Frameline 2011: Sunday
Jun. 21st, 2011 12:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nakedbeeAnother fun day at the movies! Highlights include discovering that Margaret Cho has an amazingly sultry country diva voice and that I want there to be more movies that involve characters traveling back in time and having sex with their younger selves.
Note: plot summaries and promotional images again shamelessly lifted from Frameline and/or the filmmaker's sites. Check out the festival website and/or websearch the film's titles for more info.
No Gravity
Young engineer Silvia Casalino dreams about going to space. The essayistic documentary, No Gravity is a personal story as well as a broader take on the history of women in space and the relationship between gender and technology.
Awesome!! Perhaps it's just that I wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid, but this doc was so moving and inspiring! The structure could have been better, but the content was awesome. Incoherent squee follows:
I love realizing how wrong my 1950s scientist stereotype is! I always kick myself for my subconscious belief that even though modern filmmakers get scientists wrong wrong wrong, somehow the B-movie directors of the 50s were spot on! The French woman talking about staying up all night scrawling equations across a chalkboard; continuing in voiceover of a photo of herself in a cute 60s bikini on a beach in French Guyana (where Europe launches it's rockets) with the other rocket scientists in their swim trunks. The Russian woman in her matronly ruffled blouse and pearls talking about the research she did before sending the first animals into space; her stories about the dogs they used … she seemed so much realer and more female than my B-movie white-coated stereotype scientist (I don't know if that communicates what I mean, but that's the best I can come up with). The story about Nichelle Nichols recruiting for NASA in the 80s … how believable it was that they opened up the space program to women and minorities, but weren't getting many applications until she volunteered to tour the country and tell people they were serious. I mean, when Uhura says "I Want You", you'd go, right? Then the story about Mae Jemison (the first African-American woman astronaut) meeting Nichelle Nichols at a con, to mutual squee and admiration. So awesome!!
We Who Are Sexy: The Whirlwind History of Transgender Images in Cinema
Join two film historians for a whirlwind ride through the history of transgender images in film. A smart combination of on-stage conversation and film clips, this program will showcase an amazing array of rarely seen tidbits ranging from the bad old days of guys in dresses and pathological transsexuals up through the empowered self-representations of the early '90s and into the hot transgender best of the 21st century.
I was so excited about this. A lecture! A clipshow! Woo hoo! The first one of these I went to years ago (on the history of gay porn) was fantastic - educational and entertaining. Sadly in this program there was very little lecture; clips were named and given a brief context, but nothing too deep. There was also too much reliance on shared knowledge … in a show described by the creators themselves as focusing on rare, hard-to-find sources, why would one assume we'd all heard of the films and their surrounding controversy before? Also the clips were poorly curated: too long, not targeted, not sequenced particularly meaningfully. To top it off, the mods paced themselves so poorly that they didn't have time for talking about the clips afterwards or for taking questions as planned. Vidders and acafen, you have spoiled me with your skillful use of video clips to make arguments, stimulate discussion, educate, and tell stories!
Fierce and Fabulous! – Queer Women of Color Shorts
Black lesbians raising children reveal The Gift of Family. A South-Asian lesbian couple finds themselves Legally Challenged after a job loss. Grace and Fierceness highlights the rhythmic path of spiritual activist Afia Walking Tree. Two women embark on an unexpected journey of passion and find a new Recipe for Love. Drama galore, 3Girlz & 9Lives are roommates intertwined in this comedy of errors.
All films created through Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project (QWOCMAP).
A nice set of shorts, with some good moments. I think these were all first films from the respective filmmakers as part of a "learn to make movies" program. That showed, but the stories were interesting enough that I could forgive some slowness in pacing. The Gift of Family was my favorite, but the gorgeously shot haute cuisine in Recipe for Love deserves a shoutout as well.
Cho Dependent
San Francisco native Margaret Cho, the original ass-master, is the queen of cock-talk and hardcore queer rights activism. The woman who embraces all the letters of the queer alphabet is back on the big screen, ready to attack the few taboos remaining after previous concert films I’m the One That I Want (2000), Notorious C.H.O. (2002), and Revolution (2004).
Cho Dependent, bearing the same name as Cho’s 2010 Grammy-award nominated comedy album, covers it all—from her stint on Dancing With the Stars, to Lady Gaga to the culture shock of moving to the deep south for Drop Dead Diva. In typical Cho fashion, the performance toggles between outrageous bedroom antics to self-deprecating tales of an outsider to impressions of her mother’s latest antics (yay!).
While lacking the emotional punch of I’m the One That I Want, this was still super fun to watch. It felt like getting to hang out with Margaret again and catch up, which was awesome, because she is so incredibly fierce. Apparently one of the many things she's been up to is discovering her inner rock star. I was blown away by how gorgeous her singing voice is, especially in I'm Sorry, which you should all head over to YouTube to watch. Yay, Margaret!
Judas Kiss
If you had the chance to go back and tell your younger self what mistakes not to make, would you take it? Judas Kiss follows filmmaker Zach Wells, once a young directing prodigy. Now a recovering alcoholic who gets the rare job filming weddings in Hollywood, Zach mooches off his old college friend, successful horror director Topher Shadoe.
When Topher has to back out of judging a film competition at their alma mater, he convinces Zach to go in his place. While Zach seems disconcerted in his old stomping grounds, he finds comfort in the arms of a handsome young man at the local gay bar. Maybe being back isn’t so bad after all. But then he realizes that one of the filmmakers he’s supposed to be judging has his name – and is screening the same film that he won the competition with years ago. He discovers a quirk in time and space that gives him an opportunity to make right what, in retrospect, went wrong all those years ago. Zach’s young doppelganger is more interested in finding sex, love and filmmaking stardom than in listening to strange theories about time travel. Will Zach get a second chance? Will his younger self choose love and friendship over money and fame—that’s sure to fade in time.
I had to see this one. Traveling back in time and having sex with oneself is a trope I've loved ever since I first read that fic with Hermione and the time-turner. I loved that the director was a total cutie, who when asked if this trope was a common one (with "you are so weird" implied), just blushed and said yes ... he's read a bunch of sci-fi books with this premise, although he thinks this is the first film on the topic. Wheee!
I'm greedy, though, and so wanted more than the one sex scene between future!Zach and past!Zach. I especially wanted to see them interact after they figure out the time travel/alternate universe thing. On the bright side, the cast was exceptionally hot and often clad in suits, glasses, or very little at all, so it was pretty fun to watch.
Bonus track:
Hannah and the Hasbian
Hannah is unwilling to believe that her girlfriend is now 100% set on a life of hot man on woman action because reading Twilight made her more Team Jacob than Team Bella. This film plays like a demented episode of Golden Girls—well, one where Dorothy and Rose have recently broken up and Blanche was (believe it or not) even more slutty.
We had a hard time deciding between the two films in this time slot, so while I was time traveling,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mister_b33 headed over to see this film. He gave it rave reviews, so we'll be looking for it on DVD later.
Note: plot summaries and promotional images again shamelessly lifted from Frameline and/or the filmmaker's sites. Check out the festival website and/or websearch the film's titles for more info.
No Gravity
Young engineer Silvia Casalino dreams about going to space. The essayistic documentary, No Gravity is a personal story as well as a broader take on the history of women in space and the relationship between gender and technology.
Awesome!! Perhaps it's just that I wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid, but this doc was so moving and inspiring! The structure could have been better, but the content was awesome. Incoherent squee follows:
I love realizing how wrong my 1950s scientist stereotype is! I always kick myself for my subconscious belief that even though modern filmmakers get scientists wrong wrong wrong, somehow the B-movie directors of the 50s were spot on! The French woman talking about staying up all night scrawling equations across a chalkboard; continuing in voiceover of a photo of herself in a cute 60s bikini on a beach in French Guyana (where Europe launches it's rockets) with the other rocket scientists in their swim trunks. The Russian woman in her matronly ruffled blouse and pearls talking about the research she did before sending the first animals into space; her stories about the dogs they used … she seemed so much realer and more female than my B-movie white-coated stereotype scientist (I don't know if that communicates what I mean, but that's the best I can come up with). The story about Nichelle Nichols recruiting for NASA in the 80s … how believable it was that they opened up the space program to women and minorities, but weren't getting many applications until she volunteered to tour the country and tell people they were serious. I mean, when Uhura says "I Want You", you'd go, right? Then the story about Mae Jemison (the first African-American woman astronaut) meeting Nichelle Nichols at a con, to mutual squee and admiration. So awesome!!
We Who Are Sexy: The Whirlwind History of Transgender Images in Cinema
Join two film historians for a whirlwind ride through the history of transgender images in film. A smart combination of on-stage conversation and film clips, this program will showcase an amazing array of rarely seen tidbits ranging from the bad old days of guys in dresses and pathological transsexuals up through the empowered self-representations of the early '90s and into the hot transgender best of the 21st century.
I was so excited about this. A lecture! A clipshow! Woo hoo! The first one of these I went to years ago (on the history of gay porn) was fantastic - educational and entertaining. Sadly in this program there was very little lecture; clips were named and given a brief context, but nothing too deep. There was also too much reliance on shared knowledge … in a show described by the creators themselves as focusing on rare, hard-to-find sources, why would one assume we'd all heard of the films and their surrounding controversy before? Also the clips were poorly curated: too long, not targeted, not sequenced particularly meaningfully. To top it off, the mods paced themselves so poorly that they didn't have time for talking about the clips afterwards or for taking questions as planned. Vidders and acafen, you have spoiled me with your skillful use of video clips to make arguments, stimulate discussion, educate, and tell stories!
Fierce and Fabulous! – Queer Women of Color Shorts
Black lesbians raising children reveal The Gift of Family. A South-Asian lesbian couple finds themselves Legally Challenged after a job loss. Grace and Fierceness highlights the rhythmic path of spiritual activist Afia Walking Tree. Two women embark on an unexpected journey of passion and find a new Recipe for Love. Drama galore, 3Girlz & 9Lives are roommates intertwined in this comedy of errors.
All films created through Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project (QWOCMAP).
A nice set of shorts, with some good moments. I think these were all first films from the respective filmmakers as part of a "learn to make movies" program. That showed, but the stories were interesting enough that I could forgive some slowness in pacing. The Gift of Family was my favorite, but the gorgeously shot haute cuisine in Recipe for Love deserves a shoutout as well.
Cho Dependent
San Francisco native Margaret Cho, the original ass-master, is the queen of cock-talk and hardcore queer rights activism. The woman who embraces all the letters of the queer alphabet is back on the big screen, ready to attack the few taboos remaining after previous concert films I’m the One That I Want (2000), Notorious C.H.O. (2002), and Revolution (2004).
Cho Dependent, bearing the same name as Cho’s 2010 Grammy-award nominated comedy album, covers it all—from her stint on Dancing With the Stars, to Lady Gaga to the culture shock of moving to the deep south for Drop Dead Diva. In typical Cho fashion, the performance toggles between outrageous bedroom antics to self-deprecating tales of an outsider to impressions of her mother’s latest antics (yay!).
While lacking the emotional punch of I’m the One That I Want, this was still super fun to watch. It felt like getting to hang out with Margaret again and catch up, which was awesome, because she is so incredibly fierce. Apparently one of the many things she's been up to is discovering her inner rock star. I was blown away by how gorgeous her singing voice is, especially in I'm Sorry, which you should all head over to YouTube to watch. Yay, Margaret!
Judas Kiss
If you had the chance to go back and tell your younger self what mistakes not to make, would you take it? Judas Kiss follows filmmaker Zach Wells, once a young directing prodigy. Now a recovering alcoholic who gets the rare job filming weddings in Hollywood, Zach mooches off his old college friend, successful horror director Topher Shadoe.
When Topher has to back out of judging a film competition at their alma mater, he convinces Zach to go in his place. While Zach seems disconcerted in his old stomping grounds, he finds comfort in the arms of a handsome young man at the local gay bar. Maybe being back isn’t so bad after all. But then he realizes that one of the filmmakers he’s supposed to be judging has his name – and is screening the same film that he won the competition with years ago. He discovers a quirk in time and space that gives him an opportunity to make right what, in retrospect, went wrong all those years ago. Zach’s young doppelganger is more interested in finding sex, love and filmmaking stardom than in listening to strange theories about time travel. Will Zach get a second chance? Will his younger self choose love and friendship over money and fame—that’s sure to fade in time.
I had to see this one. Traveling back in time and having sex with oneself is a trope I've loved ever since I first read that fic with Hermione and the time-turner. I loved that the director was a total cutie, who when asked if this trope was a common one (with "you are so weird" implied), just blushed and said yes ... he's read a bunch of sci-fi books with this premise, although he thinks this is the first film on the topic. Wheee!
I'm greedy, though, and so wanted more than the one sex scene between future!Zach and past!Zach. I especially wanted to see them interact after they figure out the time travel/alternate universe thing. On the bright side, the cast was exceptionally hot and often clad in suits, glasses, or very little at all, so it was pretty fun to watch.
Bonus track:
Hannah and the Hasbian
Hannah is unwilling to believe that her girlfriend is now 100% set on a life of hot man on woman action because reading Twilight made her more Team Jacob than Team Bella. This film plays like a demented episode of Golden Girls—well, one where Dorothy and Rose have recently broken up and Blanche was (believe it or not) even more slutty.
We had a hard time deciding between the two films in this time slot, so while I was time traveling,
mister_b33 headed over to see this film. He gave it rave reviews, so we'll be looking for it on DVD later.