GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE
MARCH 20, 1998
Evenings Out
Wexner series features six lesbian and gay films
by Kaizaad Kotwal
Columbus-Over the next month, the film and video department of the Wexner Center for the Arts is showcasing six films of particular interest to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community. These films are not only varied in style and subject matter, they also transcend varied geographies, politics and social viewpoints.
Fire
Directed by Deepa Mehta March 19 and 20, 7 pm
Acclaimed by critics and audiences worldwide, the first film in the series tells the story of an Indian family based in New Delhi. The film powerfully examines the threads that bind men and women within tradition and the new, transitional forces that threaten to shred those ties.
At the center of the film are two women, Radha and Sita, who are struggling within their marriages. Radha's husband Ashok is trying to achieve spiritual nirvana, ridding himself of any carthly desires. Sita, newly wed to Jatin, must compete with his refusal to abandon his Chinese girlfriend.
These two women, forced by circumstance and curiosity, come together in an explosion of cultural and gender taboos.
This film is a must-see, especially because it offers a view of India away from the colonial misrepresentations of filmmakers like David Lean and Richard Attenborough. Deepa Mehta's lens is kaleidoscopic in its beautiful images and colors, but it also presents a world that is fraught with contradictions and littered with flawed people and social norms.
Mehta has brought together a stunning cast with two particularly radiant and effective performances by Shabana Azmi as Radha and Nandita Das as Sita.
In India, the film has been the center of much controversy not only because of the presentation of a lesbian relationship between Indian women, but also because the film provokes burning questions about choices women can make that threaten the status quo of a large and unquestioned patriarchy.
Jodie: An Icon
Directed by Pratibha Parmar
Pride Divide
Directed by Paris Poirier April 3, 7 pm
Another director of Indian origins, Pratibha Parmar, has created a short film about Jodie Foster, a global icon in her own right, but one of particular interest to lesbians. A popular favorite at many film festivals, this film explores the career of Foster and those aspects of her persona that attract favor from her lesbian and gay fans. The film quickly covers early Foster roles of tomboyish peculiarity to her adult roles as women to be reckoned with.
Jodie is a rapid-fire sequence of images and sound bytes including a Jodie Foster look-alike contest in San Francisco which Diva magazine said gives "insights into Foster's butch/femme indeterminacy."
These 1977 scenes of gay man dancing in West Hollywood and lesbians at a Houston conference illustrate an age-old difference in Pride Divide.
Fans and queer cultural critics alike share their views on what makes Foster a lesbian icon. Most memorable among these is comedienne Lea DeLaria's comment that "IfI was Hannibal Lecter, it wouldn't be her liver I'd want to eat."
Jodie will be followed by Pride Divide, the latest television project from producer Karen Kiss and director Paris Poirier, who previously made the award winning Last Call at Maud's. This film examines the ageold battle between the sexes from the perspective of the divide between gay men and lesbian women. The film's point of view, almost always both funny and poignant, is one that tells of gay men and lesbians united in the larger battle against homophobia, but totally divided about intra-cultural issues.
Pride Divide is a montage of viewpoints from across the continent with more than one hundred people sharing their views on this gender chasm in the GLB community. Some of the impressive line-up of on-screen personas include Torie Osborn, Camille Paglia, Michelangelo Signorile, Simon LeVay, Kate Clinton and Barney Frank.
While contentious in its dialogue, the film's humor adds an even sharper edge to what happens to our rainbow house when it is divided.
The Silver Screen Color Me Lavender Directed by Mark Rappaport April 4, 7 pm
This new film explores Hollywood's socalled Golden Age, when issues of homosexuality were either ignored or misrepresented. Like The Celluloid Closet, this film has clips from myriad Hollywood classics and personalities.
Mark Rappaport's film revisits Hollywood of the past in order to reveal subtexts created in an age when the queer theory lexicon was nonexistent.
According to Chicago Sun-Times critic Bill Stamets, Pratibha Parmar,Rappaport's "entertaining and enlightening scavenger hunt suggests that gay cinema is as American
as apple pie."
The film is narrated by Dan Butler from the sitcom Frasier.
Rappaport and Butler both avoid the academic approach favoring swift pacing and snappy ban-
ter.
The Delta
Directed by Ira Sachs April 15, 7 pm
The Delta is probably Jodie Foster
the most well-known and widely-screened film in
this Wexner series. Written and directed by Ira Sachs, The Delta was well received at many festivals including the Toronto and Sundance festivals. This is also the film most-likely to receive wide distribution.
Sachs weaves a love story in the doomed tradition of Romeo and Juliet, set in contemporary America. The filmportrays the violent and volatile intersection of race, class, sexuality and geography in the Unites States. Sachs's protagonists are Lincoln, an affluent white teenager, and Minh, the immigrant off-spring of an impoverished Vietnamese woman and a black G.I. The setting of this gripping tale is Memphis.
Sachs presents a microcosmic look at the love between these two boys, and yet the way in which he weaves his tale comments on an America that is on the verge of a social, cultural and socio-economic breakdown.
This is a beautiful movie whose title brilliantly captures the essence of a delta, a place where the waters are calm only for a few seconds before they burst forth with destructive energy and forceful turbulence in an attempt to merge with the greater waters beyond. Sach's watery metaphor is both at once a reflection of the fluidity of love and the notion that like water, sexual, social, racial and class divides are both lifegiving and life-taking. This film is an absolute must-see.
·
It's Elementary
Talking About Gay Issues
in School
Directed by Debra Chasnoff and Helen Cohen April 22, 7 pm
Called "possibly the most important film ever on lesbian ad gay issues" this film has been playing to packed film audi-
ences across
the country. The film tackles the way in which the elementary edu-
cational system, along with parents, deals with the issue of gender and sexuality.
This take on "family values" in the school systems is presented primarily through the eyes of the children themselves. This strategy on the part of Academy-Award winning direcDebra
tor
Chasnoff (codirected by
Helen Cohen)
is brilliant because it partially removes the paternalistic notion that adults always know what's right for the young ones.
Chasnoff, herself a lesbian mother of two sons, isn't afraid of taking on the tougher issues and yet doesn't dismiss the legitimate concerns of parents and teachers alike.
It's Elementary shows how non-elementary the struggle is to keep issues of gender and sexuality from being swept under the carpet. This film's genius lies in the fact that it removes the blinders so that a dialogue can be opened up. Any educator worth their salt knows that great education is about meaningful, insightful and socially-relevant discourse.
All these films will be presented in the Film-Video theater at the Wexner Center on the Ohio State University campus. Ticket prices are $5 for the general public, $4 for Wexner Center members, students, and senior citizens and $2 for children under 12. For more information, call the box office at 614-292-3535. With the exception of Fire, the films are being presented in conjunction with the OSU Office of Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Student Services.