10th Annual Boston Gay & Lesbian Film/Video Festival

June 1 - 12, 1994

Jury Award Winners

from 10th Annual Boston Gay & Lesbian Film/Video Festival
No items found.

Jury Honorable Mention

from 10th Annual Boston Gay & Lesbian Film/Video Festival
No items found.

Audience Awards

from 10th Annual Boston Gay & Lesbian Film/Video Festival
No items found.

Best in Show Shorts

from 10th Annual Boston Gay & Lesbian Film/Video Festival
No items found.

All Feature Films

from 10th Annual Boston Gay & Lesbian Film/Video Festival
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1993

A Day In The Life Of Edmund White

with Chicken Hawk

in person
Bill Cory
37 min
USA
1993
This video by Washington-based videographer Bill Cory is a glimpse into the private life of one of America’s best-known gay authors. Subtitled Melodocumentary-The Day Shit Happened, it is set in Paris and adopts a very candid and whimsical tone as White is seen taking a gym class, lunching with a Countess, meeting a phone-sex caller, attending an awards ceremony, hosting a dinner party and finally winding up in bed with a handsome hunk he meets cruising under a Paris bridge.
 min total program
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1989

Alexandria Always And Forever

in person
Youssef Chahine
105 min
Arabic
Egypt
1989
Youssef Chahine is the premier director of Egyptian cinema—the largest national cinema in the Arab world—and this film, the conclusion of an autobiographical trilogy, was intended as his coming-out film. As the director begins production on a film, his favorite actor, and alter ego, deserts the set, and problems continue to mount. Along the way, Chahine exploits the misfortunes of his main character to satirize the process of filmmaking, especially in the Third World.
Set in 1987 against the backdrop of a hunger strike by the Egyptian film industry, Chahine himself steps in to play Yehia, the famed Egyptian director whose life is chronicled in “Alexandria, Why?” and “An Egyptian Story”. Obsessed with Amr, the handsome actor he discovered and cast as his alter-ego in parts one and two of The Alexandria Trilogy, Yehia pressures Amr to star in various film projects that change even as Yehia’s perception of the young actor begins to change. He first casts Amr as Hamlet, which the actor deems too demanding for his talents, then as the lead in a musical biopic of demigod Alexander the Great, who founded the city of Alexandria in 332 B.C.
 min total program
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1993

Cancer In Two Voices

with No Saintly Girl and Dangerous When Wet

in person
Lucy Massie Phenix
43 min
English
USA
1993
In 1985, when Barbara Rosenblum learned she had cancer, she and her partner, Sandy Butler, made a political decision to document the process of their lives for the three years Barbara had left. “Phenix has crafted a film that is not a downward spiral but more like an emotional twister that lifts you up. Jewish, lesbians, friends, and lovers, they express their feelings about guilt, anger, their bodies, music, and their garden. Linking it all together is their wonderful relationship.” - Sundance Film Festival
A lesbian couple’s eight-year relationship is put under strain when Barbara is diagnosed with breast cancer. Barbara is told she has three years to live, and so she and Sandy document their lives with courageand frankness. The two women talk about their identity as Jewish women and lesbians and speak openly about the difficult issues each is facing.
 min total program
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1992

Chain Of Desire

in person
Temístocles López
105 min
English
USA
1992
La Ronde, the classic sexual merry-go-round, is updated to the age of AIDS by Themistocles Lopez and given a gay perspective that results in a sexy, funny, and hauntingly civilized film that does Schnitzler proud. Here, in contemporary New York, it is chanteuse meets pious workman meets wife meets doctor meets maid meets writer meets young hustler meets social worker meets dancer, etc. With Malcolm McDowell (A Clockwork Orange) as an avid chicken-hawk.
A series of unrelated amorous lovers are connected by a chain of desire.
 min total program
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1993

Coming Out Under Fire

with Private SNAFU Censored

in person
Arthur Dong
71 min
English
USA
1993
Based on Allan Bérubé’s acclaimed book, ten gay and lesbian veterans of World War II tell their stories. In WWII the military first adopted its policies to identify, reject, and discharge homosexuals as mentally ill. The fill uncovers the story of the men and women who were fighting two wars–one for their country, and one against witch hunts, “queer stockades,” and stigmatization as “sex perverts” by the country they were serving.These histories shed especially eloquent light on the latest bureaucratic machinations of bigotry, the Senate’s challenge of Clinton’s pledge to lift the ban.
A historical account of military policy regarding homosexuality during World War II. The documentary includes interviews with several homosexual WWII veterans.
 min total program
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1993

Confession Of A Pretty Lady: Sandra Bernhard

with Chicks in White Satin and Conceicào

in person
Kris Clarke
45 min
English
UK
1993
Actress, singer, and comedienne Sandra Bernhard is profiled in this documentary featuring interviews with Camille Paglia, comedian Paul Mooney, Martin Scorsese, and The Advocate editor Jeff Yarborough, as well as the “pretty lady” herself. “... a wonderful feel-good movie which highlights Bernhard’s less obnoxious aspects and showcases the lady as a fine comedian and social satirist” - San Francisco Bay Times
Bernhard, an actress-comedienne whose brassy humor attracts a cult-like following, here offers a semiconfessional view of her life’s landscape. Childhood memories of her father, a doctor, and her mother, an artist, are warmly rendered in scenes of the Jewish family amiably accommodating itself to the Christmas season, and of the obligatory communal vacations joined by colorful relatives. The abrupt transition to a flamboyant denizen of “downtowns,” Los Angeles or New York, to an existence as a character in the lives of marginal people, is evoked in sharply satirical terms, in a melange of humorous fact and fiction, monologues akin to those that make Bernhard an icon of pop culture.
 min total program
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1983

Corrupt

in person
Roberto Faenza
117 min
English
Italy
1983
With a beautiful cameo performance by the real Sylvia Syndey, this bizarre, sophisticated thriller recalls the cult film Performance. A stylish thriller starring Sex Pistols’ John Lydon as an effeminate self-professed cop killer and Harvey Keitel as a corrupt police lieutenant, the two have an intense sado-masochistic relationship that just barely conceals the homosexual attraction threatening to engulf both of them.
A NYPD officer imprisons and tortures an admitted cop-killer, but finds the tables turned when his victim refuses to break and in fact urges more punishment.
 min total program
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1993

Crush

with Cruel

in person
Alison Maclean
97 min
English
New Zealand
1993
This piercing modern fable entwines the lives of a beautiful adolescent girl, a predatory femme fatale, a wheelchair-ridden critic, and a once-successful novelist. That is, until the lives of the three women and one man are simultaneously shattered. Wreaking sexual havoc is brash Lane (Marcia Gay Harden), whose mercurial allegiances with her friend, lover, and a teenage nymph named Angela (Caitlin Bossley) sow frustration and paranoia, forcing a dramatic confrontation fraught with erotic tensions.
On the way to interview a novelist, Lane and Christina are involved in a car crash which leaves literary critic Christina brain-damaged. Lane undertakes the assignment and becomes attracted to the novelist’s 15 year old daughter, leading to stormy emotions.
 min total program
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1993

Desperate Remedies

in person
Stewart Main & Peter Wells
93 min
English
New Zealand
1993
This preposterously affected bodice-ripper is set in a raunchy harbor town teeming with sexually aroused and confused transportees. One such is brooding Lawrence Hayes (Kevin Smith), pouting sweatily like a refugee from a Levi’s ad. Opulent dressmaker Dorothea Brook (Jennifer Ward-Lealand) enlists his help to save her opium-addicted sister from the sensual, callous fop Fraser. Nostrils flare, lower lips quiver, impossible skirts trail over checkered floors, uncorseted bosoms bounce, sex of all preferences is simulated—climaxing with the lesbian lovers happily walking into the sunset. “Dares to be bad and succeeds quite splendidly.” - Time Out UK
n a town called Hope on the edge of Britain’s empire, desperations clash: the beautiful Dorothea Brook is desperate to free her pregnant sister Rose from the clutches of Fraser, a fortune hunter. A local politician, William Poyner, is desperate for cash and thinks marriage to Dorothea will save him. Dorothea hires Lawrence Hayes, a rough but handsome Argonaut, to bribe Fraser with jewels and to marry Rose; Hayes desperately loves Dorothea and may marry Rose to stay close to her. But Dorothea has a lover, the ravishing Anne Cooper, who encourages the match with Poyser to give the lovers cover. Are these remedies, each desperate in its turn, going to make anyone happy?
 min total program
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1994

Fast Trip, Long Drop

with Deaf Heaven

in person
Gregg Bordowitz
54 min
English
USA
1994
In the spring of 1988, video artist/activist Gregg Bordowitz tested HIV-positive, quit drinking and doing drugs, and came out to his parents about his homosexuality. This imaginative film, which came to include a questioning of his understanding of the diagnosis and of the relationship between illness and history, is a kaleidoscopic blast of visual stimulation, intellectual irreverence, and emotional confrontation. “The riskiest film about AIDS made to date. Finally someone has the guts to face despair honestly and without a trace of self-pity… angry, mournful, cynical, funny, moving and wise” - Douglas Crimp
A gay jewish man speaks out about living with and dying from AIDS. He also discusses how being gay has affected his identity as a jew and his relationship with his parents.
 min total program
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1994

Go Fish

in person
Rose Troche
83 min
English
United States
1994
Described as a lesbian Slacker, this first feature offers an inside look at lesbian life in the 1990s. There’s Max, who is looking for love, and Kia, who thinks she’s found it in Evy. But to complicate Kia’s life, there’s the seemingly available Ely, who lives with the loose Darla, who in turn believes Ely would like Max. “There’s an innocence about the characters that’s usually missing from ‘lesbian chic’ coverage; these women look more like twenty-something figures in underground video or Alison Bechdel’s Dykes To Watch Out For*.* GO FISH begins just about where coming-out films used to end.” — Sundance Film Festival
Max is a trendy, pretty, young lesbian, who is having trouble finding love. A friend sets her up with Ely, whom Max likes, but Ely is frumpy, homely, and older. Nor do they have much in common. Can Max learn to look past the packaging?
 min total program
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1993

Green On Thursdays: The Crusade Against Gay Bashing

with Stick Figures

in person
Dean Bushala & Deirdre Heaslip
77 min
English
USA
1993
Used as a code for gay identification during more homophobic times, the wearing of green on Thursdays has since become a symbol of the oppression against gay people by those who continue to place credence in such outdated stigmatizers when searching for gays to bash. This film examines the culture of violence among homophobes and highlights the work of the Pink Angels, a Chicago community activist group. “A distressing, compassionate, and extremely valuable film.” — LA Weekly
A look at gay-bashing in America and the efforts that are necessary to stop it. The filmmakers spent 3 years documenting violence against the gay community that seldom made the mainstream media.
 min total program
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1993

Grief

in person
Richard Glatzer
87 min
English
USA
1993
Set in a working TV production office, this film follows a team producing a low-end, tacky soap opera. Executive producer Jo is leaving, and emotionally vulnerable Mark is up for the job. He’s stressed over the anniversary of his lover’s death from AIDS and by his crush on Bill, who has just broken up with his girlfriend. The tension is compounded by the homophobia of the executives upstairs and by the secret erotic skirmishes behind closed doors. The TV they produce becomes the characters’ mirror, and the film is a satire, but one that is much more than parody.
A campy chronicle of the lusts and loves of the men and women who work on a low-rent TV show called, “The Love Judge.”
 min total program
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1993

I'll Love You Forever... Tonight

in person
Edgar Michael Bravo
80 min
English
USA
1993
Ethan, a young gay man haunted by childhood memories of being molested by his father, takes a weekend trip to Palm Springs with Dennis, his fair-weather “fuck buddy.” Dennis secretly hopes Ethan will get back together with Peter, Ethan’s ex-boyfriend, who is also vacationing at the desert hot-spot. This, in turn, will allow the manipulative Dennis to move in on Peter’s studly lover, Jeff. Ethan, meanwhile, disgusted by his bedmate’s shallowness, is moved to contact his dad, with whom he makes a final peace. Director Bravo’s minimalist script and shrewd direction, concentrating on the emotions motivating the utterances, gives the goings-on a fascinating, Harold-Pinter-on-Fire-Island subtext.
Set in the late 1980s, this critically acclaimed indie classic from 1992 portrays a gritty side of gay life in Los Angeles. Ethan (Paul Marius), a 27-year-old photographer, believes he has no need for love or commitments, and is living his life amidst one-night stands. Ethan is coaxed by his “best buddy” Dennis (Jason Adams) into attending a reunion of college friends and lovers at a Palm Springs hideaway. What is supposed to be a restful vacation turns into a round of hard drinking and cruel sexual games. By the end of the “vacation,” Ethan feels a need for new friends and returns to Los Angeles. Confronting his troubled family life, he calls his father - who doesn’t want anything to do with him. In the end, Ethan realizes that he can make his own “family” with friends who will accept each other without judgments.
 min total program
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1993

Libera

in person
Pappi Corsicato
83 min
Italian
Italy
1993
Already being touted as an Italian Almodovar, director Pappi Corsicato’s exotic extravaganza is a quasi-surreal portrait of three Neapolitan women. The second of the stories has the film’s most overtly gay theme in which Carmela’s handsome homosexual son discovers his “mother” is more than he ever dreamed. A visual delight, shot through with a bizarre sense of humor and decor, director Corsicato is a talent to discover and to watch.
Three separate women endure trouble with the men in their lives.
 min total program
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1993

Ludwig 1881

in person
Fosco & Donatello Dubini
90 min
German
Germany
1993
In the summer of 1881, King Ludwig II of Bavaria traveled to Lake Lucerne with Joseph Kainz, an actor in his court, to recreate scenes from Schiller’s William Tell in their authentic settings. Against stunning Alpine backdrops, this film records the historical rise of aestheticism as well as the way power plays itself out in even platonic, yet homoerotic, relationships. The directors have cast Helmet Berger, the star of Luchino Visconti’s 1975 Ludwig, as the same character here.
In 1881 Ludwig of Bavaria goes on a cruise on a Swiss lake. He takes with him a famous actor, Josef Kainz, to act out the scenes from a story which took place on the lake, at the actual locations.
 min total program
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1990

Lulu

in person
Bigas Luna
95 min
Spanish
Spain
1990
Lulu portrays the sexual odyssey of one woman and, in scenes that are both funny and deeply shocking, gives new meaning to the term “fag hag”—Lulu not only wants to “hang out” with gay boys, but she also winds up as the sandwich in a series of sexual couplings with Banderas look-alikes that include group sex, handcuffs, and shavings. Politically incorrect and wildly sensual, director Bigas Luna (Jamon Jamon, Bilbao) makes countryman Almodóvar look like Ron Howard in what must be this festival’s most daring film.
Fifteen-year-old Lulu has never known any affection from her family. But when she goes to a rock concert with Pablo, a friend of the family, he introduces Lulu to her first sexual experience. Years later, Pablo and Lulu have married; Pablo has created a sheltered, private world for Lulu, into which nothing intrudes. However, Lulu tires of her cloistered existence, and begins hanging out in shady bars, looking for vicarious thrills and danger.
 min total program
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1969

Midnight Cowboy

in person
John Schlesinger
113 min
English
United States
1969
Midnight Cowboy rates landmark status as not only a multi Oscar winner but the first major studio production to be branded with an X rating. Voight is incredible as Joe Buck, a naive Texan who is convinced he can make a living as a hustler to old lonely rich women. Dustin Hoffman is brilliant as Ratso Rizzo, the seedy, crippled con artist who becomes Joe’s only friend. Between the two down-and-out characters, cameos are played by New York’s mod squad of screaming Sixties superstars Viva, Ultra Violet, International Velvet, Taylor Mead and Paul Morriessey.
Joe Buck is a wide-eyed hustler from Texas hoping to score big with wealthy New York City women; he finds a companion in Enrico “Ratso” Rizzo, an ailing swindler with a bum leg and a quixotic fantasy of escaping to Florida.
 min total program
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1993

One Nation Under God

in person
Teodoro Maniaci & Francine Rzeznick
83 min
English
USA
1993
This widely discussed documentary takes a historical look at attempts by religious groups and psychiatrists to change sexual orientation. While “reparative therapies” have been discredited by reputable mental health professionals since the 1970s, the legitimacy of Christian “ex-gay” ministries is questioned in on-screen interviews with former members of such groups.
Focusing on the contemporary religious Right Wing proliferation of curative therapies for homosexuality, this riveting documentary offers historical context as well as a political analysis of this frighteningly large movement.
 min total program
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1993

Paris, France

in person
Gerard Ciccoritti
112 min
English
Canada
1993
A no-holds-barred exposé of the raunchy, creative juices flowing in the writer’s veins, director Gerry Ciccoritti pulls out all the stops in this relentless tale of sex, sex, sex, and more sex! Lucy Quick, a hip young novelist cast in the image of Anaïs Nin, finds herself suffering from writer’s block and at the end of her tether. Enter Sloan, a wiry avenging angel with a perpetual hard-on. They embark on an odyssey to the center of their sexual imaginations, eventually drawing in everyone around them. Ciccoritti demonstrates true finesse in his direction of straight, gay, and S&M sex scenes, pushing sexual tension beyond expected limits into the realm of absolute anarchy and hilarity.
A writer has torrid fantasy affairs with young men.
 min total program
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1991

Salmonberries

in person
Percy Adlon
95 min
English
Germany
1991
The incomparable k.d. lang makes her film debut in Percy Adlon’s (Bagdad Cafe, Sugarbaby) exquisitely shot love story about a young, untamed Eskimo woman and her lesbian desire for a German émigeré working as a librarian at an Eskimo trading post in Northwest Alaska. Kabetsu, played by k.d. Lang, who sings the title song “Barefoot”, makes awkward advances to Roswitha (Rosel Zech, who played the title role in Fassbinder’s Veronika Voss). The ensuing relationship begins fraught with sexual tension, but grows into one of nurturing independence and love.
A young orphaned woman named Kotzebue is trying to find out who her parents are in the icy landscapes of Alaska. Kotzebue is helped by an East German librarian, whose husband was killed while fleeing from the GDR. Although both women could not be more different from each other, a fragile relationship forms.
 min total program
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1993

Turnabout: The Story Of The Yale Puppeteers

Director Dan Bessie in person
Dan Bessie
60 min
English
USA
1993
For more than 70 years, Harry Burnett, his cousin Forman Brown, and Forman’s lifetime companion Roddy Brandon traveled through America’s big cities and small towns, delighting multitudes of adults with their captivating puppets and lively, satirical songs. This is the story of their long, happy, and productive lives, of the unique, world-famous puppet and cabaret theater they created in Hollywood, and about Forman’s work as a pioneering gay author, whose recently rediscovered and widely acclaimed autobiographical novel, Better Angel, has been a revelation to straight and gay readers alike.
Documentary about the Yale Puppeteers. A bit eccentric, certainly off beat and creative, the puppeteers and their story - as well as their place in history - is meticulously documented and tugs at the heartstrings.
 min total program
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1992

Well Sexy Women

with Fingered!

in person
Unconscious Collective
50 min
UK
1992
An informative, frank, and sexy guide to safer lesbian sex. This video does not shy away from sensitive subjects, delivering timely information in a sensual and passionate way. Six beautiful women explicitly demonstrate safer sex techniques and clearly point out what is not considered safe. Made for and by lesbian women, with stunning beauty and openness.
 min total program
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1993

Zero Patience

in person
John Greyson
100 min
English
Canada
1993
A rip-roaring, in-your-face musical about AIDS starring a gay ghost—the infamous Quebecois flight attendant “Patient Zero”—who seduces a 170-year-old sexologist, the Victorian adventurer Sir Richard Francis Burton. Combining influences as diverse as Bertolt Brecht, Busby Berkeley, Michel Foucault, and Barbra Streisand, director John Greyson exposes the greed, homophobia, and careerism underlying both media and scientific responses to the AIDS epidemic. Outrageously funny, with eye-popping sets and tuneful musical numbers, Zero Patience manages to celebrate the anger as well as the compassion and love in the gay community.
The ghost of “patient zero”, who allegedly first brought AIDS to North America - materialises and tries to contact old friends. Meanwhile, the Victorian explorer Sir Richard Burton, who drank from the Fountain of Youth and now works as Chief Taxidermist at the Toronto Natural history Museum, is trying to organise an exhibition about the disease for the museum’s “Hall of Contagion”.
 min total program
No items found.

All Short Film Programs

from 10th Annual Boston Gay & Lesbian Film/Video Festival
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM

1st Gay Men's Safe Sex Video Contest

FREE

with Timepiece

in person
 min total program
This compilation of the year’s hottest sex videos proves you don’t have to be sorry to be safe. Take notes, so there will be no questions later! This very erotic collection promises to be an annual event; just like the Tournee of Animation, only much more fun.
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM

Lesbian Sexuality Shorts

FREE

in person
 min total program
A program of short films and videos
No items found.

Screenings & Events

June 1 - 12, 1994

SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1993
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

One Nation Under God

FREE

Wed, Jun 01, 1994 @ 6:00 pm
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
This widely discussed documentary takes a historical look at attempts by religious groups and psychiatrists to change sexual orientation. While “reparative therapies” have been discredited by reputable mental health professionals since the 1970s, the legitimacy of Christian “ex-gay” ministries is questioned in on-screen interviews with former members of such groups.
Focusing on the contemporary religious Right Wing proliferation of curative therapies for homosexuality, this riveting documentary offers historical context as well as a political analysis of this frighteningly large movement.
Teodoro Maniaci & Francine Rzeznick
83
 min
English
USA
 min total program
in person
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1993
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

Grief

FREE

Wed, Jun 01, 1994 @ 7:30 pm
Harvard Film Archive
Set in a working TV production office, this film follows a team producing a low-end, tacky soap opera. Executive producer Jo is leaving, and emotionally vulnerable Mark is up for the job. He’s stressed over the anniversary of his lover’s death from AIDS and by his crush on Bill, who has just broken up with his girlfriend. The tension is compounded by the homophobia of the executives upstairs and by the secret erotic skirmishes behind closed doors. The TV they produce becomes the characters’ mirror, and the film is a satire, but one that is much more than parody.
A campy chronicle of the lusts and loves of the men and women who work on a low-rent TV show called, “The Love Judge.”
Richard Glatzer
87
 min
English
USA
 min total program
in person
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1994
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

Go Fish

FREE

Wed, Jun 01, 1994 @ 8:00 pm
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Described as a lesbian Slacker, this first feature offers an inside look at lesbian life in the 1990s. There’s Max, who is looking for love, and Kia, who thinks she’s found it in Evy. But to complicate Kia’s life, there’s the seemingly available Ely, who lives with the loose Darla, who in turn believes Ely would like Max. “There’s an innocence about the characters that’s usually missing from ‘lesbian chic’ coverage; these women look more like twenty-something figures in underground video or Alison Bechdel’s Dykes To Watch Out For*.* GO FISH begins just about where coming-out films used to end.” — Sundance Film Festival
Max is a trendy, pretty, young lesbian, who is having trouble finding love. A friend sets her up with Ely, whom Max likes, but Ely is frumpy, homely, and older. Nor do they have much in common. Can Max learn to look past the packaging?
Rose Troche
83
 min
English
United States
 min total program
in person
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1993
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

Green On Thursdays: The Crusade Against Gay Bashing

FREE

with Stick Figures

Thu, Jun 02, 1994 @ 6:00 pm
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Used as a code for gay identification during more homophobic times, the wearing of green on Thursdays has since become a symbol of the oppression against gay people by those who continue to place credence in such outdated stigmatizers when searching for gays to bash. This film examines the culture of violence among homophobes and highlights the work of the Pink Angels, a Chicago community activist group. “A distressing, compassionate, and extremely valuable film.” — LA Weekly
A look at gay-bashing in America and the efforts that are necessary to stop it. The filmmakers spent 3 years documenting violence against the gay community that seldom made the mainstream media.
Dean Bushala & Deirdre Heaslip
77
 min
English
USA
 min total program
in person
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1993
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

Confession Of A Pretty Lady: Sandra Bernhard

FREE

with Chicks in White Satin and Conceicào

Thu, Jun 02, 1994 @ 8:00 pm
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Actress, singer, and comedienne Sandra Bernhard is profiled in this documentary featuring interviews with Camille Paglia, comedian Paul Mooney, Martin Scorsese, and The Advocate editor Jeff Yarborough, as well as the “pretty lady” herself. “... a wonderful feel-good movie which highlights Bernhard’s less obnoxious aspects and showcases the lady as a fine comedian and social satirist” - San Francisco Bay Times
Bernhard, an actress-comedienne whose brassy humor attracts a cult-like following, here offers a semiconfessional view of her life’s landscape. Childhood memories of her father, a doctor, and her mother, an artist, are warmly rendered in scenes of the Jewish family amiably accommodating itself to the Christmas season, and of the obligatory communal vacations joined by colorful relatives. The abrupt transition to a flamboyant denizen of “downtowns,” Los Angeles or New York, to an existence as a character in the lives of marginal people, is evoked in sharply satirical terms, in a melange of humorous fact and fiction, monologues akin to those that make Bernhard an icon of pop culture.
Kris Clarke
45
 min
English
UK
 min total program
in person
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1983
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

Corrupt

FREE

Fri, Jun 03, 1994 @ 5:00 pm
Harvard Film Archive
With a beautiful cameo performance by the real Sylvia Syndey, this bizarre, sophisticated thriller recalls the cult film Performance. A stylish thriller starring Sex Pistols’ John Lydon as an effeminate self-professed cop killer and Harvey Keitel as a corrupt police lieutenant, the two have an intense sado-masochistic relationship that just barely conceals the homosexual attraction threatening to engulf both of them.
A NYPD officer imprisons and tortures an admitted cop-killer, but finds the tables turned when his victim refuses to break and in fact urges more punishment.
Roberto Faenza
117
 min
English
Italy
 min total program
in person
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1993
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

Coming Out Under Fire

FREE

with Private SNAFU Censored

Fri, Jun 03, 1994 @ 7:00 pm
Harvard Film Archive
Based on Allan Bérubé’s acclaimed book, ten gay and lesbian veterans of World War II tell their stories. In WWII the military first adopted its policies to identify, reject, and discharge homosexuals as mentally ill. The fill uncovers the story of the men and women who were fighting two wars–one for their country, and one against witch hunts, “queer stockades,” and stigmatization as “sex perverts” by the country they were serving.These histories shed especially eloquent light on the latest bureaucratic machinations of bigotry, the Senate’s challenge of Clinton’s pledge to lift the ban.
A historical account of military policy regarding homosexuality during World War II. The documentary includes interviews with several homosexual WWII veterans.
Arthur Dong
71
 min
English
USA
 min total program
in person
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1991
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

Salmonberries

FREE

Fri, Jun 03, 1994 @ 9:00 pm
Harvard Film Archive
The incomparable k.d. lang makes her film debut in Percy Adlon’s (Bagdad Cafe, Sugarbaby) exquisitely shot love story about a young, untamed Eskimo woman and her lesbian desire for a German émigeré working as a librarian at an Eskimo trading post in Northwest Alaska. Kabetsu, played by k.d. Lang, who sings the title song “Barefoot”, makes awkward advances to Roswitha (Rosel Zech, who played the title role in Fassbinder’s Veronika Voss). The ensuing relationship begins fraught with sexual tension, but grows into one of nurturing independence and love.
A young orphaned woman named Kotzebue is trying to find out who her parents are in the icy landscapes of Alaska. Kotzebue is helped by an East German librarian, whose husband was killed while fleeing from the GDR. Although both women could not be more different from each other, a fragile relationship forms.
Percy Adlon
95
 min
English
Germany
 min total program
in person
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1993
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

I'll Love You Forever... Tonight

FREE

Fri, Jun 03, 1994 @ 9:30 pm
Harvard Film Archive
Ethan, a young gay man haunted by childhood memories of being molested by his father, takes a weekend trip to Palm Springs with Dennis, his fair-weather “fuck buddy.” Dennis secretly hopes Ethan will get back together with Peter, Ethan’s ex-boyfriend, who is also vacationing at the desert hot-spot. This, in turn, will allow the manipulative Dennis to move in on Peter’s studly lover, Jeff. Ethan, meanwhile, disgusted by his bedmate’s shallowness, is moved to contact his dad, with whom he makes a final peace. Director Bravo’s minimalist script and shrewd direction, concentrating on the emotions motivating the utterances, gives the goings-on a fascinating, Harold-Pinter-on-Fire-Island subtext.
Set in the late 1980s, this critically acclaimed indie classic from 1992 portrays a gritty side of gay life in Los Angeles. Ethan (Paul Marius), a 27-year-old photographer, believes he has no need for love or commitments, and is living his life amidst one-night stands. Ethan is coaxed by his “best buddy” Dennis (Jason Adams) into attending a reunion of college friends and lovers at a Palm Springs hideaway. What is supposed to be a restful vacation turns into a round of hard drinking and cruel sexual games. By the end of the “vacation,” Ethan feels a need for new friends and returns to Los Angeles. Confronting his troubled family life, he calls his father - who doesn’t want anything to do with him. In the end, Ethan realizes that he can make his own “family” with friends who will accept each other without judgments.
Edgar Michael Bravo
80
 min
English
USA
 min total program
in person
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1993
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

Libera

FREE

Sat, Jun 04, 1994 @ 2:00 pm
Harvard Film Archive
Already being touted as an Italian Almodovar, director Pappi Corsicato’s exotic extravaganza is a quasi-surreal portrait of three Neapolitan women. The second of the stories has the film’s most overtly gay theme in which Carmela’s handsome homosexual son discovers his “mother” is more than he ever dreamed. A visual delight, shot through with a bizarre sense of humor and decor, director Corsicato is a talent to discover and to watch.
Three separate women endure trouble with the men in their lives.
Pappi Corsicato
83
 min
Italian
Italy
 min total program
in person
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1993
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

A Day In The Life Of Edmund White

FREE

with Chicken Hawk

Sat, Jun 04, 1994 @ 9:30 pm
Harvard Film Archive
This video by Washington-based videographer Bill Cory is a glimpse into the private life of one of America’s best-known gay authors. Subtitled Melodocumentary-The Day Shit Happened, it is set in Paris and adopts a very candid and whimsical tone as White is seen taking a gym class, lunching with a Countess, meeting a phone-sex caller, attending an awards ceremony, hosting a dinner party and finally winding up in bed with a handsome hunk he meets cruising under a Paris bridge.
Bill Cory
37
 min
USA
 min total program
in person
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1992
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

Chain Of Desire

FREE

Sun, Jun 05, 1994 @ 2:00 pm
Harvard Film Archive
La Ronde, the classic sexual merry-go-round, is updated to the age of AIDS by Themistocles Lopez and given a gay perspective that results in a sexy, funny, and hauntingly civilized film that does Schnitzler proud. Here, in contemporary New York, it is chanteuse meets pious workman meets wife meets doctor meets maid meets writer meets young hustler meets social worker meets dancer, etc. With Malcolm McDowell (A Clockwork Orange) as an avid chicken-hawk.
A series of unrelated amorous lovers are connected by a chain of desire.
Temístocles López
105
 min
English
USA
 min total program
in person
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

1st Gay Men's Safe Sex Video Contest

FREE

with Timepiece

Mon, Jun 06, 1994 @ 9:30 pm
Harvard Film Archive
This compilation of the year’s hottest sex videos proves you don’t have to be sorry to be safe. Take notes, so there will be no questions later! This very erotic collection promises to be an annual event; just like the Tournee of Animation, only much more fun.
 min
 min total program
in person
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1969
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

Midnight Cowboy

FREE

Tue, Jun 07, 1994 @ 5:00 pm
Harvard Film Archive
Midnight Cowboy rates landmark status as not only a multi Oscar winner but the first major studio production to be branded with an X rating. Voight is incredible as Joe Buck, a naive Texan who is convinced he can make a living as a hustler to old lonely rich women. Dustin Hoffman is brilliant as Ratso Rizzo, the seedy, crippled con artist who becomes Joe’s only friend. Between the two down-and-out characters, cameos are played by New York’s mod squad of screaming Sixties superstars Viva, Ultra Violet, International Velvet, Taylor Mead and Paul Morriessey.
Joe Buck is a wide-eyed hustler from Texas hoping to score big with wealthy New York City women; he finds a companion in Enrico “Ratso” Rizzo, an ailing swindler with a bum leg and a quixotic fantasy of escaping to Florida.
John Schlesinger
113
 min
English
United States
 min total program
in person
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1993
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

Desperate Remedies

FREE

Wed, Jun 08, 1994 @ 5:00 pm
Harvard Film Archive
This preposterously affected bodice-ripper is set in a raunchy harbor town teeming with sexually aroused and confused transportees. One such is brooding Lawrence Hayes (Kevin Smith), pouting sweatily like a refugee from a Levi’s ad. Opulent dressmaker Dorothea Brook (Jennifer Ward-Lealand) enlists his help to save her opium-addicted sister from the sensual, callous fop Fraser. Nostrils flare, lower lips quiver, impossible skirts trail over checkered floors, uncorseted bosoms bounce, sex of all preferences is simulated—climaxing with the lesbian lovers happily walking into the sunset. “Dares to be bad and succeeds quite splendidly.” - Time Out UK
n a town called Hope on the edge of Britain’s empire, desperations clash: the beautiful Dorothea Brook is desperate to free her pregnant sister Rose from the clutches of Fraser, a fortune hunter. A local politician, William Poyner, is desperate for cash and thinks marriage to Dorothea will save him. Dorothea hires Lawrence Hayes, a rough but handsome Argonaut, to bribe Fraser with jewels and to marry Rose; Hayes desperately loves Dorothea and may marry Rose to stay close to her. But Dorothea has a lover, the ravishing Anne Cooper, who encourages the match with Poyser to give the lovers cover. Are these remedies, each desperate in its turn, going to make anyone happy?
Stewart Main & Peter Wells
93
 min
English
New Zealand
 min total program
in person
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1989
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

Alexandria Always And Forever

FREE

Wed, Jun 08, 1994 @ 6:00 pm
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Youssef Chahine is the premier director of Egyptian cinema—the largest national cinema in the Arab world—and this film, the conclusion of an autobiographical trilogy, was intended as his coming-out film. As the director begins production on a film, his favorite actor, and alter ego, deserts the set, and problems continue to mount. Along the way, Chahine exploits the misfortunes of his main character to satirize the process of filmmaking, especially in the Third World.
Set in 1987 against the backdrop of a hunger strike by the Egyptian film industry, Chahine himself steps in to play Yehia, the famed Egyptian director whose life is chronicled in “Alexandria, Why?” and “An Egyptian Story”. Obsessed with Amr, the handsome actor he discovered and cast as his alter-ego in parts one and two of The Alexandria Trilogy, Yehia pressures Amr to star in various film projects that change even as Yehia’s perception of the young actor begins to change. He first casts Amr as Hamlet, which the actor deems too demanding for his talents, then as the lead in a musical biopic of demigod Alexander the Great, who founded the city of Alexandria in 332 B.C.
Youssef Chahine
105
 min
Arabic
Egypt
 min total program
in person
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1992
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

Well Sexy Women

FREE

with Fingered!

Wed, Jun 08, 1994 @ 7:30 pm
Harvard Film Archive
An informative, frank, and sexy guide to safer lesbian sex. This video does not shy away from sensitive subjects, delivering timely information in a sensual and passionate way. Six beautiful women explicitly demonstrate safer sex techniques and clearly point out what is not considered safe. Made for and by lesbian women, with stunning beauty and openness.
Unconscious Collective
50
 min
UK
 min total program
in person
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1993
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

Ludwig 1881

FREE

Wed, Jun 08, 1994 @ 8:00 pm
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
In the summer of 1881, King Ludwig II of Bavaria traveled to Lake Lucerne with Joseph Kainz, an actor in his court, to recreate scenes from Schiller’s William Tell in their authentic settings. Against stunning Alpine backdrops, this film records the historical rise of aestheticism as well as the way power plays itself out in even platonic, yet homoerotic, relationships. The directors have cast Helmet Berger, the star of Luchino Visconti’s 1975 Ludwig, as the same character here.
In 1881 Ludwig of Bavaria goes on a cruise on a Swiss lake. He takes with him a famous actor, Josef Kainz, to act out the scenes from a story which took place on the lake, at the actual locations.
Fosco & Donatello Dubini
90
 min
German
Germany
 min total program
in person
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1993
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

Cancer In Two Voices

FREE

with No Saintly Girl and Dangerous When Wet

Thu, Jun 09, 1994 @ 6:00 pm
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
In 1985, when Barbara Rosenblum learned she had cancer, she and her partner, Sandy Butler, made a political decision to document the process of their lives for the three years Barbara had left. “Phenix has crafted a film that is not a downward spiral but more like an emotional twister that lifts you up. Jewish, lesbians, friends, and lovers, they express their feelings about guilt, anger, their bodies, music, and their garden. Linking it all together is their wonderful relationship.” - Sundance Film Festival
A lesbian couple’s eight-year relationship is put under strain when Barbara is diagnosed with breast cancer. Barbara is told she has three years to live, and so she and Sandy document their lives with courageand frankness. The two women talk about their identity as Jewish women and lesbians and speak openly about the difficult issues each is facing.
Lucy Massie Phenix
43
 min
English
USA
 min total program
in person
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

Lesbian Sexuality Shorts

FREE

Thu, Jun 09, 1994 @ 8:00 pm
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
A program of short films and videos
 min
 min total program
in person
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1990
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

Lulu

FREE

Fri, Jun 10, 1994 @ 7:00 pm
Harvard Film Archive
Lulu portrays the sexual odyssey of one woman and, in scenes that are both funny and deeply shocking, gives new meaning to the term “fag hag”—Lulu not only wants to “hang out” with gay boys, but she also winds up as the sandwich in a series of sexual couplings with Banderas look-alikes that include group sex, handcuffs, and shavings. Politically incorrect and wildly sensual, director Bigas Luna (Jamon Jamon, Bilbao) makes countryman Almodóvar look like Ron Howard in what must be this festival’s most daring film.
Fifteen-year-old Lulu has never known any affection from her family. But when she goes to a rock concert with Pablo, a friend of the family, he introduces Lulu to her first sexual experience. Years later, Pablo and Lulu have married; Pablo has created a sheltered, private world for Lulu, into which nothing intrudes. However, Lulu tires of her cloistered existence, and begins hanging out in shady bars, looking for vicarious thrills and danger.
Bigas Luna
95
 min
Spanish
Spain
 min total program
in person
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1994
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

Fast Trip, Long Drop

FREE

with Deaf Heaven

Fri, Jun 10, 1994 @ 7:30 pm
Harvard Film Archive
In the spring of 1988, video artist/activist Gregg Bordowitz tested HIV-positive, quit drinking and doing drugs, and came out to his parents about his homosexuality. This imaginative film, which came to include a questioning of his understanding of the diagnosis and of the relationship between illness and history, is a kaleidoscopic blast of visual stimulation, intellectual irreverence, and emotional confrontation. “The riskiest film about AIDS made to date. Finally someone has the guts to face despair honestly and without a trace of self-pity… angry, mournful, cynical, funny, moving and wise” - Douglas Crimp
A gay jewish man speaks out about living with and dying from AIDS. He also discusses how being gay has affected his identity as a jew and his relationship with his parents.
Gregg Bordowitz
54
 min
English
USA
 min total program
in person
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1993
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

Crush

FREE

with Cruel

Fri, Jun 10, 1994 @ 9:00 pm
Harvard Film Archive
This piercing modern fable entwines the lives of a beautiful adolescent girl, a predatory femme fatale, a wheelchair-ridden critic, and a once-successful novelist. That is, until the lives of the three women and one man are simultaneously shattered. Wreaking sexual havoc is brash Lane (Marcia Gay Harden), whose mercurial allegiances with her friend, lover, and a teenage nymph named Angela (Caitlin Bossley) sow frustration and paranoia, forcing a dramatic confrontation fraught with erotic tensions.
On the way to interview a novelist, Lane and Christina are involved in a car crash which leaves literary critic Christina brain-damaged. Lane undertakes the assignment and becomes attracted to the novelist’s 15 year old daughter, leading to stormy emotions.
Alison Maclean
97
 min
English
New Zealand
 min total program
in person
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1993
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

Paris, France

FREE

Sat, Jun 11, 1994 @ 2:00 pm
Harvard Film Archive
A no-holds-barred exposé of the raunchy, creative juices flowing in the writer’s veins, director Gerry Ciccoritti pulls out all the stops in this relentless tale of sex, sex, sex, and more sex! Lucy Quick, a hip young novelist cast in the image of Anaïs Nin, finds herself suffering from writer’s block and at the end of her tether. Enter Sloan, a wiry avenging angel with a perpetual hard-on. They embark on an odyssey to the center of their sexual imaginations, eventually drawing in everyone around them. Ciccoritti demonstrates true finesse in his direction of straight, gay, and S&M sex scenes, pushing sexual tension beyond expected limits into the realm of absolute anarchy and hilarity.
A writer has torrid fantasy affairs with young men.
Gerard Ciccoritti
112
 min
English
Canada
 min total program
in person
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1993
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

Zero Patience

FREE

Sun, Jun 12, 1994 @ 5:00 pm
Harvard Film Archive
A rip-roaring, in-your-face musical about AIDS starring a gay ghost—the infamous Quebecois flight attendant “Patient Zero”—who seduces a 170-year-old sexologist, the Victorian adventurer Sir Richard Francis Burton. Combining influences as diverse as Bertolt Brecht, Busby Berkeley, Michel Foucault, and Barbra Streisand, director John Greyson exposes the greed, homophobia, and careerism underlying both media and scientific responses to the AIDS epidemic. Outrageously funny, with eye-popping sets and tuneful musical numbers, Zero Patience manages to celebrate the anger as well as the compassion and love in the gay community.
The ghost of “patient zero”, who allegedly first brought AIDS to North America - materialises and tries to contact old friends. Meanwhile, the Victorian explorer Sir Richard Burton, who drank from the Fountain of Youth and now works as Chief Taxidermist at the Toronto Natural history Museum, is trying to organise an exhibition about the disease for the museum’s “Hall of Contagion”.
John Greyson
100
 min
English
Canada
 min total program
in person
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1993
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

Turnabout: The Story Of The Yale Puppeteers

FREE

Sun, Jun 12, 1994 @ 7:30 pm
Harvard Film Archive
For more than 70 years, Harry Burnett, his cousin Forman Brown, and Forman’s lifetime companion Roddy Brandon traveled through America’s big cities and small towns, delighting multitudes of adults with their captivating puppets and lively, satirical songs. This is the story of their long, happy, and productive lives, of the unique, world-famous puppet and cabaret theater they created in Hollywood, and about Forman’s work as a pioneering gay author, whose recently rediscovered and widely acclaimed autobiographical novel, Better Angel, has been a revelation to straight and gay readers alike.
Documentary about the Yale Puppeteers. A bit eccentric, certainly off beat and creative, the puppeteers and their story - as well as their place in history - is meticulously documented and tugs at the heartstrings.
Dan Bessie
60
 min
English
USA
 min total program
Director Dan Bessie in person
10th Annual Boston Gay & Lesbian Film/Video Festival

Screenings & Events

June 1 - 12, 1994

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