Sorddin

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.

Today is the day that every year always gives me the same uneasy feel­ing. The “Oh fuck, its Sep­tem­ber already!” feel­ing.

After years (well I’ve been on the net since ’95 so I can say years) or search­ing I have final­ly found a sub­ject about which the Inter­net knows noth­ing. I thought I was close two years back when I jok­ing­ly said to a friend “There’s prob­a­bly even web­sites ded­i­cat­ed to ‘Hey Dad’!”. Turns out there are web­sites about ‘Hey Dad!’, thought strange­ly their most­ly in Ger­man, go fig­ure.
But I think I’ve final­ly found a hole in the vast sum of triv­ial that is the Inter­net. I can’t find any­thing more than a pass­ing ref­er­ence in the occa­sion­al web log to *The Rock­et Clock* from ‘Playschool’. I mean the search did­n’t even turn up any decent porn sites!

It’s been a strange sort of year, and Mar­di Gras seems so long ago. But fear not, here comes queer­Doc, so I bought myself a Pink Pass and am plan­ning to spend the week­end inside the Chau­v­el cin­e­ma.

but the fact is that the uni­verse works, against all the odds.

While sit­ting at a table in a fast food restau­rant that one of the oth­er patrons might at any minute pull out a semi-auto­mat­ic machine gun and paint the room red.
That you’ve walked into a musi­cal, but your the only one that does­n’t know the words, the dance moves and you can’t hear the music.
The wait­ress is com­plete­ly unable to see you despite wav­ing your hands in an ‘I’m drown­ing over here’ way.

Sea­son Five of Buffy has just recent­ly end­ed, Sea­sons One and Two are now of DVD and now part of my col­lec­tion, Sea­sons One, Two and Three were played on Fox­tel over the East­er long­week­end. And to top it all off I’ve just spent the last few days re-watch­ing Sea­son Four.
So now I’m in the weird posi­tion of hav­ing all of Buffy fresh in my mind. I’ve nev­er had any­thing close to this expe­ri­ence with Doc­tor Who. The sheer vol­ume of Doc­tor Who makes that more dif­fi­cult, even ignor­ing the miss­ing episodes. And then on top of that there is the long list of unread Doc­tor Who books.
Yet I call myself a Doc­tor Who fan (proud­ly, but with­out the need to be obvi­ous) and do not call myself a Buffy fan. I enjoy Buffy, I enjoy talk­ing about it with fel­low view­ers, I enjoy the get togeth­ers to watch it, but Buffy is not a reflec­tion of who I am or what I believe.
Com­plex.
Doc­tor Who did not always hit the mark, but the over-all non-vio­lent hero-teacher real­ly res­onates with me.
Buffy on the oth­er hand deals with some very impor­tant con­tem­po­rary issues, but when it comes down to it she pokes things with a pointy stick.