from diwan to Chop Suey!

Chop Suey

smorgasbord of delights will remor fin,

the

evelan

March 1, 2002

GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

Art theaters are a godsend to the cinemaphile. Foreign films, independent films, retrospectives, all there on the screen like juicy grapes, ripe for the plucking.

The Cleveland Cinematheque, whose bimonthly schedules are a smorgasbord for the film buff, covers all three genres through March and April, starting with the complete works of Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang. Tsai's films are part of a movement of

Vive L'Amour

Asian work that has been compared to the French New Wave cinema of the 1950s and '60s, signaling a shift in the currents towards a more inclusive, diverse cinema. Tsai's 's ouevre might also be compared to that of Alfred Hitchcock, though. Not necessarily in terms of Hitchcock's title as the "Master of Suspense;" rather, it is in Hitchcock's fascination with "sexual perversity" that parallels can be found.

While Hitchcock, brought up in a religious home in Britain at the end of the nineteenth century, found the ideas of male and female homosexuality intriguing, his portrayals of them in his films present a mixed bag, sometimes the bogeyman, often simply background information.

Tsai, on the other hand, is actively participating in the move of homosexuality and gay issues to the forefront of the Southeast Asian consciousness; he had a part in a documentary featuring filmmakers talking about gender and sexual identity in their films.

In Tsai's films, and in his work for televifilms,

sion shown in the U.S. for perhaps the first time, all aspects of modern gay life are shown.

For instance, in his 1997 film The River, the main character's father is a closeted gay man. In the 1995 made-for-television documentary My New Friends, Tsai talks to two HIV-positive men, Taiwan's first AIDS documentary, experimenting with the objectification of people with AIDS by filming them from the neck down as they talk about their lives, loves, fears and hopes.

In Rebels of the Neon God, Tsai's 1992 first feature film, a young student in the throes of rebelling against authority falls in love with a motorcycle-riding tough. The film is not available in the U.S., and this Taiwanese print presents a rare opportunity to see the theatrical birth of Tsai's work.

Wrapping up the retrospective, perhaps too final a word since Tsai is still in the cinematic trenches, is his 1994 dark comedy Vive L'Amour. This is the tale of a love triangle between a female real estate agent who uses a client's apartment as a no-tell motel, a gay salesman who also uses the apartment and the street vendor that they both love. Kind of a kinkier The Night We Never Met for the intellectual set.

April sees something of the past made manifest for boys and for girls at the arthouse. First, Barbara Hammer's latest film History Lessons takes the audience on a tour of the role of lesbians in the 20th century through the use of found photos, film clips, home movies, stag films and other media hinting at, or showing outright, images of lesbianism.

The film is a fascinating look at the perceived history of lesbianism in the United States, with 1950s health education films flowing into heterosexually-oriented porn films of women with Egyptian-influenced eyeliner caressing each other, from clips of Eleanor Roosevelt speaking to a women's rights conference to reenactments of tabloid headlines that shocked the nation. It's a fun and furious run through time that should not be missed.

For the boys, the Cinematheque is bring-. ing photographer Bruce Weber's Chop Suey to town.

The film flows back and

forth through Weber's interests, including his model Peter Johnson, cabaret star Frances Faye, a cousin of film icon Danny Kaye and an open lesbian in a time when every female star slept with Frank Sinatra, fashion doyenne Diana Vreeland, his collection of photographs and love of both Jan-Michael Vincent and Robert Mitchum.

On a quick side note, the film includes clips from a movie a then-young Vincent did with a then-even-younger Robert Englund, long before Freddy Krueger came to haunt Elm Street.

The film is interesting, self-indulgent fun, perhaps a little too self-indulgent at times, but one supposes that is allowed when it's your own film. The visuals range from stunning to amusing, occasionally journeying into the realm of the surreal with Derek Jarman-esque dreamy sequences of boys swimming; the scenes themselves, though, are perfectly in context, showing the young men being photographed.

The Tsai Ming-liang collection will be shown throughout the first half of March. History Lessons plays April 11 and 14 at 7 and 9:25 pm respectively, while Chop Suey will be shown Friday and Saturday, April 19 & 20 at 7:30 pm on Friday and 9:50 pm on Saturday.

The Cinematheque is located inside the Cleveland Institute of Art at 11141 East Boulevard. They can be reached at 216-421-7450, or online at http:/ /www.cia.edu/cinematheque for full details on their complete schedule.

History LessonsTM