10 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

February 18, 2005

eveningsout

Sex is politics

Bruce LaBruce's latest film will cement his cult status

by Kaizaad Kotwal

Columbus-Two very subversive pieces of queer cinema will be screened at the Wexner Center on February 25 and 26.

Opening the evening is Guy Maddin's short film Sissy Boy Slap Party. A gang of pent-up, scantily clad sailors gets up to some naughty business. The film satirizes the culture of sailors and its nexus to sexuality, given their fetishized uniforms and lives of solitude out at sea.

The second piece of the evening is the latest from underground Canadian filmmaker Bruce LaBruce.

From the most terrible enfant terrible of gay cinema, Raspberry Reich continues LaBruce's campaign to prove that sex is politics. Like his previous films Super 81⁄2, Hustler White, No Skin off My Ass and Skin Gang, LaBruce argues that revolutionary urges originate in the erogenous zone. Here a group of

would-be German radicals act out fantasies of being the Baader-Meinhof Gang and the Symbionese Liberation Army, beginning in the bedroom and then taking it to the streets. The film is not for the faint of heart. LaBruce's filmmaking is edgy, provocative, and queer every step of the way. He uses fullfledged sex acts as part and parcel of his filmmaking. He blurs the lines between cinema and pornography, making him a champion of the freedom-of-speech folk and a pariah of those who believe that all sex acts on film are porn and nothing more.

In Raspberry Reich, LaBruce argues that humanity needs to let go of its hegemonic reliance on heterosexuality. Here the leader of the revolutionary gang, Gudrun, forces her followers-all men-to have sex with each other as a way of proving their loyalty to the cause. Then one of the gang members falls in love with the son of the wealthy executive that they kidnap.

LaBruce

seems

much

more European in his aesthetic than Canadian. For fans of LaBruce's work, this will definitely cement his cult status. For the rest, remember that his work is an acquired taste, but if

you're up for a new cinematic experience, then Raspberry Reich is the perfect way to go.

The films will screen on Friday and Saturday, February 25 and 26 at 8:45 pm. Tickets

Sissy Boy Slap Party

are $6 general public and $4 for senior citizens, members, and students. Contact www.wexarts.org for more information, or call 614-292-3535.

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On the edge of exile

Performance artist Tim Miller, one of the famed NEA Four, returns to Ohio with his new piece, Us.

Us continues Miller's quest to make sense of his struggles to keep Alistair McCartney, his Australian boyfriend, from being deported. Were McCartney a woman, the couple could get married and she would be safe, but no such protections exist for same-sex couples in the United States.

Unlike his last piece, Glorybox, the new performance looks at the issues through the lens of musicals and show tunes.

“On top of my renowned homoerotic hijinks and political opining, I finally come out as a big musical show queen!" Miller notes. "Us ricochets between my love affair since childhood with Broadway musicals crosscut to an exploration of gay marriage, exile and the injustices lesbian and gay couples face in the good ol' USA.

"Teetering here on the edge of exile, it has been really fun to do this exploration of how musicals informed my queer identity and politics as we grow up," Miller continues. "But then, I was once an eight-year-old boy who did stripteases for his brother with Gypsy on the record player."

Miller will be performing at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park's Marx Theater, 962 Mt. Adams Circle, on Monday, February 28. For more information or tickets, call 513-421-3888.

Then, on Saturday, March 5, he will be at Oberlin College's Warner Center, 30 North Professor St. for an 8 pm show. Tickets for the general public are $5, and tickets and information are available by calling 440-775-8169.

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