JANUARY 24, 1997 GAY PEOPLE's Chronicle 17

EVENINGS OUT

Director's biography is strange mix of Warhol, Waters

Neurosia:

50 Years of Perversity Directed by Rosa von Praunheim First Run Features

Reviewed by Bob Boone

When sensationalist TV journalist Gesine Ganzman-Seipel is assigned to investigate the mysterious death and disappearance of notorious gay director Rosa von Praunheim, she is enveloped in the controversy that surrounds his life.

Neurosia: 50 Years of Perversity is a combination of fact and fiction that serves as von Praunheim's autobiography. In German with English subtitles, the film follows Seipel as she traces the director's past through his diaries. Her attitude toward him grows from a general disgust, to understanding, and finally a reluctant affection as she begins to suspect he is not actually dead.

Seipel is confronted by a confusing flow of individuals who adore the lost director as well as those who despise him. When the trail

leads her to some of von Praunheim's old friends in the United States, the ambiguity toward the director is summed up by one man: "People loved him in New York, but then in New York, they love anybody with an accent."

Born Holger Mischwitzky, the director adopted the name Rosa in honor of the rosa Winkel, the pink triangle sewn to the garments of gay men in the Nazi death camps. He spurred the organization of gay activist groups in Germany with his 1970 film It's Not the Homosexual Who is Perverse, But the Situation in which He Lives. The film's portrayal of the self-destructive lifestyle von Praunheim saw in many gay men also earned the director countless criticisms from within the gay community. The uproar intensified when, following von Praunheim's loss of many friends to AIDS in the 1980s, he began outing numerous German gay celebrities and declared, "Gays should display their faces, not just their asses."

Rife with dry humor and offbeat characters, Neurosia may seem a bizarre mingling

FIRST RUN FEATURES

Trash-TV reporter Gesine Ganzman-Seipel (Desiree Nick) searches for clues in Rosa von Praunheim's flat.

of an Andy Warhol and a John Waters film. It proves an entertaining introspective of von Praunheim's career thus far.

Neurosia plays at the Cleveland Muscum of Art, 11150 East Blvd., on Wednesday, January 29 at 7:30 pm; no one under 17 admitted.

A beautiful memory of the women of the Left Bank

Paris Was a Woman Directed by Greta Schiller Written by Andrea Weiss Zeitgeist Films

Reviewed by Bob Boone

"For a lost generation, we certainly knew where we were heading. We were headed straight for France," American writer Janet Flanner commented on the generation of authors and artists who flocked to Paris in the years between the world wars.

Paris Was a Woman is a fascinating chronicle of the women artists and literary figures of that generation who settled for a

time on the "left" bank of the Seine River in Paris. Director Greta Schiller, who also produced and directed the Emmy-winning Before Stonewall, smoothly blends black and white films and photos of Paris with past and present interviews with people near to the circle of artists, scholars, and with the women artists themselves.

The film captures the excitement that these women helped to create by bucking traditional roles and establishing themselves as independent and experimental figures in art and literature. In their own words and voices, close friends and lovers Sylvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier relate their establishment of their neighboring bookstores, which were

The world according to Bruce LaBruce

Hustler White

Written and directed by Bruce LaBruce and Rick Castro Strand Releasing

Reviewed by Bob Boone Arriving in Los Angeles to write his memoirs, grumpy foreign visitor Jurgen Anger (Bruce LaBruce) has his heart and libido stolen at the sight of Monti Ward, a hustler on Santa Monica Blvd.

Hustler White, the first in a promised trilogy named in the tradition of Kieslowski's Blue, White, and Red, follows Anger in his pursuit of his dreamed-of hustler and chronicles the misadventures that ensue.

Interspersed are scenes of various other hustlers and their stories of unrequited love, dangerous johns, and porn film exploits. In an effort to mold a Bruce LaBruce utopia, the atmosphere is deliberately edited of any hint of AIDS or drug abuse and features no women or drag queens.

Hustler Monti Ward is portrayed by Tony Ward, who has appeared in Madonna vidcos "Cherish" and "Justify My Love" and has been the subject of photographers Bruce Weber and Herb Ritts. His character's stunning looks do not forestall his clumSiness, which leads to a few of Hustler White's unexpected twists.

Hustler White takes a more shocking approach. A graphic S&M encounter and a "stump" sex scene are not for anyone with queasy stomachs.

Hustler White shows at the Cleveland Cinematheque, 11141 East Blvd., on Thursday, February 6 at 9:05 pm and Friday, February 7 at 9:40 pm. Not rated, but

Monti Ward on the boulevard.

Not as interesting or endearing as LaBruce's first film No Skin Off My Ass.

RICK CASTRO

with nudity and sexual scenes, no one under 17 admitted.

an epicenter of the Paris culture of the day.

Friends and housekeepers remember for us the weekly literary salons, who would attend, and how everyone would act. It is a reminiscence beautifully captured by the breadth of those included in the film.

Among the history lesson of the women's talents and accomplishments, one is treated to the voices of lovers Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas sharing tender observations of one another's laughter or personality. There are also frequent excerpts of the columns of Janet Flanner, who wrote the weekly column "Letter from Paris" in The New Yorker for 40 years, reporting on the Paris enclave. Her comments are warm and unguarded, such as her description of how Stein's hearty laughter would erupt through the salon as "a contagion of good spirit."

*

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ZEITGEIST FILMS

Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein walk their dog through Paris' Left Bank.

It is pleasing that the intimate relationships among these women are always acknowledged. That many of these women artists were clearly lesbians flows through the documentary from Stein's simple remarks on the beauty of American journalist Djuna Barnes's legs, to the mention that American poet Natalie Barney "fantasized recreating the golden age of Lesbos." The documentary ends as the artists flee

the advancing Nazi onslaught of World War II. One of the last to leave, Janet Flanner summarizes the fragile preciousness of the world these artists had created: "We were all voluntary exiles temporarily."

Paris Was a Woman shows at the Cleveland Cinematheque, 11141 East Blvd., Friday, January 31 at 7:30 pm and Saturday, February 1, at 7 pm.

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