Author: David

RAINMAKERS II: TINA MACHIDA IN ZIMBABWE
Dir: Rob­bie Hart, Cana­da, 2000, Beta SP, 26 mins
(50% full)
score: 4 out of 5
If you think that you’ve got prob­lems in your life its good to know you can rely on a doco fes­ti­val to show just how much worse it is for oth­er peo­ple. This is the sto­ry of the cur­rent strug­gle for equal­i­ty for gay and les­bian peo­ples of Zim­bab­we and serves as a reminder that the work is not yet fin­ished.
SCOUT’S HONOR
Dir: Tom Shep­ard, USA, 2001, 16mm, 57 mins
(50% full)
score: 5 out of 5
A touch­ing tale about a straight twelve year old who is try­ing get the Boy Scouts of Amer­i­ca to accept equal­ly and freely gay peo­ple.
One of the ele­ments of this sto­ry I found most fas­ci­nat­ing was of a man who had been kicked out of the Scouts 17 years ago and had been since then fight­ing. This is fas­ci­nat­ing because he has been in a posi­tion over the years to observe the change in the way the media report­ed his sto­ry, from orig­i­nal­ly sid­ing with the Scouts to more recent­ly con­demn­ing the Scouts… does this mean the world is actu­al­ly becom­ing a more tol­er­ant place?
For more infor­ma­tion about queer­DOC 2001 or Queer Screen.

‘SOUTHERN COMFORT’
Dir: Kate Davis, USA, 2000, Beta SP, 90 mins
(50% full)
score: 5 out of 5
This is one of those films that is just amaz­ing, the hard­ship and strug­gle that each of the char­ac­ters has had to go through in their lives is heart wrench­ing and in the mid­dle of sad­ness their is love.
This is a touch­ing film and I don’t think I can actu­al­ly describe why, just see it if you get a chance.
For more infor­ma­tion about queer­DOC 2001 or Queer Screen.

‘HOW DO I LOOK?’
Queer film and its audi­ences
A pan­el dis­cus­sion.
I did­n’t sit in on this ses­sion, choos­ing instead the self­ish option of get­ting some food.
For more infor­ma­tion about queer­DOC 2001 or Queer Screen.

‘WHITE PEOPLE’S BUSINESS’
Dirs: Diana Dacic and Melis­sa See­len­mey­er, Aus­tralia, 2001, Beta SP, 26 mins
(75% full)
score: 4 out of 5
The pre­miere screen­ing of an inter­est­ing film about non-indige­nous involve­ment in the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion move­ment that among oth­er things asks “Now that we’ve walked across the Har­bour Bridge, what do we do?”
‘A FIELD GUIDE TO WESTERN WILDFLOWERS’
Dir: Wayne Yung, Cana­da, 2000, Beta SP, 6 mins
(75% full)
score: 4 out of 5
A 6 minute kiss of 63 men, with flow­ers, go fig­ure. Cute, charm­ing and fas­ci­nat­ing.
‘DIFFERENT SHADES OF PINK’
Dir: Alexan­der Ku, Aus­tralia, 2001, Beta SP, 45 mins
(75% full)
score: 3 out of 5
The pre­miere screen­ing of a local doco about mixed rela­tion­ships. This film starts well but I think it got a lit­tle tired about half way through.
For more infor­ma­tion about queer­DOC 2001 or Queer Screen.

‘NEED AND WANT’
Dirs: Mic­ki Pok­lar and Daniela Cro­cetti, USA, 2000, Beta SP, 35 mins
and
‘LESBIANS GO MAD ON LESBOS’
Dirs: Ker­ry McGib­bin and Gabi Kent, UK, 2000, Beta SP, 54 mins
I did­n’t see either of these. There are two rea­sons for this, you can choose which one you want to believe. Per­son­al­ly it was a bit of both.
1) I was a bit to docoed out and need­ed some time to breathe and think.
2) The room packed full of dykes wait­ing to go in scared me.
Either way it would have been nice to have some­one spe­cial to hold my hand that night.
For more infor­ma­tion about queer­DOC 2001 or Queer Screen.

Aging Queers and Teenage Fears
‘ABOUT VIVIEN’
Dir: Kathy Sport, Aus­tralia, 2000, 16mm, 14 mins
(full house)
score: 5 out of 5
An amaz­ing sto­ry about Vivien, a cross-dress­ing man (or maybe he was trans­gen­der, I’m not sure) in the 1950s and the things he had to deal with to live his cho­sen life.
‘OPENING CLOSET X’
Dirs: Max Kel­ly & Diana Pol­ish, USA, 1998, video, 17 mins
(full house)
score: ?
Damn, in all the con­fu­sion I’ve com­plete­ly for­got­ten which one this one was… maybe I’ll remem­ber lat­er and be able to put some­thing more inter­est­ing here.
‘GAY AND GRAY IN NEW YORK CITY’
Dirs: Nicholas Ches­la, Cindy Crea­ger and Julie Eng­lan­der, USA, 1999, video, 22 mins
(full house)
score: 5 out of 5
With the out and proud gay com­mu­ni­ty only real­ly now grey­ing the issue of what hap­pens to old­er gay peo­ple needs to be addressed because despite what the dance bun­nys might think gay peo­ple don’t just dis­ap­pear after 35.
‘YOUTH OUTLOUD!’
Dirs: Becky Burklee and Kathy Hines, USA, 2000, Beta SP, 46 mins
(full house)
score: 5 out of 5
This one hit a few raw nerves. As the only place I’ve ever been per­son­al­ly been a vic­tim of hate crimes was school, the sto­ries these kids told about their expe­ri­ences were much more per­son­al.
This film stirred up a bunch of reac­tions, guilt, fear, sor­row, grief.
Some of the sto­ries were far worse than any­thing I’d ever expe­ri­enced and I found myself guilty feel­ing glad that noth­ing that bad hap­pened to me and at the same time seri­ous­ly pissed off that it hap­pens to any­one at all.
For more infor­ma­tion about queer­DOC 2001 or Queer Screen.

Queer Fam­i­lies
‘NO DUMB QUESTIONS’
Dir: Melis­sa Regan, USA, 2001, Beta SP, 25 mins
(75% full)
score: 5 out of 5
This is an charm­ing doco about three sis­ters 6, 9, and 11-year-old and their ques­tions and strug­gle in deal­ing with their Uncle Bill becom­ing Aunt Bar­bara. As always chil­dren have a habit of see­ing what grown-ups are blind too.
‘DESTINY’S CHILDREN’
Dir: Kevin O’Keefe, Cana­da, 2001, Beta SP, 18 mins
(75% full)
score: 3 out of 5
While a nice doco this one did­n’t res­onate. Sure I felt for the guy who had spent 17 years try­ing to find a way to adopt chil­dren, but, I don’t know, there was some­thing miss­ing from the sto­ry.
‘DADS WANTED’
Dir: Justin Pem­ber­ton, New Zealand, 2001, Beta SP, 44 mins
(75% full)
score: 4 out of 5
An insight­ful look at three dif­fer­ent types of gay fam­i­lies.
For more infor­ma­tion about queer­DOC 2001 or Queer Screen.

‘OUT IN NATURE: HOMOSEXUAL BEHAVIOUR IN THE ANIMAL KINGDOM’
Dirs: Jes­si­ca Menen­dez, Bertrand Loy­er & Stephane Alexan­dresco, UK, 2001, Beta SP, 52 mins
(75% full)
score: 5 out of 5
A mat­ter of fact and graph­i­cal doco about homo­sex­u­al behav­iour (which is dif­fer­ent from homo­sex­u­al­i­ty) in the ani­mal world. This film takes a even hand to a sub­ject that has in the past been edit­ed out of sci­en­tif­ic research.
For some time any sci­en­tif­ic research that has dared bring up the sub­ject of homo­sex­u­al behav­iour in ani­mals has also tried to jus­ti­fy this behav­iour in var­i­ous ways, this film looks at these the­o­ries and then presents a group of ani­mals in which this is clear­ly not the case. For exam­ple one sug­ges­tion was that ani­mals have homo­sex­u­al sex as a ‘sec­ond best’ when there are no ani­mals of oppo­site sex around, while per­haps true for some groups of ani­mals it is shown to be not true in all cas­es.
And so after a rather exten­sive look at the var­i­ous dif­fer­ent the­o­ries and ani­mal groups the doco basi­cal­ly comes to the con­clu­sion that not enough is known to be able to say any­thing for sure.
It is per­haps the things that the doco does not say that are its great­est mes­sage. The doco does not explic­it­ly draw any con­clu­sions about human homo­sex­u­al behav­iour one way or the oth­er, but it does make you think.
‘PLUSHIES AND FURRIES’
Dir: Rick Cas­tro, USA, 2001, Beta SP, 22 mins
(75% full)
score: 5 out of 5
A nice fluffy look into the world of plushies (stuffed ani­mals) and fur­ries (peo­ple that like to dress up as ani­mals). This fun lit­tle film does­n’t try to jus­ti­fy this life choice it sim­ple presents it as an option and shows some warm and gen­uine peo­ple deal­ing with issues like try­ing to explain it all to mum.
‘STEERS AND QUEERS’
Dir: Paula Gau­thi­er, USA, 2000, 16mm, 30 mins
(75% house)
score: 4 out of 5
This is one of those docos that shows a world I had­n’t even known exist­ed, that of the gay rodeo. A world were gay guys and galls love being thrown off hors­es and bulls. Sure it ain’t for every­one, but it is for them and its good to see that they can con­tin­ue to enjoy a part of their life with­out fear or dis­crim­i­na­tion.
For more infor­ma­tion about queer­DOC 2001 or Queer Screen.

‘UNDETECTABLE’
Dir: Jay Cor­co­ran, USA, 2001, Beta SP, 76 mins
(25% full)
score: 3 out of 5
Well, okay, not the best film ever made, but still some inter­est­ing stuff. This film fol­lows 6 peo­ple as they try to com­bat HIV over a four year peri­od. More than any­thing its an edu­ca­tion­al film for peo­ple that don’t know about AIDS or HIV, of which there are more and more.
The film is one of the depress­ing ones I was expect­ing to be part of the fes­ti­val of the 6 peo­ple the film fol­lowed, two of them were dead at the end and only two had a viral load at unde­tectable lev­els.
The word ‘Cured’ is not used when dis­cussing HIV, the clos­est is ‘cop­ing well with treat­ment’.
AIDS has now been around for 20 years, with the first case of diag­no­sis in the US in 1981. But with the treat­ments that exist now there is a mis­con­cep­tion by the world that AIDS is under con­trol.
After the screen­ing there was a dis­cus­sion that attempt­ed to bring the issues of the film to an Aus­tralian con­text.
For more infor­ma­tion about queer­DOC 2001 or Queer Screen.

NIGHT TRADE
Dir: Bar­bara Karpin­s­ki, Aus­tralia, 2001, Beta SP, 10 mins
(full house)
score: 4 out of 5
The fes­ti­val opened with the pre­miere screen­ing of a short film titled ‘Night Trade’. Shows a mans life in Aus­tralia now after hav­ing fled the war Yugoslavia and explores his work as a gigo­lo. Half doc­u­men­tary in that the voice over is authen­tic while the visu­als are re-enact­ments. This work also fea­tures John­nie Cass of Big Broth­er fame.
KEEP THE RIVER ON YOUR RIGHT
Dirs: David and Lau­rie Shapiro, USA, 2000, 35mm, 90 mins
(full house)
score: 4 out of 5
The jour­ney of Tobias Schnee­baum as a film crew look­ing to make an inter­est­ing doc­u­men­tary force an 78 year old man to re-walk a part of his life he would rather for­get.
There’s a beau­ti­ful scene in the film where Tobias sings a song of the Asmat peo­ple and then he trans­lates it:
In the riv­er there is shrimp
In the riv­er there is piss
In the riv­er there is shit
The shrimp eat the piss
The shrimp eat the shit
We eat the shrimp.
Strange­ly this film has a lot to say yet the mes­sages it sends don’t seem to be the ones the direc­tors had in mind. The film itself seems to almost not hear the mes­sage of its sub­ject and keeps bring the issue back to can­ni­bal­ism even though Tobias him­self states that it was such a small part of his life.
For more infor­ma­tion about queer­DOC 2001 or Queer Screen.