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GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE January 16, 2009 www.GayPeoplesChronicle.com

Jay Crisfar as Otto, a dead boy in a dead building.

It ain't easy being dead

The newest zombie doesn't eat brains

by Anthony Glassman

Certain things are not to everyone's liking.

For one, indie cinema. If everyone liked films that are outside the mainstream, the Cleveland Institute of Art's Cinematheque would not exist, playing the works of directors like Noam Gonick and Bruce LaBruce, both Canadian queer filmmakers whose work is definitely not fare for the local multiplex.

Also, oddly enough, some people don't like zombie films. Whether a classic like the original Night of the Living Dead, or a

terrifying newcomer to the genre like 28

Days Later, fans thrill to the action while others find them... grotesque, perhaps.

The thought of mixing the two—a zombie film from a queer Canadian indie filmmaker simply beggars the imagination.

Thankfully, the Cinematheque is taking imagination out of the equation by presenting Otto; or, Up With Dead People on January 29 and February 1.

The latest film from enfant terrible LaBruce, Otto tells the story of the eponymous undead, a gay teenaged zombie walking around Berlin.

In LaBruce's imagining, the zombie lifestyle has become a fetishized subsection

of queer culture; at one point, the audience almost sees the inside of "zombie bar" Flesh, although a patron heads Otto off before he can enter, telling him, "It's dead in there."

Beyond simply being the tale of Otto (Jay Crisfar) staggering about, eating small animals (for some reason, he can't bring himself to eat human flesh), it's also a film within a film.

Medea Yarn (Katharina Klewinghaus) is making a movie about a gay zombie infestation, her political manifesto about LGBT

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