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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Carlos is spending the summer in the country with his family in order to help out with things. Perhaps he won’t even be returning to the capital, as economic prospects are hardly rosy there either. Extremadura on the other hand, sparsely populated and for a long time one of the most neglected regions in Europe, is experiencing a tentative upturn. Tourism and modernisation rub shoulders with almost archaic customs and a conservative, mostly elderly population here. Sleepless Knights depicts all this in casual, unobtrusive fashion, in images that have at times a truly otherworldly beauty. The central theme is the love story between the newly returned Carlos and the young policeman Juan. “You don’t look like you’re from here,” remarks Juan when they meet. “I’m not from here,“ replies Carlos, “I live in Madrid.” Whether to be from here or elsewhere is a decision that many here have to make. Extremadura, Madrid, maybe even Munich? This uncertainty suffuses their love story with a peculiar sense of tension before the backdrop of a seemingly relaxed, uneventful summer. It is only the old men striding through the austere landscape in their strange knight costumes who remain blissfully untroubled.

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We begin our run at the coolidge-corner-theater with two midnight screenings of John Cameron Mitchell’s acclaimed film Hedwig and the Angry Inch which tells the story of an ‘internationally ignored’ rock singer, Hedwig, and her search for stardom and love. Born a boy named Hansel who searches for love, Hedwig reluctantly submits to a sex change operation in order to marry an American G.I. The operation is botched, leaving her with an ‘angry inch’. Finding herself divorced in a Kansas trailer park, she forms a rock band and encounters a lover, Tommy, who leaves her, steals her songs, and becomes a rock star. Touring with her pan-Slavic band, The Angry Inch, Hedwig shadows Tommy’s stadium tour, performing in near-empty restaurants for bewildered diners and a few die-hard fans. Somewhere between the crab cakes and the cramped motel rooms, between the anguish and the acid-wash, she pursues her dreams and discovers the origin of love.

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