Queer as film folk

>> The 14th annual Image&Nation queer film fest offers up its fruit

by MATTHEW HAYS

Good gawd, has it really been 14 years? Apparently so, and despite some moments of doubt, when members of its own community questioned the need for a gay event like this one, the Image&Nation gay and lesbian film festival had endured and continues to grow and thrive. This year, the fest offers up a wide range of new entries, while also giving bent filmgoers rare opportunities to see other queer-related film and video on the big screen.

As with all film festivals, there's a ton of material and much of it is a crap shoot. Here are examples of some films or videos I either really liked or am really looking forward to.

Circuit queens might want to check out Dirk Shafer's latest feature, titled (simply enough) Circuit. The former Playgirl model, whose last film, Man of the Year, was an autobiographical look at his own coming out, looks here at the widespread phenom of buff men getting together and dancing from midnight until high noon. There's some fun to be had here--Shafer hasn't lost his sense of humour--but it does get bogged down in rather cheesy melodrama from time to time. Still, you'll appreciate the bodies in the film: every boy is totally buff and equipped with spray-on tan. A good warm-up for our own Black & Blue, which opens in the first week of October for its 10th-anniversary event.

A heroic look at one woman's struggle with breast cancer emerges with My Left Breast, from Newfoundland-based filmmaker Gerry Rogers (a former Montrealer). Rogers manages to maintain her sense of humour throughout a gruelling ordeal: diagnosis, surgery, chemotherapy, radiation and the resulting hair loss. It's an unblinking look at the disease, but one of the most impressive things about it is the way Rogers' lesbian life partner appears by her side, entirely matter-of-factly. This film so moved Montreal filmmaker Terre Nash, who won an Academy Award for her no-nukes doc If You Love This Planet in '83, that she handed her Oscar over to the filmmakers to thank them for making My Left Breast. Now that's high praise.

Wild, wild kingdom

Barbet Schroeder has one of the weirdest filmographies I can think of, from fairly serious biopics like Reversal of Fortune to raunchy love stories (as in Barfly) to basic, all-out trash (Single White Female). He's in his element again with Our Lady of the Assassins, an odd love story about an ageing writer who meets up with a street urchin who gets by with the help of a firearm. The two bond in the most unlikely of circumstances. As with Schroeder's entire oeuvre, expect the unexpected.

Though I don't know of many urban gays who insist on getting the National Geographic channel, the new doc Out in Nature may just change some minds on this all-important issue. Here, cameras observe homosexual behaviour in all sorts of species (forget people not knowing some of this behaviour didn't exist, I didn't know some of these species existed!) and shows us the results.

All those interested in the sex trade will want to take note of this special event, held this Monday, Sept. 24. It's an evening of films by, for and about transsexual prostitutes titled Work It, Girl: Transsexual Prostitutes on Screen. Unreeling will be Jeanne B's Chroniques, Brazilian Prostitutes in Italy (a TV doc) and Madame Lauraine's Transsexual Touch. A panel discussion will follow.

A revealing and hilarious look at the porn biz can be found in The Fluffer, in which a young man goes west to find his way, only to end up working as an "assistant" to porn stud Johnny Rebel (not his real name). Though we've seen a number of films about the straight porn biz in the past five years, there still haven't been many about that element of the biz which caters to the massive gay demographic.

Good things come in short packages

As per usual, the fest is a great place to check up on the work of short filmmakers. Free of the constraints faced when creating a typical feature, instead these artists often simply trash the entire rule book and make up their own. Local artist Atif Siddiqi is a case in point, with his obtuse, funny and beautiful M! Mom, Madonna and Me, an autobiographical rumination on the basis of identity. What does Siddiqi find? The roots of his persona come from none other than his own mother ("a Pakistani homemaker") and superstar Madonna. Not to be missed.

And lesbians are up to all sorts of nasty things in Image&Nation's smart and sexy anthology of erotic shorts, that include Watching Lesbian Porn (Dayna Mcleod's how-to video), Playing With Ourselves (a masturbatory manual), Pussy Buffet (the title says it all) and How to Fuck in High Heels (see previous parentheses).

The Boy Scout controversy has been in the news of late, and for those who missed Scout's Honor, the doc made about the fight of one straight adolescent Boy Scout against the organization's homophobia, this is your chance to catch it. The film includes interviews with those who took their case all the way to the Supreme Court and, sadly, lost.

Local filmmaker Jean-François Monette (Where Lies the Homo?) regales with these simple, yet poignant, tales of young folk coming out in Quebec. The doc series Coming Out is another bit of choice TV that's being screened at the event.