GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

MARCH 6, 1998

Evenings Out

From guppies to sailors, history to herstory

Cleveland film festival features six gay and lesbian films

by Doreen Cudnik

Cleveland-The 22nd Cleveland International Film Festival, set for March 19 to 29 at Tower City Cinemas in downtown Cleveland, is expected to host an estimated 30,000 film lovers.

Judging by the number of queer film buffs at past festivals, you're likely to run into someone you know.

An annual fave event among many in the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community, the festival has always had an unmistakable queer esthetic, thanks to the hard work of openly gay executive director David Wittkowsky.

While some cities, like New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Toronto, have a specifically gay and lesbian film festival, Cleveland has a "Ten Percent Cinema" festivalwithin-a-festival.

Wittkowsky came up with the idea for Ten Percent Cinema in 1993, as a way to showcase the emerging queer cinema trend that began in the late 1980s. He describes the filmmaking of that time as being "very much about queer films being made by queer filmmakers for queer filmgoers."

As film has progressed into the '90s, with gay filmmakers moving into the mainstream, and non-gay audiences becoming more sophisticated about GLBT issues, Wittkowsky wonders if there will always be a need for the Ten Percent Cinema portion of the festival. He pointed out that three of this year's Ten Percent entries could just as easily have been in the American Independents section; while the other three would have fit just as well with the other Documentaries.

Someday, Wittkowsky said, he may decide to do away with the special sections, alphabetize the entries in the program guide and "offer them all up as 'This is current filmmaking.'

But for now, Wittkowsky believes that there is a continued need for a specific section devoted to gay and lesbian films. In addition to helping people navigate through the 75-page

festival guide to find the films they're most interested in, Wittkowsky said that having the special section helps to highlight gay and lesbian cinema for all filmgoers, and draws attention to these films among gay and lesbian filmgoers.

This year's Ten Percent Cinema includes six films that run the gamut from a cynical look at the culture of narcissism among gay urban professionals, to a documentary of the recent struggle to form a gay-straight student alliance in Salt Lake City, to the stories of notable gay men and lesbians in history who were left out of history books.

"I always present the Ten Percent portion of the festival with a great amount of pride," Wittkowsky said.

Likewise, Ohio's gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community should experience a great deal of pride watching these six remarkable films.

All the Rage

Directed by Roland Tec U.S., 1997; 105 minutes

"You don't find that man incredibly attractive?"

"No... He's too perfect."

That catty banter between two waiters at a trendy gay bar sums up the ironies in Roland Tee's feature debut, a sardonic gaze at the culture of narcissism perpetuated among gay urban professionals in Boston.

In this school of “guppies,” none flashes his fins brighter than attorney Christopher Bedford. He's wealthy, blond, toned and constantly on the prowl at clubs and gyms around South End. Yet, to his closest friends he confides that he's also pining for Mr. Right. Chris seems to find him in Stewart, a sensitive book editor. But Stewart can't match Chris, either in physique or income, and Chris' attention inevitably drifts to bigger biceps, better bodies.

With artful finesse, and without undue harshness or haughtiness, Tec indicts a philosophy that values good looks above and beyond all

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In Out of the Past, pioneering lesbian activist Barbara Gittings leads one of the 1960s "Annual Reminders." These pickets of Independence Hall in Philadelphia every Fourth of July planted the seed for today's lesbian-gay pride marches.

else, an ultimately empty lifestyle in which the eye of the beholder is only skin deep.

Friday, March 27 at 2:45 p.m.; Saturday, March 28 at 10:00 p.m.; and Sunday, March 29 at 4:30 p.m.

The Human Race

Directed by Bobby Houston U.S., 1998, 96 minutes

In July 1997, the vessel Survivor entered the illustrious TransPac sailboat race, an "epic downwind sprint" crossing 2,200 miles of treacherous open water from Los Angeles to Hawaii-with an all-gay, all HIV-positive crew. New drug treatments and healthy attitudes brought many of these men out of their deathbeds and back into active lives. But are they up for the ultimate sea trial?

Bob goes out dancing with his former college roommate—and unrequited flame— Brendan during a reunion of friends in I Think I Do, sparking a comedy of errors with Bob's present lover.

With the names of 3,000 kindred AIDS fatalities painted on the hull of the boat (a hired hard-luck' craft which failed to complete the TransPac once before) the Survivor sets out. The novice crew's optimism is soon dampened by malfunctioning equipment, hurricane Dolores, plummeting Tcell counts and the incipient madness of sheer isolation. Through it all, director Houston keeps his camera running one stressed sailor lashes out at it with his fists to record an outstanding, harrowing log of heroism and endurance.

The ocean doesn't discriminate," one teammate says. "The ocean takes you whether you have AIDS or not.” Saturday, March 21 at 12:15pm. Tuesday. March 24 at 5:00 p.m., and Wednesday, March 25 at 9-15 p.m.

I Think I Do Directed by Brian Sloan U.S., 1997, 104 minutes

This film about a group of George Washington University students of various races and sexual orientations, set to a hip, retro

soundtrack, has a good chance to become the must-see, most-talked-about darling of the Ten Percent cinema line-up, if not the entire festival.

While at college, the not-quite-out-yet Bob (Alexis Arquette) pines for his roommate Brendan, a frat-boy type who has no problem engaging in some homoerotic wrestling with his "little buddy” (they appear as Gilligan and Skipper at a Halloween party) in the privacy of their own dorm room, but becomes a ladies man when they are in mixed company.

When Bob "accidentally” squeezes Brendan's behind during a drunken wrestling match at the group's Valentines Day party, Brendan feels obligated to assert his manhood in the form of a right hook to the jaw. It becomes the incident that they never talk about. Upon graduation Brendan takes a job in Boston, and Bob becomes a writer for a soap opera in New York. They keep in touch, but neither one can ever quite commit to hopping on the train and going to visit the other.

The entire group is brought back together again for the wedding of Carol (Carol Anita Gonzales to be precise--played by Lauren Velez of I Like it Like That fame) and the WASP-y but lovable Matt, sweethearts since their college days. Bob, acting as Carol's maid of honor for the nerve-wracking event, is comfortably out now, and brings along his current lover Sterling Scott (formerly Scott Sterling, but he changed his name around and became a big daytime drama star).

The hunky Sterling pretends not to like it when hers followed by autograph seekers, and he would rather turn in early than go out dancing with the gang. Deep down in his buff, toned chest is a heart that beats only for Bob, and being this close to a marriage ceremony gets it pumping even faster. thinking about the fabulous possibilities for his and Bob's wedding.

Ah, but things are not always as they seem, and the weekend erupts in a comedy of errors

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