For the first time ever we are collaborating with MIX NYC to bring the best in queer experimental film to the festival. Founded in 1987 by author Sarah Schulman and filmmaker Jim Hubbard, MIX NYC produces New York’s longest-running lesbian & gay film festival. MIX NYC promotes, produces and preserves experimental media that is rooted in the lives, politics, and experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and otherwise queer-identified people. MIX’S work challenges mainstream notions of gender and sexuality while also upending traditional categories of form and content. (This program was curated by Bug Davidson.)

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A POW in Nazi Germany, Vietnam peace promoter, leading gay rights advocate and loving partner of 46 years to Charles Chiarelli, Taking a Chance on God follows the extraordinary life of 86-year-old Jesuit priest John McNeill. This powerful documentary, tells McNeill’s inspiring story of faith, love and perseverance in the face of oppression and rejection. McNeill, the co-founder of the LGBT Catholic group Dignity NY, author of the revolutionary “The Church and the Homosexual,” and leader in the gay community during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, has refused to let his voice be silenced despite being expelled from the Jesuits after forty years of faithful service. Chronicling his love for the Church, the LGBT community, his Jesuit brothers and his partner Charlie, “Taking a Chance on God” proves that there can and should be harmony between the gay community and the Catholic Church. (Description courtesy of Emily Suttmeier, Woodstock Film Festival.)

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Things get very complicated very quickly when Joe, an angsty drug dealer, meets Belle, a buoyant suicidal psychopath, in this dark comedy. After an outlandish accident in Tel Aviv leaves the pair with a body to dispose of, they embark on a madcap journey to lose the cops - and end up finding love in Sderot (the target of ongoing rocket attacks). Gritty but tender, Joe + Belle offers an absurd portrait of life in contemporary Israel. Come and see the film that AFTERELLEN.com calls “Totally offkilter, sexy and stylish in a distinctly grungy, almost ‘90s sort of way” that “manages to say something deep about love and violence while still offering all the gallows humor you could hope for.

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