The 2011 Pride Film Festival, in Review

Unlike last year where I had the oomph and time to write individual reviews for each film, this year, I do not.

Instead I’ll tell you about the highlights and a few of the lowlights.

Over all I’m under the general impression that there were fewer gay films this year, about the same number of lesbian films, no truly bisexual films, and an increase in the number of transgendered films—although this is my general impression. Perhaps if I were to sit down and do a count, it would be different.

My favorite feature length film of the weekend (so far) was Violet Tendencies, in which an aging fag-hag wants a heterosexual boyfriend—but since she is surrounded by gays, she has no idea how to interact with heterosexual males and ends up scaring them off—some in less than two minutes. She does manage to sustain a long-term relationship with a (non-practicing) Mormon whose idea of fun is to get up early and watch the early morning light dance across columns. The film is a wonderful comedy and the audience loved it.

Hens and Chicks was the best short of the weekend. It is an adorable film about a young girl who, upon learning the facts of life (women need men in order to have babies), wonders where she came from.

The most depressing film shown was Latecomers, a documentary out of the UK which explores two men who came out late in life: one, Margaret, is transgendered and celebrating by going to London Pride, the other, Peter, is a sniveling weasel who says that since his wife provides 80% of what he wants in a relationship, he doesn’t want out – plus he has adult children. I wanted to choke Peter, and as MT noted, if his wife truly loved him, she would divorce him.

The least understandable film of the weekend was, naturally, a German one: Toren im Sand. In theory it was about two guys in a relationship who never have sex (if they were women, we would call it Lesbian Bed Death), but like many German films, the director seems not to have had a budget for lighting—out of the 16 minutes that the film lasted, about a third wasn’t visible – we could hear the dialogue but we couldn’t see what the hell was going on. Beyond that I never quite understood it.

Next there were two films that seemed to be too long: Contracorriente, a Peruvian film about a married man with a pregnant wife who has an affair with a man came in at 100 minutes, but I bet it could be trimmed to 80 minutes without damaging the storyline. I’ll admit that of the people I’ve talked to, I’m the only one with that opinion.

The other film that lasted too long was Riot Acts: Flaunting Gender Deviance in Music Performance. That said, it might not actually have been too long, but it was cut in such a way that there were multiple times that it felt like the film was about to end, only to suddenly continue onward.

Overall it’s been a pleasant weekend – a diverting, fun, and interesting set of movies. I’ve only skipped one movie so far and I will probably skip the last movie tonight—I skipped The Four-Faced Liar because it started past midnight and I was tired, and I will probably skip Ghosted, the last film of the weekend—it’s a German flick about a Hamburger who is coming to terms with her lover’s murder.

Bonus Film: The winner of the make a film in a week video was “The Lady Bunch”–out of the six films entered it was by far the best film–and apparently it won in a landslide!