Jenn and Matt are best friends from college who are now in their 30s. Single by choice, Jenn spends her days teaching hot yoga and running errands for her boss. Matt suffers from comic-book writer’s block and can’t get over his ex-boyfriend. They decide to fulfill a youthful promise to have a child together… the old-fashioned way. Can they navigate the serious and unexpected snags they hit as they attempt to get their careers and dating lives back on track in preparation for parenthood? “Gayby” is an irreverent comedy about friendship, growing older, sex, loneliness, and the family you chose. (Description courtesy of SXSW Film Festival.)

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Set during a tumultuous period of FrenchCanadian history, Funkytown follows the lives of eight people who are linked to a world famous Montreal nightclub called The Starlight in the late 1970s, when disco, casual sex, cocaine, and corruption reigned supreme. The action pivots around Bastien (Patrick Huard), a larger-than-life TV personality with a heroic appetite for booze, drugs, women, and outlandish clothes. We also follow aspiring singer Adriana, who has her sights set on record producer Gilles as her ticket to fame, and club dancer Tino, who becomes confused about his sexuality when he meets the openly gay Jonathan. By 1980, as the disco lifestyle fades, the characters feel the hangover acutely and are forced to make some difficult life choices. With many characters based on real-life figures from the era, Funkytown is a realistic portrait of Montreal.

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Vito Russo was at the forefront of every gay rights movement from Stonewall to the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, as a passionate advocate for justice in the newly formed ACT UP, and a co-founder of GLADD. In 1981, he published his landmark book The Celluloid Closet that examined the way Hollywood depicted homosexuality. It was the most extensive record to date of LGBT representation on screen, and forced an examination of film's often-homophobic messages. It still remains the definite text on the subjects and is studied worldwide. With heartwarming and humorous interviews of Vito's family and friends (Armistead Maupin, Jeffrey Freidman, Rob Epstein, and Lily Tomlin among them), and clips from an astonishing collection of film treasures, Vito presents a moving portrait of the person who paved the way for and proved the importance of LGBT film festivals like ours. Even after his death in 1990, his story continues to inspire and his mark on the gay community is unquestionable. (Description adapted from the Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival.)

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