Film

J’accuse, then & now, David France’s powerful documentary about AIDS activists

1980s HIV-AIDS activist organizations ACT-UP and TAG (Treatment Action Group) are the subjects of director David France’s visceral and stirring documentary “How to Survive A Plague.”

Along with tracking the lives of the men and women who put themselves on the line for these causes,France has assembled amazing archival footage of the group’s epic demonstrations in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, confronting the Food and Drug Administration over the release of AIDS drugs, pouring ashes of their lovers on the White House lawn and even the infamous ’condomming’ of antigay Jessie Helms’ home.

The power of these images and the thought-provoking interviews in the film take you inside the unprecedented activism of these groups. Most moving in revealing the high wire act these activists were walking, most of them battling the disease themselves. The members, with ACT-UP founder Larry Kramer leading the charge, saved lives and galvanized gay activism. It is also a history of the solidarity of gays, lesbians, and straight allies in a perilous time.

The private stories of those who fought and died as well as those who lived long enough to received effective drug treatment, is the heart of the film, but France doesn’t pull back for revealing the internal struggles of ACT-UP as well. As the movement becomes more effective, organizers disagree on the mission for quick AIDS drug trials and bypassing FDA approvals. This reaches a fevered pitch in the early 90s when AIDS deaths were cresting, even as they have to grapple with the fact that they might be chasing so much snake oil.

The end of the film reveals that, even with effective drugs, AIDS is still a worldwide epidemic. France has reasserted a powerful message that we must always be ready to fight for justice for our people wherever they are being silenced, ignored, harassed or, as it was expected then by politicians, just dying off.

France is an award-winning journalist and New York Times best-selling author who has been writing about AIDS since 1982 and will release a book in 2013 with a history of the AIDS epidemic. Meanwhile, don’t miss this film.

MetroScape

I’ll be home (alone) for Christmas

What’s it to ya~!

Alternate traditions have always been a part of gay Christmas (whether the straight family at home was aware of it or not). Eventually there is either a G=SHA (gay-straight holiday alliance) between old family traditions and new inclusive ones that feature same-sex couples at family functions for starters- then the holiday mixed nuts of all stripes~

~Anyway when you find yourself a onesie again, under whatever circumstance, relatives and friends express concern that you might be brooding, soused & ready to take the long swim, if you are alone on major holidays. Well that is much appreciated, I guess, you wonder why it doesn’t occur to people that being alone in a group at say, holiday feasts, makes you feel worse. Togetherness isn’t the answer to everything. Besides, home alone on a holiday in the city really can be magical~

~When xmas falls on a Sunday, this is a city alive with such serenity and urban calm. There is no traffic. I can seek out new architecture on my bicycle, craning in pan and scan. I’ve been discovering new old buildings in this city for 30 years and it continues to teach me where and who (thank you gayborhood) I am~

~First there is always WRTI & fab programming of holiday music with Basie, Ellington, Ella, Louis, Nat, Eartha & Giraldi; Bob Perkins always has something new from the old days. Then there is YouTube for guilty favorites- this year- scenes from Valley of the Dolls & selected celeb Christmas camp starting with Bing & Bowie~

{Mostly you miss the old gang on the return from home holiday bar crawl, course most of all your missing partner & drinking, dancing, and the possiblitily of sex under the tree, last dance at Equus~ then a nightcap at Roscos on Spruce~}

~No regrets, c’est la vie. But if you are lucky enough to live in Philadelphia when xmas falls on a Sunday – alone can be bliss~

~these sugarplums dancing as I stroll through Rittenhouse with, finally, a tree befitting the center of town for Christmas and a Menorah sculpture for Hanukka and the lights in the trees for everybody, including the blue deco lazars atop Liberty Place~ 

~as I tool through town to catch the French silent film hit The Artist at the Ritz Five for the 2:40, with a pocketful of dark choc Godiva balls (thanks Liz!)& my heart on the sleeve of my 20s ratty hounds-tooth overcoat. I’m pretty sure I was the only one there alone, but I felt so much part of the crowd.  Let’s see, even though I saw Chaplin at the old TLA when they showed movies, this is the first silent I’ve ever seen on the big screen, so it was a transcendent experience.  More about that in a separate piece… well it had FACES as Norma Desmond would say-  the star Jean Dujardin, a cross between John Gilbert, Gene Kelly & Fred Neblo (of silent Zorro fame). Berenice Bejo luminous in Adianesque noveau.  Not only was there a Jack terrier and a big dance finish~ the music, entranced. This is not stylized cinema, but a work of cinema art. I wept.  

~Biked down to Penn’s Landing and tapdanced a bit on the causeway perch over the Delaware, at sunset with the skyline cut with a pink burnished and mauve sky.  Back through town able to ride without stopping for 12 blocks without a car in sight and such gorgeous silence.  and even the bars aren’t open until tonight, but detox boy will have to be content on being drunk on the Artist.

Merry Christmas Jack,
see you at the movies
or in a dream
~ t’amo darling j’taime ~

Film

at Qfest

Out director Scud is part of a new wave of film auteurs who makes stylish,, sexually explicit, often violent but character driven films. Born in China, Scud has produced, written and directed four films in four years. At Qfest he looked more like an international star than a director, presenting his last two features- “Amphetamine” and “Love Actually…Sucks“which was premiering at the festival because of censorship in Asia.

 Scud admitted to a few drinks at Tavern on Camac, but held a lively talk with the audience after the screening.  Later, I got a chance to speak to him for a few more minutes.

“ I was a little disappointed that “Amphetamine” was not sold out. Because it has been doing so well at the other festivals, but the audience response was overwhelming and I was happy that we sold out “Love Actually“last night.

“Amphetamine” starts with a naked man on the ledge of a building and “ Love” starts at a wedding where the bride shows a celebratory film that includes the groom having oral sex with another man. It gets bawdier from there, even though in both cases the sexual content is so natural showing the sexual lives of his characters as well as their social and family lives. Because, or despite that, he is censored in China

Although both films have completely different cinematic looks with a lot of outdoor locations and elaborate effects. Scud shot Love in 19 days, but there was a year of postproduction. “Depending on the content and the story I want to tell. I will try to find the best person to do it. Even for music, it depends.” Along with high concept cinematography, the director is very careful with the music and sound effects he uses for his movies. In fact, he said he wish he would have been a composer.

The filmmaker is just starting to take “Love“ on the circuit. The film is a mash of characters plots overlapping ala Robert Altman. “The Hong Kong audiences are looking forward to “Love Actually.” I have the biggest line-up for my films, even with censorship. If I give in enough, I can still screen it. I was born in China in 1966, when there was a huge change there, I moved to Hong Kong, after Mao died, because my mother was a citizen there. I don‘t mean to be a Chinese filmmaker- or not a Chinese filmmaker- this is a universal language. ”

Scud (his name meaning swift moving in Chinese) he has won awards in Hong Kong, his films face censorship there. “Hong Kong is become more and more conservative. That has more impact on the censorship. We were the most open society in Asia. That is changing” but he said, “His films “don’t have much political content.” even though the social backdrop in Amphetamine’s central gay love story is the international financial crisis set off by the 2008 US stock market crash and Obama election.

Scud told the audience that his many overlapping stories could be confusing to American audiences “several people have told me they preferred “Amphetamine” because it focuses on one story. I wanted to tell many stories with “Love Actually…Sucks“, but it becomes more demanding on the audiences. But…I had so many stories to tell with this subject.“

Film

Sonali Gulati did her grad work at Temple University and returned to Philly this week to present her inspiring and beautifully filmed documentary I Am. She received a standing ovation as she walked down the aisle after the screening. Most of the audience stayed for the Q&A. Since April she has toured 42 festivals around the world and has picked up awards. Here is part of my interview with Sonali when she was at her home base in Richmond, Va.

“My reason for making the film first was that I hadn’t come out to my mother and it was unfinished business for me.” Gulati said in a phone interview from Virginia last week. when she talked to Edge about why she had to make the film.

“We were very close. I thought a lot about how she would have reacted. And I had the feelings of regret not coming out to her. “She said, adding that she is still conflicted about it. “But also with a sense of relief that had I come out we would have probably had problems over it.”

Gulati teaches filmmaking at Virginia Commonwealth University and has previously won awards for her short films. I Am is her first full-length documentary and has won prizes at the Kashish Film Festival and IFFLA.

“I Am” also delves into the lives of a cross-section of Indian gay men and women and their relationships after coming out to their families and communities. Gulati is part of a new wave of documentary filmmakers who avoids the talking heads & cut and paste look the genre. Her cinematography is visually compelling and has a narrative aesthetic.

In addition to capturing gorgeous panoramas of New Dehli, Gulati was able to film many scenes of gay pride in an otherwise entrenched homophobic society.

“It’s very different from the West. We have pride marches like we do in the west, for instance, people who organize will provide masks for people to come out, but protect their identity.“

Gulati interviewed 21 people and pared it down to nine profiles for the film, including interviews with Prince Manvendra Kumar Singh, who came out publicly rather than be forced by his parents into another failed pre-arranged marriage.

The filmmaker was fortunate enough to have been there when India struck down an archaic British law (section 377) that criminalized homosexuality. A relic from British colonialism, it remained on the books until 2009. “I just happened to be in India at the time. I got a phone call that morning saying ‘the judgment is going to be announced today, so be ready with your camera.’

“It’s a British law. When the rule was being fought, the conservative lawyers who wanted to keep the law said ‘Oh, There are no gay people in India, being gay and lesbian is a real western concept and the lawyers on the other side said ‘Are you kidding me, it’s the law that is western. Gay people have always been here and we have art, literature and history to prove it.” she said.

with I Am now she is part of GLBTQI history in India and the world.

Gay lives

Farley Granger died at 85 this week. He bucked the studio system, insisting on good parts and when it came to living openly as a gay man, he refused to play into Hollywood’s antigay policies. A wonderful actor and unique star, he will be missed.

 In 2007 he was in Philly to receive an award from the Philadelphia International gay and lesbian film festival.  I had a chance to interview him and his partner Robert Calhoun for an Edge piece.

The following is part of that interview ~~

 

They would pause first, then finished each other’s sentences.

A beautifully romantic idea rarely seen in real life. But for screen legend and gay icon Farley Granger and writer Robert Calhoun, it is a description that would apply after 45 years together.

I met them when they came to Philadelphia where Granger was honored for cinematic artistic achievement at the 13th International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. The couple is also on a mini tour to promote Include Me Out, Granger’s bare bulb memoir co-written by Calhoun.

Looking a little dazed from travel, the men graciously recount many details of Granger’s life in films and on stage in the lounge of swank Hotel Sofitel, where they were preparing for a reception in their honor that evening at XIX Nineteen Caf�, the elegant penthouse restaurant at the Park Hyatt at the Bellevue Philadelphia. After receiving his award, the film festival continued to honor them with a screening of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope, the 1948 thriller that starred Granger as a gay killer modeled in Arthur Laurents’ screenplay after the real-life murderers Leopold and Loeb.

Calhoun immediately interjects as they sit down. “We did the book together and I’m inclined to more detailed memories.” It is Granger, though, who fills in the emotion and star power.

Granger was scouted at age 17 by a studio rep for movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn and appeared in the film North Star before going into the Navy. When Granger returned to Hollywood after his discharge, he refused to be controlled by the Orwellian studio system and backed away from it. How intrusive were they when he began his career in post WWII Hollywood?

“Very.” Granger said without hesitation

Calhoun: “Farley did the first two films for (influential producer) Lewis Milestone starting when he was 17. He did North Star and then at 20th The Purple Heart then he went into the Navy. When he got out he got back and went to see Lewis Milestone and then …”

Granger: “Milestone said ’Aaron Copland is in town doing the music for my film and he would love to see you again. Why don’t you call him?’ We had dinner at the famous James Wong Howe restaurant and Aaron came in and I was smoking a cigarette and we laughed about that … and we just giggled about everything really. I was saying things like ’what do you really think of Prokofiev?’ to him and making an ass of myself I’m sure. And we were just having a wonderful time. The next day I was called into Goldwyn’s office and told I’d been seen with Aaron Copland and that was very bad thing to do…” Calhoun: “because Copland ’was a known homosexual.’” they said.

Granger: “’I said, I don’t believe what you’re telling me …’ They said he’s gay and I said I know that and I said ’… it’s my life and I’ll see who I want to see, if you don’t like it, get rid of me. But I certainly will not give up Aaron Copland for you, being as stupid as you are and I walked out.’ I was furious.”

Calhoun: “That was 1948 in Goldwyn’s office and a vice president did most of the talking and Goldwyn said there imposingly silent behind his desk … But he (Granger) directed this to Goldwyn and said ’and furthermore I met him at your studio on a film you made called North Star.’”

Robert notes that Granger never expressed any fear or regret for how he handled them. It certainly didn’t hinder his career. “Goldwyn wanted to loan me out a lot of times to other studios because he only made one or two movies a year. He would loan me out and they were bad scripts. Ali Baba things that Tony Curtis did and I didn’t want to do them, so I said no.” Granger laughs when I ask him if they didn’t get rid of him because he was such a screen presence who was not only great looking but a naturally talented actor, and that they were afraid of him.

“Both probably.” he says with a wicked laugh….

Calhoun: “You’re not scary, but you’re not going to be pushed around. He also was not a part of the gay cliques that existed in Hollywood. The weekend swim parties at George Cukor’s house. Farley was not part of those groups. He chose to be with the New York/Metro musical crowd at Gene Kelly’s open house weekly. And musical people didn’t care who did what with whom. Farley found those parties so much more fun.”

Granger’s star was sealed as a leading man working with director Alfred Hitchcock on Strangers on a Train and Rope, both films with homosexual angles. In Rope, Granger and John Dahl play college age buddies who kill a fellow student for vicarious thrills. Rope was written by gay playwright/screenwriter Arthur Laurents (West Side Story and Gypsy), with whom Granger had a relationship. The meticulous Hitchcock never brought up the word homosexual, so ’it’ was never discussed, but the actors played it pretty straightforwardly as lovers.

On Strangers on a Train Calhoun said “It just sort of happened. They didn’t discuss it, but it’s so apparent that Robert Walker knew what he was doing … and Farley certainly was aware. It was interesting that it thread that very fine line of being acknowledged or acknowledged between the two of them.” Granger said that Walker was great to work with. “Hitchcock never brought up the word homosexual in either of the films,” Calhoun added, “which is odd because he obviously knew what he was doing.” Granger (with an ironic laugh): “Yes, he certainly did.” The actor also recalls taking tennis lessons from gay tennis great Bill Tilden at Charlie Chaplin’s house for his role as a tennis pro in ’Strangers.’ Granger invited his friend choreographer Jerome Robbins to dinner to meet Chaplin. “They came and they were wonderful and later that evening they ended up dancing together, which was just heaven to see.”

Granger bought out the remainder of his contract and was headed to New York to study and work in theater, his real dream. His agent told him that instead he had to make back the money he had just given back to Hollywood and should go to Italy to work with maverick gay Italian film director Luchino Visconti on a film called Senso.

Granger: “I didn’t know Visconti. My agent said that Goldwyn would let me out of the contract if I gave him all of my money. And I said sure I’ll do that. Then he said there’s this Italian movie and they wanted Ingrid Bergman and Brando, but they couldn’t do it. It was supposed to be very good. I loved Italy anyway, so I said ’Yes I’ll do it.’ We ended up living there.”

Granger was also in a famed, but ill-fated revival of The King and I co-starring Barbara Cook, who would become a lifelong friend. “Everyone wanted to take it to Broadway and Hammerstein said he and Richard Rogers would do it. But nothing happened.” Just as it was about to happen, there was an actor’s strike, and then Oscar Hammerstein died. Granger: “We were good. She was the best.”

Calhoun: “Barbara eventually sent us a copy of a letter that she had from Laurents writing to Rodgers saying how terrific he thought the show was. How much more impressed he was with the revival. Rodgers wrote back that, by far Farley and Barbara were superior than the original production on Broadway.” It was time to stop, but, like Barbara, I could have danced all night with Farley.

The couple was greeted by a full room of admirers at the Hyatt. Just desserts because Philly has special meaning for them: they fell in love and committed to each other on one of the saddest days in our nation’s history – the day President Kennedy was shot in 1963. “It was in Philadelphia that we really became a pair.” Calhoun said.

DanceMetros2

 

Dancers, choreographers, artistic directors and fans packed the Perelman Theater for the LiveArts Lucinda Childs DANCE, a multimedia reconstruction of her sensational opus from 1979, scored to the whirling-dervish electronia of Philip Glass, who was also in attendance for this event.

Sol LeWitt’s film of Childs’ original production from 1979 is projected on a proscenium scrim, with the dancers in life size or big screen images. The current troupe virtually gets to dance with the previous company. Childs choreographs dancers in perpetual chasse and builds from lateral jumps, reverse turns and skip steps that break to roundelay. The choreography is draughtsman like, playing with perspective- horizontal, vertical, diagonal and (through film) top view.

Together, the relentlessness of the choreography, Glass’s dizzying score, the phantom dancers, either breaks you or hypnotizes. For those who resist it could induce vertigo or worse, boredom. but for those who go under the spell, it is trippy. It strips the mind of linear thought like successful meditation.

Love the concept or not, the dancers are amazing. Their skill, stamina and elan from start to finish is remarkable. This audience definitely was keyed into that. Lucinda, who dance in the original, joined them onstage for a bow to the lusty ovation.

DanceMetros

TAKES at Philadelphia Live Arts

A cubed scrim in the warehouse space of the Hub is the stage for Nichole Canuso dancey-filmic installation TAKES. She inhabits that space, with no aesthetic distance from the audience with Dito van Reigersberg, some beaten whicker furniture, a birdcage and record player. Are these private moments of a couple circa 1961? Is this one evening in the life of, or a lifetime? They play records, they dance around a bit, they up end the wicker (ugly either way), they hide airmail letters in the birdcage. Scenes from a marriage? A day room in a psyche ward? A dream?

All through this the couple is being traced in bleached out projections on all sides of the transparent cube. The layers, the exposition of their faces, Canuso’s reclining torso looms and their faces refract like a hall of mirrors. It has a cumulative hypnotic effect and people start to move around the cube (as they were invited to do so as if this were a living sculpture).

There is no linear narrative and Canuso’s dance template is limited and she could strengthen the dance side of it, but this is a whimsical, melancholic scenario and one of the most intriguing pieces Canuso has created. Nicole and Dito have beautiful, secreted chemistry. At one point he dresses her as if she were helpless. Is she passed out or debilitated. These characters remain a mystery, but the intimacy they conjure in performance is palpable.

The visual effects which Canuso called a ‘video landscape’ is achieved through the tech wizardry of Lars Jan. Just as impressive is Mike Kiley sound design and the original music that goes from 60s sambas to concussively spiked overlays. There are real – time projection, but sometimes it is manipulated or delayed, which plays with your depth & time perception. There are after burns of moments that stick in the mind. Those moments when Canuso exhitbits memorable dramaturg.

Cinema

Filmmaker Bob Christie globetrotted for a year filming his powerful documentary Beyond Gay: The politics of pride. For all those who think that gay pride marches are just occasions for sex, drugs and costumes as important as all of that is, this film is a reminder that symbolically pride parades mean much more.

An antigay mob roughed up the filmmakers while they were shooting the first successful gay parade in Moscow. It was staged in front of Tchaikovsky Hall and at the Canadian embassy with a small band of gay Russians faced hostile protesters. Christie follows the circuit of parades on four continents from the 3 million strong in São Paulo, Brazil to the handful that have to stage a stealth demonstration in the rabidly homophobic Sri Lanka. It is an inspiring call to arms for global involvement, awareness and activism for GLBTQ human rights.

Bahaman filmmaker Kareem Mortimer told the audience at the screening of his stirring drama Children of God that he chose the tragic end of a love affair between a white art student and a black musician because it reflected the reality of what was happening there. This love story is set against a religious and political campaign in the Bahamas against gays.

“During the time we were shooting the film, there were five murders that happened in the block around me. I decided on that ending so, like it or not, people will have some feeling to want to do something.” This film is a vital political drama that has the power to move hearts and minds.

In the theater lobby, Mortimer talked about why he made the film. “I wanted to try to change things in the society I live in…how these hateful attitudes can turn into something really violent and ugly.”

Mortimer said there is no social networking either “There was a group called Rainbow Alliance but they disbanded, so right now there is no GLBT group in the Bahamas. There is nowhere for people to go when something happens. It’s a big hush little secret. It’s the worse thing you could be and the worse thing you could support, so no one is going to do anything.” he said.

“The Bahamas is only 50 miles off of the coast of Florida, but GLBT life is completely hidden and is openly condemned by the straight world there. Fortunately in the arts community “there were people there of influence who wanted to see a film like this made…to speak to the whole issue of homophobia and hate crimes. It actually was quite easy to raise funds for the film and get people on board, easier than I anticipated.” Mortimer said.

In the film, a minister condemns homosexuals as an elaborate cover for being on the dl himself. “The closeted minister is very common.” He based the character on an incident that happened to him. “ I actually saw a preacher in a gay bar and asked him if he was so and so “I’m not, in here.” he said.

Part of the reason Mortimer wanted to make this film is because even Brokeback Mountain was banned in the Bahamas. The director said he was enjoying his stop in Philly for Qfest and is looking forward to Children of God’s theatrical release in the US. He is strategizing the release in the Bahamas. “I’d show it for free there.”

JazzLife

There seems to be a trend at QFEST this year of films with jazz soundtracks and in each case an essential part of recreating cinema verite and fantasy. The all-star soundtrack for Tamra Davis’ brilliant documentary Jean-Michel Basquiat The Radiant Child, included tracks and performance footage of Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Parker and audio tracks from Miles, Mingus and Monk throughout the film.  The film is built off of an incisive video interview Tamra filmed of the artist two years before his death from a heroin overdose. Davis not only gets to the essence of the artist and the man, Basquiat himself showed the influence of these musicians, and their importance to him as a black artist, in his work.

Even though Basquiat started as an abstract musician with his art group Gray, out caging John Cage with electronica funk at galleries, Basquiat’s heart and soul were involved with jazz. He said bebop was his favorite and that same cool, intensity pulses in much of his work. The reclaimed hipster downtown Manhattan echoes the cool jazz era and private film of Basquiat at the forefront of that scene is vividly captured.

Film

At the Castro Theater in San Francisco last year, the makers of Word Is Out | Stories of Some of Our Lives, showed the restored groundbreaking documentary on gay America back to where it first premiered in 1977.

The epi-gay-centric symbolism is not lost. It is hard to fathom a world now without the course of events that have driven gay life in years since- GLBT civil rights legislation, HIV/AIDS, cultural wars, political clout, gay tv; so much has happened since, how is it possible that the film would still be so compelling?

In fact, this time capsule is so resonating today even with cultural shifts in gay America since it was filmed. The 28 people profiled in the film, culled from over a hundred filmed interview of GLBT people from all backgrounds and all ages (18-77). They candidly tell the truths of their emotional, sexual, family and social lives representing gay America that was busting out of the collective closet.

The commemorative DVD has fascinating updated footage on the people in the film and the filmmakers who talk about how they got the film made. In its time the filmmakers confronted broad-base societal oppression.

Many of the people interviewed are no longer here, but many are flourishing under the rainbow. Word Is Out is as insightful and moving 30 years after gay America finally had a chance to tell it like it was.