January 4, 2002 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE
The Prism Awards
2001 was a fantastic year for GLBT films
by Kaizaad Kotwal
It's a brand new year, and while many will be glad to see the last one relegated to the annals of history, there were many good things about 2001. It was a fantastic year for LGBT films, from the independent to the mainstream, from the small screen to the big screen, and from the obvious to the not-so-obvious.
I am starting a new tradition of listing the best among GLBT films and awarding the newly created Prism Awards for Excellence in Celluloid. This being the first year, the awards will be given out in nine categories.
So without further ado, welcome to the first Prism Awards. The envelope please!
Best Supporting Actor
A tough and highly contested category. There were some marvelous performances and here are the top six.
In Big Eden, George Coe played Sam Hart, a grandfather who tries to help his grandson come to terms with his sexuality and his unrequited love for the jock from his high school years. In The Deep End, there were two noteworthy performances by Jonathan Tucker and Josh Lucas. Tucker plays Beau Hall, an angst-filled teenager who gets seduced by the suave yet smarmy Darby Reese, played to slimy perfection by Lucas.
In Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Michael Pitt does a stunning rendition of a spoiled and confused boy rock star, Tommy Gnosis, the object of Hedwig's affection. In the moving and charged Together, Ola Norrell plays Lasse, a jilted man whose wife leaves him to follow her lesbianism. Lasse eventually finds that he too can find fulfillment in a gay relationship.
Norell shares this Prism with British veteran actor Brian Cox in L.I.E. Cox plays a pedophilic predator who creates a monster without cliché and with a sense of pathos and empathy.
Best Supporting Actress
Another hotly contested category with Together garnering three nominations. In All Over the Guy, Doris Roberts (Everybody Loves Raymond) turns in a funny yet moving cameo as a health clinic receptionist who philosophizes on the nature of love. In Big Eden, Nan Martin is the eccentric and affecting Widow Thayer. She seems to be of the old world, but turns out to be very open minded as she tries to match-make her gay neighbor with some of the eligible men in Eden.
Together was an actress's dream film and three shone through. Lisa Lindgren plays Elisabeth, a battered woman who movingly comes to terms with her feminism, her motherhood and her sexuality. Emma Samulesson
Together
plays Eva, a precocious teenager who cannot understand the free love and communal ways of her mother's generation as she tries to retain her sanity while coming into puberty in this chaotic environment.
The Prism goes to Jessica Liedberg, as the lesbian Anna, turning in a masterful portrayal of a married woman who is freed by owning up to her sexuality and yet must have her heart broken by the woman she falls in love with..
Best Cinematography
The nominees are Frank DeMarco for his quirky and colorful playfulness in Hedwig; Rodrigo Lalinde for his gritty and seductive camera work in Our Lady of the Assassins, capturing an unusual gay love affair in Medellin, Columbia; Romeo Tirone for his equally gritty and beguiling cinematography in L.I.E.; and Pascal Poucet whose steady and subtle work in the French Come Undone sweetly and softly captures the joy and angst of two teens falling in love over one fateful year.
The award goes to Giles Nuttgens for his brilliantly metaphoric and magical work in The Deep End, where his camera takes us into the dark world of murder and a mother's uncompromising needs to protect her son from being convicted.
Best Screenplay
The best of the year include Fernando Vallejo for a stark and brutally honest script in Our Lady of the Assassins, an unusual tale of love between an older poet and a young gangster assassin; Stephen M. Ryder, Michael Cuesta and Gerald Cuesta for their provocative writing in L.I.E. where they create a world of suburban opulence gone wrong, with latchkey kids falling prey to prostitution and the disarming seductions of the local pedophile; Francis Verber for his hilarious plot twists and poignant humanity in The
Big Eden
Closet, where a straight man must come out of a closet he was never in, to keep his job. The writing Prism this year is shared by two drastically differing scripts: Hedwig by John Cameron Mitchell, which brilliantly captures the topsy-turvy world of a person with a botched sex change procedure, and Together by Lukas Moodysson which captures the realities and disillusionments shared by a group living on a commune in Sweden during the 1970s.
Best Documentary
Three GLBT documentaries stand. out. Vicky Funari and Julia Query's Live Nude Girls Unite, Sandi Simcha DuBowski's Trembling before G-d, and Tom Shepard's Scout's Honor. T
he Prism goes to Shepard for his powerful and moving film about the Boy Scout's ban on gays and the movement started by teenage Scout Steven Cozza, who has been working to overturn that ban.
Best Actress
There weren't as many lesbian films as gay films this year, and yet there were some amazing performances in competition for this category.
In the quirky British comedy Blow Dry, Natasha Richardson and Rachel Griffiths play lovers who run a hair salon in a sleepy little town. These two actresses are moving as they struggle with keeping their family together during the cut-throat hairdressing championships and while Richardson's character is dying of cancer. In I'm the One I Want, Margaret Cho is unabashedly funny and unapologetically honest as she tells tales of her life, many of which are centered around gayness and her drag queen friends.
Dame Judy Dench turns in a masterful performance in the recently-released Iris, as famed writer Iris Murdoch whose sexual shenanigans, some with women, are legendary as is her eventual struggle with Alzheimer's.
The Prism unequivocally belongs to the amazing Tilda Swinton, whose portrayal as Margaret Hall in The Deep End is pitch perfect every moment of the film. She never falters in her honesty and in her subtlety as she shows us a mother who is trying to protect her gay son from being convicted of murder while falling in love with a mysterious and enigmatic blackmailer.
Best Actor
Probably the most hotly contested category this year. Daniel Auteuil was moving and immensely funny as he pretended to be gay in The Closet. In the Spanish Nico and Dani, Fernando Ramallo is sweetly charming and
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