6th Annual Boston International Gay & Lesbian Film and Video Festival

August 3 - 31, 1990

The festival's first year at the ICA, running beside the museum's Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit.

Jury Award Winners

from 6th Annual Boston International Gay & Lesbian Film and Video Festival
No items found.

Jury Honorable Mention

from 6th Annual Boston International Gay & Lesbian Film and Video Festival
No items found.

Audience Awards

from 6th Annual Boston International Gay & Lesbian Film and Video Festival
No items found.

Best in Show Shorts

from 6th Annual Boston International Gay & Lesbian Film and Video Festival
No items found.

All Feature Films

from 6th Annual Boston International Gay & Lesbian Film and Video Festival
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1990

An Empty Bed

Director Mark Gasper in person
Mark Gasper
56 min
English
USA
1990
In his twilight, a lonely gay man reflects on his life and the three loves of his long-lost youth one woman and two men. Forced into early retirement by a heart attack, he wanders aimlessly through the graffiti-marred streets of his New York neighborhood. Familiar haunts trigger flashbacks of happy and not-so happy times.
 min total program
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1990

DiAna's Hair Ego: AIDS Info Up Front

with Her Giveaway

in person
Ellen Spiro
30 min
English
USA
1990
A documentary film about AIDS and one unconventional woman’s efforts to educate her small, Southern community. DiAna DiAna is a local hairdresser who transformed her beauty parlor into a center for AIDS and safe sex information.
 min total program
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1990

Dry Kisses Only

with This Is Not a Very Blank Tape, Dear...

in person
Kaucyila Brooke & Jane Cottis
75 min
English
1990
Through manipulated film clips, the hilarious commentary of Theory Woman and interviews with the Lesbian on the Street, this marvelous videotape explores the lesbian subtext of classical films—the dry kisses of the tape’s title. Hollywood movies are re-edited to find the truth behind the relationships between the heroine and the “other woman.” Dykella and Dykenna chew over lesbian vampire stereotypes. And gossip columnist Lady Manilla Lively gives the inside scoop on lesbians in today’s Hollywood. DRY KISSES ONLY tells a story at once obvious and long-overdue, affirming the validity of lesbian readings of popular culture and the tenuous truths of gossip.
 min total program
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1988

Grapefruit

with Peccatum Mutum (The Silent Sin)

in person
Cecilia Dougherty
40 min
English
1988
With an all-female cast, featuring Suzie Bright as John Lennon, Cecilia Dougherty’s Grapefruit plays with the romanticized history of the iconic Fab Four, gently mocking John and Yoko’s banal squabbles and obsessive rituals of self-display. Based obliquely on Yoko Ono’s book, the piece works on many levels to reposition this mythic tale of the Beatles by casting ’80s women in mod drag—effectively mapping the lesbian sub-culture onto heterosexual mass culture. Discounting the importance of reproducing facts and historical accuracy, Dougherty gives an incisive reading of the creation of pop culture icons: it doesn’t matter who plays John Lennon because ultimately John Lennon is not a person anymore. As a star, he is a projection of our society’s collective needs and desires.
 min total program
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1986

Kamikaze Hearts

in person
Juliet Bashore
87 min
English
United States
1986
Tough and cynical veteran Mitch and her more naive, yet eager partner Tigr are a couple of porn actresses involved in an intense lesbian relationship. Their already strained relationship reaches the breaking point as substance abuse and the pressure of working in the sex industry begins to take a heavy toll on both women.
 min total program
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1988

Macho Dancer

in person
Lino Brocka
136 min
Tagalog
Philippines
1988
Pol moves to Manila for better opportunities after his American lover leaves. However, he gets drawn into the gritty world of gay prostitution and sexual slavery.
 min total program
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1990

Men In Love

in person
Marc Huestis
85 min
English
USA
1990
Mark Huestis' low-budget, shot-on-video feature casts Doug Self as Steven, a young San Francisco man whose lover Victor has just died of AIDS. Following Victor's dying wishes to have his ashes scattered in Maui, Steven travels to the Hawaii-based New Age community founded by Victor's former partner Robert (Emerald Starr). Despite an edgy relationship with Robert, who never visited Victor in his final months, Steven finds romance with the camp gardener Peter (Joe Tolbe), a matter complicated by the fact that Steven has never undergone an HIV test. Robert admits that he, too, has never had an AIDS test--his fear of death is the reason why he built his closed-off island community. After hearing of another friend's AIDS-related death, Steven leaves Peter behind to return to California
 min total program
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1990

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

in person
Beeban Kidron
165 min
English
UK
1990
Seven-year-old Jess is removed from her peculiar Pentecostal home and sent to school.
 min total program
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1990

Positive

with Silence = Death

in person
Rosa von Praunheim
83 min
English
Germany
1990
This film powerfully documents New York City’s gay community’s response to the AIDS crisis as they are forced to organize themselves after the government’s failure to stem the epidemic. Activists who are interviewed include playwrite Larry Kramer, People With AIDS Coalition co-founder Michael Callen (who died of AIDS in 1994), New York filmmaker and journalist Phil Zwickler, as well as representatives from ACT-UP, Queer Nation and the Gay Men’s Health Crisis.
 min total program
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1989

Salut Victor!

in person
Anne-Claire Poirier
83 min
French
Canada
1989
Friendship between two old men becomes love. Slightly-unkempt, tired, and frail, Philippe Lanctot moves into a rest home. The administrator says she wants him to be happy, but that seems far from his mind: he’s waiting to die. Then, into his room, unannounced, rolls the voluble Victor Laprade, who draws out Philippe over the next few months. Victor gives Philippe the gift of experiencing the moment. In return, the well-heeled Philippe organises field trips to dinner and to a botanical garden, and, unknown to Victor, becomes the man’s benefactor when Victor’s children get stingy. The openly-gay Victor also pushes Philippe to acknowledge feelings he’s always kept suppressed.
 min total program
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1988

Sand and Blood

in person
Jeanne Labrune
101 min
French
France
1988
Bullfighting, music, medicine, change, and homoerotic possibilities mix in this study of friendship. Francisco is a bullfighter on his way up, so focused even sex doesn’t hold his interest. After a minor road accident, he meets a doctor, Manuel, who attends a bullfight, leaving early, retching. His wife, who is also his partner in a string quartet, worries about him: Manuel has a history of breakdown. Manuel, for his part, hates bullfighting and the memories it brings of Franco’s Spain. His harsh views undermine Francisco’s focus. He accompanies the young fighter to Spain for an important corrida. Will Francisco succeed? And what becomes of this friendship?
 min total program
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1988

Summer Vacation 1999

in person
Shusuke Kaneko
90 min
Japanese
Japan
1988
Summer Vacation tells the story of four teenage students who spend their summer vacation at school – unsupervised and untouched by the outside world.
 min total program
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1988

The Days of Greek Gods

in person
Richard Fontaine
75 min
English
USA
1988
Richard Fontaine and Bob Miser started the current exploration of the male nude in film and photography. The two shared ideas props and models and reinvented some of the sexual icons that we all still recognise today. The gladiator the sailor, the cowboy… Starting with posing-straps and graduating to nudes their “art studies” enlisted the talents of up-and-coming actors and bodybuilders. This film recalls that era.
 min total program
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1988

The Everlasting Secret Famlly

in person
Michael Thornhill
94 min
English
Australia
1988
A beautiful, if ambitious and amoral, youth is tapped to become the lover of a powerful senator. The young man quickly realizes that he can hold this place, with all its perks, only as long as he is young. He has no other function than being young. With the help of an aged judge, the young man, referred to only as The Lover, contrives a plan to make a change in the way of the world, a plan that will take him years to realize. To succeed, he must manipulate, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, the senator, his wife, the family chauffeur (who was, when young, a lover), and, by implication, the entire well-planned and controlling everlasting secret family.
 min total program
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1968

The Legend of Lylah Clare

in person
Robert Aldrich
130 min
English
USA
1968
A dictatorial film director hires an unknown actress to play the lead role in a planned movie biography of a late, great Hollywood star.
 min total program
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1989

Tongues Untied

in person
Marlon Riggs
55 min
English
United States
1989
Marlon Riggs, with assistance from other gay Black men, especially poet Essex Hemphill, celebrates Black men loving Black men as a revolutionary act. The film intercuts footage of Hemphill reciting his poetry, Riggs telling the story of his growing up, scenes of men in social intercourse and dance, and various comic riffs, including a visit to the “Institute of Snap!thology,” where men take lessons in how to snap their fingers: the sling snap, the point snap, the diva snap.
 min total program
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1988

Urinal

in person
John Greyson
98 min
English
Canada
1988
A mystery man brings together a group of dead, gay artists to investigate a police response to the dilema of wash-room sex in Toronto. The artists have seven days in which to report on the ethics of police tactics. The artists infiltrate the police only to discover that they themselves are under surveillance as a political subversive group. The artists explore and report on the evolution of toilets and wash-room behavior.
 min total program
No items found.

All Short Film Programs

from 6th Annual Boston International Gay & Lesbian Film and Video Festival
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM

An Evening With Julie Zando

FREE

Director Julie Zando in person
 min total program
No items found.

Screenings & Events

August 3 - 31, 1990

SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1990
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

Men In Love

FREE

Fri, Aug 03, 1990 @ 7:15 pm
Institute of Contemporary Art
Mark Huestis' low-budget, shot-on-video feature casts Doug Self as Steven, a young San Francisco man whose lover Victor has just died of AIDS. Following Victor's dying wishes to have his ashes scattered in Maui, Steven travels to the Hawaii-based New Age community founded by Victor's former partner Robert (Emerald Starr). Despite an edgy relationship with Robert, who never visited Victor in his final months, Steven finds romance with the camp gardener Peter (Joe Tolbe), a matter complicated by the fact that Steven has never undergone an HIV test. Robert admits that he, too, has never had an AIDS test--his fear of death is the reason why he built his closed-off island community. After hearing of another friend's AIDS-related death, Steven leaves Peter behind to return to California
Marc Huestis
85
 min
English
USA
 min total program
in person
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1990
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

An Empty Bed

FREE

Sun, Aug 05, 1990 @ 7:15 pm
Institute of Contemporary Art
In his twilight, a lonely gay man reflects on his life and the three loves of his long-lost youth one woman and two men. Forced into early retirement by a heart attack, he wanders aimlessly through the graffiti-marred streets of his New York neighborhood. Familiar haunts trigger flashbacks of happy and not-so happy times.
Mark Gasper
56
 min
English
USA
 min total program
Director Mark Gasper in person
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1989
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

Salut Victor!

FREE

Mon, Aug 06, 1990 @ 9:30 pm
Institute of Contemporary Art
Friendship between two old men becomes love. Slightly-unkempt, tired, and frail, Philippe Lanctot moves into a rest home. The administrator says she wants him to be happy, but that seems far from his mind: he’s waiting to die. Then, into his room, unannounced, rolls the voluble Victor Laprade, who draws out Philippe over the next few months. Victor gives Philippe the gift of experiencing the moment. In return, the well-heeled Philippe organises field trips to dinner and to a botanical garden, and, unknown to Victor, becomes the man’s benefactor when Victor’s children get stingy. The openly-gay Victor also pushes Philippe to acknowledge feelings he’s always kept suppressed.
Anne-Claire Poirier
83
 min
French
Canada
 min total program
in person
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1988
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

Urinal

FREE

Thu, Aug 09, 1990 @ 7:15 pm
Institute of Contemporary Art
A mystery man brings together a group of dead, gay artists to investigate a police response to the dilema of wash-room sex in Toronto. The artists have seven days in which to report on the ethics of police tactics. The artists infiltrate the police only to discover that they themselves are under surveillance as a political subversive group. The artists explore and report on the evolution of toilets and wash-room behavior.
John Greyson
98
 min
English
Canada
 min total program
in person
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1989
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

Tongues Untied

FREE

Thu, Aug 09, 1990 @ 10:00 pm
Institute of Contemporary Art
Marlon Riggs, with assistance from other gay Black men, especially poet Essex Hemphill, celebrates Black men loving Black men as a revolutionary act. The film intercuts footage of Hemphill reciting his poetry, Riggs telling the story of his growing up, scenes of men in social intercourse and dance, and various comic riffs, including a visit to the “Institute of Snap!thology,” where men take lessons in how to snap their fingers: the sling snap, the point snap, the diva snap.
Marlon Riggs
55
 min
English
United States
 min total program
in person
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1988
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

Summer Vacation 1999

FREE

Fri, Aug 10, 1990 @ 7:15 pm
Institute of Contemporary Art
Summer Vacation tells the story of four teenage students who spend their summer vacation at school – unsupervised and untouched by the outside world.
Shusuke Kaneko
90
 min
Japanese
Japan
 min total program
in person
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1968
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

The Legend of Lylah Clare

FREE

Sun, Aug 12, 1990 @ 7:15 pm
Institute of Contemporary Art
A dictatorial film director hires an unknown actress to play the lead role in a planned movie biography of a late, great Hollywood star.
Robert Aldrich
130
 min
English
USA
 min total program
in person
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1988
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

The Days of Greek Gods

FREE

Sun, Aug 12, 1990 @ 9:30 pm
Institute of Contemporary Art
Richard Fontaine and Bob Miser started the current exploration of the male nude in film and photography. The two shared ideas props and models and reinvented some of the sexual icons that we all still recognise today. The gladiator the sailor, the cowboy… Starting with posing-straps and graduating to nudes their “art studies” enlisted the talents of up-and-coming actors and bodybuilders. This film recalls that era.
Richard Fontaine
75
 min
English
USA
 min total program
in person
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1986
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

Kamikaze Hearts

FREE

Mon, Aug 13, 1990 @ 7:15 pm
Institute of Contemporary Art
Tough and cynical veteran Mitch and her more naive, yet eager partner Tigr are a couple of porn actresses involved in an intense lesbian relationship. Their already strained relationship reaches the breaking point as substance abuse and the pressure of working in the sex industry begins to take a heavy toll on both women.
Juliet Bashore
87
 min
English
United States
 min total program
in person
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1988
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

Sand and Blood

FREE

Wed, Aug 15, 1990 @ 7:15 pm
Institute of Contemporary Art
Bullfighting, music, medicine, change, and homoerotic possibilities mix in this study of friendship. Francisco is a bullfighter on his way up, so focused even sex doesn’t hold his interest. After a minor road accident, he meets a doctor, Manuel, who attends a bullfight, leaving early, retching. His wife, who is also his partner in a string quartet, worries about him: Manuel has a history of breakdown. Manuel, for his part, hates bullfighting and the memories it brings of Franco’s Spain. His harsh views undermine Francisco’s focus. He accompanies the young fighter to Spain for an important corrida. Will Francisco succeed? And what becomes of this friendship?
Jeanne Labrune
101
 min
French
France
 min total program
in person
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1988
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

Macho Dancer

FREE

Fri, Aug 17, 1990 @ 7:15 pm
Institute of Contemporary Art
Pol moves to Manila for better opportunities after his American lover leaves. However, he gets drawn into the gritty world of gay prostitution and sexual slavery.
Lino Brocka
136
 min
Tagalog
Philippines
 min total program
in person
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1988
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

The Everlasting Secret Famlly

FREE

Sun, Aug 19, 1990 @ 7:15 pm
Institute of Contemporary Art
A beautiful, if ambitious and amoral, youth is tapped to become the lover of a powerful senator. The young man quickly realizes that he can hold this place, with all its perks, only as long as he is young. He has no other function than being young. With the help of an aged judge, the young man, referred to only as The Lover, contrives a plan to make a change in the way of the world, a plan that will take him years to realize. To succeed, he must manipulate, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, the senator, his wife, the family chauffeur (who was, when young, a lover), and, by implication, the entire well-planned and controlling everlasting secret family.
Michael Thornhill
94
 min
English
Australia
 min total program
in person
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1990
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

DiAna's Hair Ego: AIDS Info Up Front

FREE

with Her Giveaway

Wed, Aug 22, 1990 @ 7:15 pm
Institute of Contemporary Art
A documentary film about AIDS and one unconventional woman’s efforts to educate her small, Southern community. DiAna DiAna is a local hairdresser who transformed her beauty parlor into a center for AIDS and safe sex information.
Ellen Spiro
30
 min
English
USA
 min total program
in person
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1988
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

Grapefruit

FREE

with Peccatum Mutum (The Silent Sin)

Wed, Aug 22, 1990 @ 9:30 pm
Institute of Contemporary Art
With an all-female cast, featuring Suzie Bright as John Lennon, Cecilia Dougherty’s Grapefruit plays with the romanticized history of the iconic Fab Four, gently mocking John and Yoko’s banal squabbles and obsessive rituals of self-display. Based obliquely on Yoko Ono’s book, the piece works on many levels to reposition this mythic tale of the Beatles by casting ’80s women in mod drag—effectively mapping the lesbian sub-culture onto heterosexual mass culture. Discounting the importance of reproducing facts and historical accuracy, Dougherty gives an incisive reading of the creation of pop culture icons: it doesn’t matter who plays John Lennon because ultimately John Lennon is not a person anymore. As a star, he is a projection of our society’s collective needs and desires.
Cecilia Dougherty
40
 min
English
 min total program
in person
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1990
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

FREE

Thu, Aug 23, 1990 @ 7:15 pm
Institute of Contemporary Art
Seven-year-old Jess is removed from her peculiar Pentecostal home and sent to school.
Beeban Kidron
165
 min
English
UK
 min total program
in person
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

An Evening With Julie Zando

FREE

Fri, Aug 24, 1990 @ 7:15 pm
Institute of Contemporary Art
 min
 min total program
Director Julie Zando in person
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1990
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

Dry Kisses Only

FREE

with This Is Not a Very Blank Tape, Dear...

Sat, Aug 25, 1990 @ 7:15 pm
Institute of Contemporary Art
Through manipulated film clips, the hilarious commentary of Theory Woman and interviews with the Lesbian on the Street, this marvelous videotape explores the lesbian subtext of classical films—the dry kisses of the tape’s title. Hollywood movies are re-edited to find the truth behind the relationships between the heroine and the “other woman.” Dykella and Dykenna chew over lesbian vampire stereotypes. And gossip columnist Lady Manilla Lively gives the inside scoop on lesbians in today’s Hollywood. DRY KISSES ONLY tells a story at once obvious and long-overdue, affirming the validity of lesbian readings of popular culture and the tenuous truths of gossip.
Kaucyila Brooke & Jane Cottis
75
 min
English
 min total program
in person
SPOTLIGHT
US PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
FROM 1990
SHORT FILM PROGRAM

Positive

FREE

with Silence = Death

Sun, Aug 26, 1990 @ 7:15 pm
Institute of Contemporary Art
This film powerfully documents New York City’s gay community’s response to the AIDS crisis as they are forced to organize themselves after the government’s failure to stem the epidemic. Activists who are interviewed include playwrite Larry Kramer, People With AIDS Coalition co-founder Michael Callen (who died of AIDS in 1994), New York filmmaker and journalist Phil Zwickler, as well as representatives from ACT-UP, Queer Nation and the Gay Men’s Health Crisis.
Rosa von Praunheim
83
 min
English
Germany
 min total program
in person
6th Annual Boston International Gay & Lesbian Film and Video Festival

Screenings & Events

August 3 - 31, 1990

No items found.
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