon has more logos than a NASCAR jacket, reflecting the participation of at least five production companies and several other outfits that had to be noted before the film begins. The title itself is a bit complex, too: the film is based on the novel Rare and Commonplace Flowers: The Story of Elizabeth Bishop and Lota de Macedo Soares (Flores raras e banalíssimas: A história de Lota de Macedo Soares e Elizabeth Bishop) by Carmen Oliveira, English translation by Neil K. Besner. The original Brazilian title for the film was Flores raras, but IMDb indicates that it will be released in Brazil in August 2013 under the title Você Nunca Disse Eu Te Amo (in English, “You never said I love you”), as well as being released worldwide under the English title Reaching for the Moon. Elizabeth Bishop and Lota de Macedo Soares were real people: the first a poet laureate of the United States and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, the National Book Award, and the Neustadt International Prize for Literature; the latter an architect from a prominent family in Brazil. They really did have a long love affair in the 1950’s and 1960’s, but most of the day-to-day details are fictionalized.

Worldly Affairs (shorts)

“Worldly Affairs” (shorts program)
Friday, June 28, 4:00 pm @ Castro

El acompañante (The Companion), dir. Álvaro Delgado Aparicio L., 2012, Peru, 20 min., in Spanish with English subtitles 
Summer Vacation (Hofesh Gadol • חופש גדול), dir. Tal Granit (טל גרנית) and Sharon Maymon (ושרון מימון), 2012, Israel, 22 min., in Hebrew with English subtitles 
For Dorian, dir. Rodrigo Barriuso, 2012, Canada, 16 min. 
Um Diálogo de Ballet (A Ballet Dialogue), dir. Filipe Matzembacher and Marcio Reolon, 2012, Brazil, 8 min., in Portuguese with English subtitles 
Maremoto (Seaquake), dir. Daniel Aratangy, 2012, Brazil, 8 min., in Portuguese with English subtitles  • U.S. première
Fødselsdagen (Happy Birthday), dir. Lasse Nielsen, 2013, Denmark, 24 min., in Danish with English subtitles  (American première)

Born This Way

Born This Way, dir. Shaun Kadlec and Deb Tullmann, 2012, USA, 85 min., in French and English with English subtitles 
Friday, June 28, 1:30 pm @ Castro

The summer of 2013 has seen some major strides forward for gay rights in the United States, but the picture in much of the rest of the world is much less rosy. Born This Way takes a look at the struggles of the gay and lesbian community in Cameroon, a former French colony located right at the “knee bend” of Africa. We meet the tiny staff of Alternatives Cameroon, an advocacy group for gay rights and HIV prevention and treatment, and Alice Nkom, a lawyer who fights fearlessly for fair treatment in a country where homosexual acts are still punishable by up to five years in prison. Although the backdrop of societal and official homophobia is depressing, these brave activists bring hope that Cameroon may yet move into the light. Worth seeing, highly recommended.

• IMDb page • Facebook page • information about Alternatives Cameroon • Facebook page for Alice Nkom •

Beyond the Walls (Hors les murs)

Beyond the Walls (Hors les murs), dir. David Lambert, 2012, France, 98 min., in French and Albanian with English subtitles 
Thursday, June 27, 9:30 pm @ Castro

Guillaume Gouix (Ilir) and
Matila Malliarakis (Paulo)

Paulo, a young pianist, meets Ilir, a double-bass player originally from Albania. They fall deeply, madly in codependency, but try to convince themselves and the audience that it’s true love. Paulo impetuously tells his girlfriend (from whom he is mooching a place to live), so she kicks him out, and like a wounded bird with puppy-dog eyes he wheedles reluctant Ilir (who had clearly envisioned nothing more than a “no strings attached” quickie) into letting him move in. Paulo eventually promises eternal love and devotion to Ilir, who promptly disappears, turning up in prison. The constraints of prison visitation crimp, but do not end, their burgeoning codependency. How will the lost puppy survive without his big strong man, and how will his man survive in prison with the over-the-top public displays of affection in the visitation hall? If you’ve ever been tempted to “rescue” a down-on-his-luck street twink, this film stands as a cautionary tale for you; otherwise, don’t waste your time. Not recommended.

• IMDb page • Facebook page •

Hot Guys with Guns

Hot Guys with Guns, dir. Doug Spearman, 2013, USA, 103 min. 
Thursday, June 27, 4:00 pm @ Castro (U.S. première)

Marc Anthony Samuel (L)
and Brian McArdle (R)

“Imagine Lethal Weapon if Mel Gibson and Danny Glover were ex-boyfriends,” says the tagline for Hot Guys with Guns. Curiously, though, on IMDb, you have to jump to “full cast and crew” to find out the names of the stars, since they don’t appear in the “credited cast.” Danny (Marc Anthony Samuel from General Hospital) is an actor-waiter who is taking an evening class for private investigators to research a part he’s planning to audition for. He starts stalking (umm, I mean, surveiling) Pip (newcomer Brian McArdle), a party boy who seems to have a knack for attending parties where the guests end up drugged and robbed. Since the party guests are more than a little publicity shy, they can’t involve the police, so it falls to Danny and Pip to do some real detective work and find the miscreants. I sat through almost half an hour before I decided I had better things to do than watch them solve the mystery. Not a horrible film, but I can’t recommend it.

• IMDb page • Official website •

Something Real (shorts)

“Something Real” (shorts program)
Thursday, June 27, 1:45 pm @ Castro

• The Man That Got Away, dir. Trevor Anderson, 2012, Canada, 26 min. 
• Mark Bunyan: Very Nearly Almost Famous, dir. Jackie Nunns and Angie West, 2012, UK, 16 min. 
• Something Real, dir. Guy Shalem, 2013, USA, 9 min. 
• Open Letter, dir. Theo Schear, 2012, USA, 6 min. 
• Matt Alber with Strings Attached, dir. Greg Sirota, 2012, USA, 24 min. 

Mia

Mía, dir. Javier van de Couter, 2010, Argentina, 105 min., in Spanish with English subtitles 
Thursday, June 27, 11:00 am @ Castro • U.S. première

Ale dines with friends
in the pink village

Ale (Camila Sosa Villada) scrapes by, scavenging, streetwalking, sewing, and doing odd jobs, living in Aldea Rosa, the pink village, a shantytown made by various gay and transgender outcasts on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, but she is trying to improve herself, learning how to read. She finds the diary of a middle-class mother named Mía and finds herself drawn into their lives. In particular, she meets a young girl named Julia, becoming a surrogate mother to the girl despite the objections of her own friends and the girl’s father. We get to watch Ale come into herself as she nurtures Julia and pursues her own simply stated goal: Ser quien quiero ser, to be who I want to be. It’s an interesting and moving story, beautifully made, with a fairytale setup but not a storybook ending. Highly recommended.

• IMDb page •

The Battle of amfAR

The Battle of amfAR, dir. Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, 2013, USA, 40 min. , coming to HBO Dec. 2013
Entry Denied, dir. Machu Latorre, 2012, USA, 28 min.  [click “Read more” below]
Wednesday, June 26, 4:30 pm @ Castro

Dr. Mathilde Krim

Elizabeth Taylor testifying
to the U.S. Congress

In the 1980’s, AIDS came into public awareness, but Ronald Reagan was President, Jesse Helms was a powerful U.S. Senator, and it was nearly impossible to get any federal support for any research into the cause, treatment, or cure for AIDS. Dr. Mathilde Krim, a noted medical researcher as well as socialite and grandmother, teamed up with Elizabeth Taylor, a sometimes reluctant celebrity, to get private grant funding for vital research efforts through the American Foundation for AIDS Research, or amfAR. Dr. Krim had the medical bona fides, and Ms. Taylor had the unparalleled ability to draw public attention, making the team a force to be reckoned with.

Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman combine archival footage of Elizabeth Taylor with interviews with Dr. Mathilde Krim and others to form a compelling record of their groundbreaking collaboration and its significant achievements. Well done, highly recommended.

Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia

Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia, dir. Nicholas Wrathall, 2013, USA, 89 min. 
Wednesday, June 26, 2:00 pm @ Castro

Gore Vidal

I remember as a child seeing Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley, Jr., on television debating politics. As a loyal Nixon young Republican, I found myself unable to dismiss Vidal’s points as easily as I would’ve liked. Gore Vidal was a novelist, essayist, screenwriter, political commentator, and public intellectual. He was a force to be reckoned with. Documentarian Nicholas Wrathall managed to film several interviews with Gore Vidal before his death last summer, and interweaves them with notables including Christopher Hitchens, David Mamet, Norman Mailer, and Mikhail Gorbachev, and clips from Vidal’s life, ranging from a Depression-era newsreel (with his father, Eugene Vidal, an official in the Roosevelt administration) to the Kennedy White House to protests against the Vietnam War, and of course the television sparring with Buckley. As an historical writer, Vidal cast his eye backwards to figures including Aaron Burr and Abraham Lincoln, and forward to his criticism of President George W. Bush and the Iraq War, but he also wrote pure fiction, including the (in)famous The City and the Pillar, which dared to present homosexuality in a dispassionate light in 1948 — something that so angered the New York Times reviewer that Vidal wrote several novels under the pen name Edgar Box. Gore Vidal helped shape America’s perception of its own history and present, but he often despaired of our tendency to imperialism and other misadventures. Although he remained fiercely American in identity, citing his family’s ties dating to the 17th century, he lived for many years in a villa in Italy. He was a complex man, worthy of the attention he demanded, and this documentary does a fine job of shining the spotlight. Highly recommended, a Must See.

• IMDb page • Facebook page

The Happy Sad

The Happy Sad, dir. Rodney Evans, 2013, USA, 87 min. 
Tuesday, June 25, 9:30 pm @ Castro (world première!)
Qfest Philadelphia: Saturday, July 13, 7:30 pm @ Ritz East 2
Outfest Los Angeles: Saturday, July 20, 1:30 pm @ DGA
opens in theatres Friday, August 16, 2013, at IFC Center (NYC) & Sundance Sunset Cinema (L.A.)

Ummm … awwwwkwaaard …
Stan, Annie, Aaron, and Marcus

Aaron (Charlie Barnett, Chicago Fire, Private Romeo, Gayby, Men in Black 3) and Marcus (Leroy McClain, The Adjustment Bureau) are an established gay couple toying with the idea of an open relationship. Stan (Cameron Scoggins) and Annie (Sorel Carradine, daughter of Keith Carradine) are also a couple, uneasily feeling their way into the intimacy of having been together for a few months. Annie decides she needs to take a break from their relationship, and makes up the excuse that she’s now dating her (female) coworker Mandy. Stan goes on the rebound with Marcus, finding that there might just be something to this same-sex dating idea, but Marcus quickly realizes that he wants more than “no strings attached” sex, immediately breaking the one ground rule that he and Aaron set up for their non-monogamy. The characters intertwine in several more ways, as they try to figure out sexual identity, monogamy and polyamory, and where they fit in with all of the above. Beautifully written and acted, with some great music by Cameron Scoggins and his friends in The Whiskey Collection, under the direction of Rodney Evans (Brother to Brother [Frameline28]). Highly recommended, a Must See.

• IMDb page • Facebook page • Teaser trailer