This website would have around 100 visitors less per day if we hadn’t posted about Travis Mathews‘ semi-documentary project “In Their Room” and his short movie “I Want Your Love” over the past few months – they’ve turned out to be real Google magnets and I’m very thankful for that constant boost. “I Want Your Love” he has been produced as some sort of a test run for a feature film which the gay porn production company Naked Sword gladly agreed to finance after it became a huge success on the internet and has been watched more than 2 million times. The feature is now “finally, most definitely, wildly done” as Travis puts it and here’s a first teaser of what’s to come. I also recently made an interview with him, in which he also talks about his “In Their Room” Berlin movie, which Berliners will be able to see at the Berlin Pornfilmfestival later this month, where he will present it himself. I will post the the interview within the next few weeks. More about “I Want You Love” on the film’s website.
I wanted to post the first part of a YouTube stream of the legendary queer experimental movie “Flaming Creatures” by director Jack Smith here, which some nice person had uploaded a couple of weeks ago. But since Google is obviously still on a crusade against nudity and especially gay/queer eroticism the video is “no longer available” (did I already mention that they shot down my Google Adsense account because we’re running a “pornographic website” here?). Luckily I found another online version of the film over at Ubuweb.com, where you can also stream the Smith movies “Normal Love” (1963) and “Scotch Tape” (1963). If you click on the picture below, you will be directed there.
“Flaming Creatures” was shot in 1962/1963 and depicted drag and forms of sexual ambiguity in such a self-confident and transgressive way that it was seized by the police at its premiere and later was officially determined to be obscene by a New York Crime Court. I’m still amazed about the groundbreakyness of these 43 minutes of film, although it’s orientalism is frequently criticized and it’s kind of exhaustive to watch it on online. But if you haven’t seen it yet you’ll at least get an impression. More about Smith and his work on Ubuweb.com.
I highly want to recommend to all Berliners to take a closer look at the program of this year’s Pornfilmfestival 2011 at Movimento cinema. It is a really good opportunity to see a couple of (festival) films of the past months that didn’t get a proper release in Germany (or anywhere else) or only were shown in cinema for a short amount of time – a lot of them we already mentioned here. Amongst the featured films are Christophe Honoré’s “Man At Bath”, which will be the opening film festival and which I recommend, the porn icon documentary “Sagat” by Pascal Roche + Jérôme M. Oliveira, “Mutantes”, a documentary about the pro-Sex and post-porn movement by Virginie Despentes, “The Family Complete” by Japanese director Koichi Imaizumi, “Uncle David” by David Hoyle, Mike Nichols and Gary Reich, Todd Verow’s bareback documentary “Bottom X”, the Bruce LaBruce documentary “The Advocate Of Fagdom”, as well as the recent work of SF director Travis Mathews, who will present the Berlin edition of his “In Their Room” series and show the trailer to his latest film “I Want Your Love”. And there’s much more to discover.
Here’s the teaser to the short film “Mates” by Antonio Da Silva, who will be shown in the gay short film program. Check out the program here, it is completely in German at the moment, but an English version will follow this week.
The movie “Party Monster” (2003) featuring Macaulay Culkin, Seth Green and Chloë Sevigny was preceded by a novel called “Disco Bloodbath” (1999), providing a basis for the film. It tells the story of New York party promoter Michael Alig infamously participating in murdering his friend and drug dealer Angel Melendez. But even before that, a documentary took on this very subject – it’s also called “Party Monster” and was released 1998. You can watch the complete film – cheekily titled a “shockumentary” – on youtube.
“The Skin I Live In” is currently premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and opens in theaters on October 14th. Check out the Guardian for one of the first reviews.
Very sad to hear that the great American underground filmmaker and video artist George Kuchar passed away on September 6.
There’s lots of information available about him online, but I wanted to share an abridged version of an essay I wrote on Kuchar’s video diaries from the 1980s and 1990s for my MA thesis in film and video studies at York University, Toronto (finished 2004). Kuchar’s unique worldview was totally foundational to my appreciation of queer moving images, and he will be sorely missed.
All of his videos are available through Video Data Bank, and his films through Canyon Cinema and others. RIP, George.
Truth Wrapped in Trash and Vice Versa
George Kuchar found poetry in the gap between American life and Hollywood, between our painful, banal, shame-laced lives and the promises of beauty, success and fame offered by our cinematic mythmakers. Kuchar’s practice offers a model of a transformative way of seeing others with an empathy based on a shared sense of failure and shame. Through his cinematic gaze, Kuchar democratized glamour and imagemaking while creating an affecting persona from artifice and trash.
“Founded on a principle of non-discrimination in 1959, the Starlite Lounge was a cherished meeting place for people of all walks of life and famous for being the oldest Black-owned bar in the heart of Brooklyn. Throughout enormous social change over five decades from civil rights to gay liberation to AIDS activism, the Starlite Lounge has been a fixture and central space in these movements. Just as the Starlite community has been deeply affected by these waves of change, the bar has also felt the impact of rapid gentrification in central Brooklyn. By following the eviction of Brooklyn’s oldest black owned non-discriminating establishment, Starlite illustrates the importance of social spaces in marginalized communities, examines the complexities of gentrification, and demands that the needs and desires of these communities are represented in the redevelopment of their neighborhoods.” From their website where you can also donate to the project (still in development): www.thestarliteproject.com
No expert on Jack Smith or Mario Montez, I thought I’d share my take on a recent event at the Arsenal in Berlin in honor of Mario Montez and his career (http://www.arsenal-berlin.de/en/arsenal-cinema/current-program/single/article/2819/2803.html). Apparently Mario and representatives from the Arsenal – where you can find a full collection of all of Jack Smith’s films – have recently appeared at least in Poland and New York, so keep your eyes out for an appearance near you.
The evening opened on the building’s roof with a small but excited group of starlets – Mario Montez, Zazie de Paris and Vaginal Davis, among others – and their friends, groupies and fans singing a round of “happy birthday” over a multi-layered chocolate cake to Mario Montez who, it was announced, celebrated a birthday 10 days earlier. Mario’s age became a popular albeit de-emphasized conversation topic throughout the festivities, although in the end nobody cared enough to ask. From the party’s opening till its close, Mario sat – elegant and reserved – in a love seat in the corner awaiting a line of guests, all anxious to get her autograph for the minimal – perhaps ironical – fee of 2 Euros.
Rumi Missabu (picture above by Christelle de Castro) is one of the few surviving members of San Francisco’s gender-bending performance groupe The Cockettes. Fans of the troupe will know her especially from her hilarious performance as the “rebellious elevator girl” Maxine in the legendary Cockette movie “Elevator Girls in Bondage” from 1972 (picture (c) David Wise) – the film was re-released on DVD two years ago and can be ordered directly from Rumi by sending an email to cocketterumi@gmail.com ($27.95 incl. shipping/handling).
Today the Oakland based artist owns a huge archive of the group’s work and aside from her job as the official Cockettes archivist is still a very active performer: In 2009 she has been starring in the successful stage production “Pearls over Shang-Hai” at the Hypnodrome Theatre, San Francisco, in which she played the “Madame Gin Sling” (see video below by Ben Wa). She has also recently appeared in couple of independent movies such as “The Glitter Emergency” by Paul Festa, “Uncle Bob” by Robert Oppel and the Cockettes documentary “Children of the Cockettes” by Ben Wa.
Rumis most current project is the video to “Interior”, the new single by NYC duo Mirror Mirror (new album “Interior” due August 16), which is another proof that she is still an exciting performer.
In an interview with Opening Ceremony which was published on their website just a few days ago, Rumi has also announced that she will be touring New York this October, supported by artists such as Jean Franco and French singer François Chaignaud. The interview also features a couple of really nice pictures of the artist from the last few years, so go check it out.
In his youth Rodrigues wanted to be an ornithologist, but from the age of 15 ended up spending much of his time in the cinema. “My desire to make films came from watching films,” Rodrigues states, “and I learned to make films from watching films.” While he started studying biology, he made the move to film school as his passion grew, and his films exhibit these odd-couple origins: they have a certain clinical or analytical gaze married with a deep love of artifice and fantasy.
Rodrigues was particularly drawn to silent cinema – Erich von Stroheim, DW Griffith, Charlie Chaplin – and to the work of French postwar director Robert Bresson. “But,” Rodrigues cautions, “when I’m making a film I try to get rid of all my influences, because I don’t want to make films as this director or that director did, I try to find my own language.” Indeed Rodrigues’s films seem steeped in his devotion to cinema and its rich, century-old history, but rather than merely referencing the past, they build something utterly new from this foundation.
Fascinated by the extreme lengths that people will go to indulge their desires and pursue their obsessions, Rodrigues directed his first feature film, O Fantasma, in 2000. It follows Sergio, a brooding garbage man as he cruises the streets in the dead of night. Shot primarily in the dark, with only an ambient soundtrack, the film is suffused with a listless and violently narcissistic sexuality. Hunky Sergio is perpetually masturbating or fucking, but he is incapable of otherwise relating to people and remains trapped in a crippling solitude. He is virtually a beast, sniffing or licking furiously like some kind of nympho bloodhound. Increasingly frustrated by the un-conquerability of a man he encounters and then stalks throughout the film, Sergio dons a black, full-body rubber suit, transforming himself into an anonymous, post-human stain (or maybe a giant, shimmering black dildo). After kidnapping and brutalizing his prey, this creature flees to the edge of town, drinking from dirty puddles in a post-apocalyptic landfill straight out of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema or Porcile.
After this striking debut, Rodrigues became interested in “how to make a melodrama nowadays in Portugal with things that I’m connected to.” Drawing on Hollywood directors from the 1950s like Douglas Sirk and Vincente Minnelli, as well as art filmmakers like Rainer Werner Fassbinder (who revisited the melodrama genre in 1970s Germany), he directed the equally daring and darkly Romantic Odete(AKA Two Drifters), 2005, about Odete, a woman haunted by her gay neighbour Pedro after he dies in a car accident. The film plays out as a post-mortem love triangle of sorts: through their shared love for the song “Moon River” and their languorous kiss that opens the film, Pedro is eternally bound to his boyfriend Rui, so it is only natural that Pedro would find himself reincarnated – in Odete’s body.
Novo Novus Productions is a busy little multi-media production company based in New York City that produces both films and web series dealing with the everyday-life of LBGT people of color. Their most successful production so far is the internet show “Drama Queen, an on-going comedy series about the lives of three friends and roommates called Jeremiah, Davis, Preston. Here’s the trailer for the third season which is to start soon. You can watch all episodes of the previous seasons on the show’s website.
I also strongly recommend the new Novo Novus docu series “Fade In” (see still on top), which portraits homeless queers of color. Here’s the first episode of the series which has been released in May:
You should also check out the Novo Novus website for the trailers of the guy’s current film productions “Boys Like You” and “Where Truth Lies”. WTL will be presented at the HomoHarlem FilmSeries at the Schomburg Center For Research In Black Culture, NYC along with a new teaser for the third season of “Drama Queenz” and the second episode of “Fade In”. If you’re from New York and want to see this package hurry up because the event will start in just a few hours.
Weekend is a cute little micro-budget film about two guys spending their weekend together. It was shot by director Andrew Haigh who also did the movie Greek Pete and is touring around the world’s nicest film festivals at the moment. For the next stops of the tour and more information about further distribution check out its Facebook page, for more detailed information and a couple of gorgeous film stills by Quinnford & Scout (see picture above) check out the official website. There’s also an interview by the website Queerty with Haigh don in conjunction with the movie’s screening at SXSW on YouTube.
