Awesome – Page 3 – Nicolas Demers

Vancouver Queer Film Festival Review: Jamie Travis Retrospective

I don’t think I’d heard of Jamie Travis before last night. My loss, because he’s absolutely brilliant! He’s got a sharp eye for visuals, lavishing bright colours juxtaposed with dark humour and creepy mind screws. You don’t watch his movies, you strap in and let yourself be taken on a tour of a delightfully quirky mind. Maybe it’ll make sense at the end and maybe not; either way, you’re in for a hell of a ride!

I don’t think I’d heard of Jamie Travis before last night. My loss, because he’s absolutely brilliant! He’s got a sharp eye for ultra-polished visuals with bright lavish colours, juxtaposed with dark humour and creepy mind screws. You don’t watch his movies, you strap in and let yourself be taken on a tour of a delightfully quirky mind. Maybe it’ll make sense at the end and maybe not; either way, you’re in for a hell of a ride!

His work is divided into two trilogies (which apparently weren’t planned, they both just sort of happened): the Patterns trilogy (Patterns, Patterns 2, Patterns 3) is a bizarre tale of love, obsession, nightmares, Chinese food and voodoo dolls, with a nice musical number at the end. The Sad Children trilogy (Why The Anderson Children Didn’t Come to Dinner, The Saddest Boy in the World, The Armoire) consists of three darkly humorous tales of childhood alienation. I understand they were partly inspired by Travis’ own childhood, though he assures us he never murdered anyone.

According to the Q&A with A.J. Bond (co-producer of most of his movies*) and Courtenay Webber (co-star of the Patterns films) the look and feel of Why The Anderson Children Didn’t Come to Dinner was inspired by Edward Gorey. I can see that, yeah: when he wasn’t doing out-and-out horror, Gorey liked to take normal Edwardian imagery and twist it just a little, turning it into something vaguely unsettling and surreal.

* Who I just googled. Turns out he also wrote, directed, and starred in Hirsute, which I thoroughly enjoyed at the 2008 festival. Small world!

Vancouver Queer Film Festival Review: The Wise Kids

I just don’t have the words to express how amazing The Wise Kids is. Smart, moving, thoughtful, relentlessly positive? It’s all those things and more. I left the theatre all warm and happy and uplifted. Not bad for a movie about gayness and Evangelical Christianity, eh? Mark my words: this movie will win the VQFF People’s Choice Award, hands down.

This is the story of three friends, over the summer before they leave their South Carolina town for college: we have Laura, hardcore and devout, planning to go to a religious college not far away; Tim, equally devout, gay and quite okay with it, dreaming of going to film school in New York City; Brea, the preacher’s daughter who’s starting to doubt her faith, also headed for New York.

One of the stunning things about this movie is how it avoids the more annoying cliches of coming-out stories: there’s no gay-bashing scene, no gay angst, no fire-and-brimstone sermons, no harsh us-vs-them divisions. Tim starts out comfortably gay and confident that God loves him no matter what. The worse that happens to him is Laura and a couple of others saying it’s wrong and a sin, but they never reject him. His family also tentatively accepts him, though he doesn’t seem out to the rest of his community and it’s not clear how they would feel.

This movie made me think about faith. Now, you all know I’m an atheist. I have no use for religion, superstition, holy books, and all that jazz. I believe that on the whole, faith-based and magical thinking are not positive things. But The Wise Kids drew me into these kids’ world and made me sympathetic to their beliefs, or at least how they live their beliefs.

Laura’s faith is a rock, an anchor, in her words as solid and real as a chair or her close friendship with Brea (I won’t take apart that simile). She believes that the Bible is the literal Word of God, every line of it. You can’t pick and choose what you believe; either the entire Bible is holy, or none of it is. And some might say that very solidity is a comfort, but it’s also mixed with fear: specifically, that Brea and Tim are going to hell and she won’t get to be with them in Heaven. And like an anchor her faith is holding her in place: of her circle she’s the only one who’s not moving far away for college, and the only one who will attend a religious school. But maybe, just maybe, that’s okay. Maybe she’ll be happy not blazing trails or exploring the world, but taking care of sick animals in her community.

Tim’s faith is a light, brightening the world around him. His God is not in a book, but everywhere: God’s love is evident in the sun and the sky, the birds and flowers, and the hearts of all the people around. During the movie he was almost always goofy and smiling and cheerful (and when he wasn’t it was for a damn good reason). There’s no fear in him, and though he promised to keep Brea in his prayers every night, I didn’t get the impression he was afraid of God smacking her down for being an unbeliever—because his God is as loving as he is.

Brea’s faith is a puzzle, to be questioned and examined. She starts out small, openly wondering if “because our elders say so” is a good enough reason to believe something, soon moving on to googling “bible contradictions” and “religions before christ”. All attempts to discuss her doubts are dismissed with reassurances that doubting is a phase that everyone goes through, and God is bigger than her questions. To which she replies, “What does that mean?” And is then told to stop thinking so much.

I thought Brea’s first tentative steps towards unbelief were treated well, with very realistic questions that a doubting believer would have. Most of all, the audience isn’t hit over the head with a “religion is false” anvil, which would have been totally inappropriate for this kind of movie.

Though the movie does take pains to portray this Evangelical community fairly, it’s hardly all sweetness and light. Underneath an aggressive Jesus-fueled cheerfulness, there’s a dark underbelly of hypocrisy, pain and confusion: special mention goes to the pastor coming to grips with his gayness. The first time we saw him I thought he’d be played for laughs, a stereotypically queeny control freak directing the church’s Easter pageant, clearly attracted to Tim. Things get serious when he actually makes a pass at Tim (and immediately regrets it). Things get very serious when he comes out to Tim at Christmas, and plaintively adds, “but I don’t know what to do!”

Even then, the movie doesn’t dwell on angst. We don’t know where their paths will take them, but I don’t doubt for a second that these three kids are going to be okay, each in their own way, and so is the pastor. If that’s faith, it’s a faith I can live with.

Vancouver International Film Festival Review: Insomnia

More Canadian shorts, but these are more focused on art and the artist’s life.

L’année de l’os

Some weird abstract shit. Pretty entertaining under different circumstances, but it was also fairly hypnotic and I think it put me to sleep. Not kidding, but I also blame the fact that I was tired that day.

The Sapporo Project

A lovely animated short featuring the work of Japanese artist and calligrapher Gazanbou Higuchi.

Lippset Diaries

An imaginary peek inside the tortured mind of experimental filmmaker Arthur Lippset

Madame Perrault’s Bluebeard

A disturbing retelling of the story of Bluebeard, where fiction and reality merge.

Figs in Motion

Two butch daddies put on tutus and prance about. Then they put on horse heads and keep going. Very, very cute.

Ghost Noise

The longest film of the series, this is a look at Inuit artist Shuvinai Ashoona, her life in Cape Dorset, and the strange, wonderful things going through her mind.

Flawed

A long-distance relationship between an artist and a successful plastic surgeon, narrated by the artist herself and illustrated with hand-painted postcards. The resolution definitely counts as a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming

Break a Leg

An aspiring actor rehearses a scene with his grandson in a diner. Better than it sounds.

Labour Laws

Anything a woman can do, she can do pregnant! Wait, even pole dancing? Sure! Why not?

Exposed

An elevator breakdown leads to a moment of passion between a photographer and his surprise subject. Hilarious and erotic.

Ladies and Gentlemen: Biddie Schitzerman

An eightysomething standup comedienne’s last show with her loyal sidekick. Or is it? CMoH #2 of the night.

Vancouver International Film Festival Review: The Eye 3D

This hour-long film takes us on a tour of the Very Large Telescope array in Cerro Paranal, Chile—the most powerful deep-space telescope in the world. We hear the scientists and technicians describe their work and discoveries, and through them get a tantalising glimpse of the cosmos.

I expected to see lots of grand starscapes, as in that IMAX movie on Hubble, but we only see a little bit of those right at the beginning, to get us in the mood. The rest of the movie is very down to earth, a lot of it dealing with life at a compound in the middle of nowhere, and the nitty-gritty details of scientific research and making those ginormous telescopes work. And you know what? This was just as inspirational. The people there absolutely love their work: the phrase “dream come true” comes up at least twice from resident scientists; one relatively minor technician also waxes rhapsodic about the VLT’s work in pushing back the boundaries of knowledge, and awesomely refers to the community of workers as his second family.

But we also hear about the science, and it is beautiful: from the supermassive black hole at the core of our galaxy (indirectly detected from tracking the movements of nearby stars, themselves detectable only by the VLT), to another scientist’s research into extragalactic black holes and how our own black hole applies to that, to monitoring the ancient light of unbelievably faraway galaxies… Man, working there really would be any astronomy geek’s dream come true.

The ESO is planning an even larger telescope array, called the Extremely Large Telescope. The location still hasn’t been decided as far as I know, but one candidate site is not too far from the Cerro Paranal—it’s really an ideal region, high up and very dry all year round. Even now the next generation of astronomers, in high school or university, are dreaming and working and a select few will get to work on the ELT, looking for Earth-like planets around distant stars and studying light remnants from the first generation of galaxies.

PS: The movie was in 3D, which I found pretty unnecessary. I’m no fan of 3D to begin with, and with most of the scenes being talking heads, or indoors, I really didn’t see why I had to wear an extra pair of glasses. Meh. Still, that was the only sore point.

High School Confidential

The Out on Screen Society does a lot more than put out quality queer cinema. They also run Out in Schools, a program to put queer films in schools all across the province, to facilitate discussion and fight homophobia and bullying. The news have been full of stories of gay teens committing suicide due to bullying—and don’t think it doesn’t happen in Canada. That’s why Out in Schools is such a vital program, because it may be the difference between life and death for some students.

But in spite of the seriousness, there was a lot of fun to be had. Yummy baked goods, a stint in detention where you might have to do lines or get spanked by a nun, dressing up as a nerd or jock, it all adds up to a freaky fetishy fantasy of a high school that never was, where queer is either just another word or the word of the day. And it was awesome. Looking back I probably should have dressed up, if only putting tape on the bridge of my glasses or something, but oh well.

And then you had the cabaret acts. Because these days you can’t put “high school” and “queer” together without it adding up to “Glee,” the first act was a chorus doing “Don’t Stop Believing”. Then you had the usual gamut: a couple drag acts, a truly awesome gardening-themed stripper, a nerdy librarian who tries to keep it classy but can’t help stripping, and a poetry reading. Great fun.

Apologies for the low quality, all I had was my iPhone and the light level wasn’t too good.

Vancouver International Fringe Festival

I don’t think I’d ever gone to a Fringe show before, and this year I went to two! It should have been three, but I’d double-booked myself on Friday and missed Morgan Brayton’s Raccoonery. I thought about rescheduling (which would have meant buying another ticket, since Fringe policy clearly states there are no refunds or exchanges), but I’d just come down with a cold, so that plan was kaput. Still, I got to enjoy two really excellent shows:

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

Dr. Horrible, live on stage, in front of an audience! And it was awesome. All the scenes, all the songs, plus a few extra surprise ones from Commentary: The Musical, which I’ve never watched so they were brand new (“Ninja Ropes,” “Nobody’s Asian In The Movies”, and “Nobody Wants To Be Moist”). All the classic lines were there, eagerly awaited (“The hammer is my penis.” “The thoroughbred of sin?”), along with a brand new one that got a big laugh from the crowd: when Billy and Moist were discussing truly evil deeds to impress Bad Horse, Moist suggested “slashing funds to the BC arts community.”

(Ooo, politics! See, it’s funny because the Campbell government is evil.)

They did a great job of adapting the action for a small stage with very few actors (for example, in the heist scene the truck was first a tiny remote-controlled one, then left completely offstage.) The actors were fine; the actress playing Penny was a little weaker, and I thought her voice was too soft, but aside from that, no complaints. I absolutely loved the show.

Fucking Stephen Harper

I wasn’t really sure what to expect with Fucking Stephen Harper: How I Sexually Assaulted the 22^nd Prime Minister of Canada and Saved Democracy. I sort of thought we’d get a humorous retelling of the incident where he accidentally touched Stephen Harper’s junk and was charged with sexual assault (though that charge was eventually dismissed). What it turned into was a blistering rant on Canadian Conservative politics, the explicit homophobia of lots of Conservative neanderthals past and present, including the dead-eyed Bush Lite currently running our country, and the apathy of many gay Canadians who think we’ve got it pretty good here. And we do, no question, but there are people in power right now doing their best to turn back the clock and impose their version of Christianity on the country. Whether or not they succeed is up to us.

I really should start on Marci McDonald’s The Armageddon Factor, shouldn’t I?

Vancouver Queer Film Festival Review: From Coast To Coast Is Queer

It’s good to be queer and Canadian! This brand-new installment complements The Coast Is Queer to show queer shorts from all over this fair land of ours. The program included a dozen titles, but I’ll only list the ones that made a strong impression on me.

The Island

Filmed in Cold Lake, Alberta, I believe. Cold Lake looks… cold. I guess it’s probably not just miles and miles of snow every day of the year, but damn. Anyway, the snow forms a great contrast to the cute animation and cuter fantasy of an all-gay tropical island.

Lesbian National Parks

Oh, sure, it’s full of easy jokes about endangered lesbian species like the Marxist-Feminist and Bull-Dykus Americanus, but I didn’t care. So funny!

Au pays des esprits

The only French language short of the night (with subtitles). In a letter to his father, the narrator draws parallels between Louis Riel’s resistance and his own. Lovely use of archival footage, but I’m not sure I really got it. I’d probably have to watch it a couple more times.

Labels

Okay, so having a fetish for cowboys makes you Alberta-sexual? Ha! This cute little movie by David C Jones questioned the importance of all the labels we put on our preferences. Incidentally, it got me thinking about The Butch Factor, where some of the men also downplayed the importance of the label “gay”. The difference is, they didn’t play it for laughs.

The Reason Why

One man’s open letter to four of his exes, all named Mark. Drama and humour in equal amounts

Basin

Native drumming and shots of the Athabasca River basin—lovely pristine water and nature, contrasted with the devastation caused by tar sand extraction. Sort of reminded me of Koyaanisqatsi.

Love Exiled

This film focuses on American or half-American couples who had to move to Canada to get married. They speak of being exiled, unable to return because their marriage wouldn’t be recognised. Grandparents are separated from grandchildren, families are split… this is the human cost of bigotry. Not that the bigots care.

Mind you, there’s a potentially happy ending. The movie was done before Judge Walker struck down Prop 8, so an update may show same-sex marriages happening again in California. We can but hope.

That’s Right Diana Barry, You Needed Me

Canada has given us Anne Murray and Anne of Green Gables. Put the two together and what do you get? A sing-along to Anne Murray’s You Needed Me, with shots of Anne Shirley and her bosom friend (heh) Diana Barry, of course! There’s nothing like a little lesbian subtext and audience participation. This was by far the best short of the night, and a serious contender for best short of the whole festival.

Vancouver Queer Film Festival Review: The Coast Is Queer

Wow, that was an awesome crop of movies this year! Fifteen short films were showcased, ranging in quality from “pretty good” to “excellent”. I’ll just mention the ones that made a strong impression on me.

Butch Tits

Butch dykes. Showing off their tits. Talking about their tits. Playing with their tits. Yeah, there were a lot of tits. Am I ever going to stop saying “tits”?

The Original Movie

I’ll be honest here, I have no clue what the fuck that was about. Did I love it? Oh yeah. The visuals (silhouette animation, which I’ve never seen before at the VQFF) and the music were amazing, the plot was… you know what? I don’t care. I could have watched this all night.

The Heist

A gang of beautiful cat burglars plans to steal a special shoe from the Vancouver Museum’s Fluevog exhibition. Gorgeously filmed in black-and-white, the better to show off every ribbon and sparkle, with fantastic choreography and catchy music, this might be one of the best films of the night.

Stay

The theme here is love vs. fear. Should you come out to your parents and spend the night (the whole night) with your boyfriend, or stay in the closet and risk losing him? Love wins in the end. A little by-the-numbers, but well acted and executed.

Online

Dayton juxtaposes pictures of surfing the net and jerking off, with a voiceover narrating his most heartfelt confessions and darkest fears. Gripping, raw, powerful.

Sleep Tight

Well, shit, I had no idea bedbugs were such horrible beasts. lisa g and her girlfriend found out the hard way in 2006 when their apartment was infested. They filmed the entire ordeal—washing clothes and sheets, moving furniture, bagging up everything, fumigation—only editing and releasing the movie last year.

Super Queer

Okay, that was just too cute for words. A superhero who changes into his secret identity by twirling around like Wonder Woman (but with more sparkles) and who turns gaybashers into prancing queens with lavender lightning? Be honest, who hasn’t fantasized about someone like that?

Ms. Thing

Hey, Karen X Tulchinsky’s a director! This fake infomercial hawks a female version of Thing (you know, from The Addams Family) for all the lonely gals tired of the club scene who need a helping hand. Terrifically acted, cutely raunchy, and so very funny.

Horsey

Until last night, I could honestly say I’ve never seen a woman suck on a rubber dick worn by another woman, in a tux, wearing a horse’s head. After last night, I can no longer make that claim. Bren Ryder and Amber Dawn star in this offbeat little flick about fantasy and desire. Come for the confessions, stay for the horsey sex.

Vancouver Queer Film Festival Review: Riffs On The Theme Of Activism

For various reasons I missed The Love That Won’t Shut Up, Rex vs Singh, and The Portside. I’d be damned if I was going to miss the last of the screenings commissioned by the Queer History Project.

Riffs consists of five very short films (about 5 minutes long on average), with the focus being on a panel discussion with the directors. Moving and informative, Riffs is an excellent conclusion to an already fantastic series.

For various reasons I missed The Love That Won’t Shut Up, Rex vs Singh, and The Portside. I’d be damned if I was going to miss this screening, the last of the series commissioned by the Queer History Project.

Butte

Shot in 2006 by, and starring, Byron Chief Moon, it shows him dancing and meditating on Blood Reserve land in southern Alberta. The visuals are stunning (seriously, that is one beautiful landscape), and Chief Moon does a wonderful job of wordlessly communicating his deep connection to the land, but I couldn’t quite see what it had to do with history or activism. But as he explained during the Q&A, this was a way for him, an urban queer, to reconnect to the land of his ancestors.

Laughing Behind Enemy Lines

This funny and touching documentary by David C Jones gives us a glimpse of the drag entertainers of the 50’s and 60’s, back when homosexuality was still illegal. They didn’t have parades then, or a bookstore, but through their acts, and bringing like-minded people together, these drag queens helped plant the seeds of a true community. Was it activism? Hell yes, though they may not have thought so at the time.

And I learned something, too: one of the interviewees (who owned a nightclub called Roddy’s) briefly ran a queer bootleg club in 1955! Bootleg? Well, BC was one of several provinces that briefly flirted with Prohibition, but that ended in 1920. However, sale of liquor could only take place in government-controlled stores. It’s possible those stores wouldn’t sell to gay people or businesses back then. Fascinating either way!

In The Garden

This is another short that’s at first sight not obviously related to history or activism. Or queerness, for that matter. Debora O uses old footage obtained from her father of their personal garden, and in her voiceover praises the art of community and urban gardening: it affords us a powerful connection with the earth (so often missing with urban folks), with our bodies, with the world at large, and draws the vital link between consumption and cultivation. She concludes that queers, especially, need to reach out and connect just like urban gardeners.

Which might seem a little tacked on, but there is a connection. Queers, she said in the post-show Q&A, are doing a lot of work in community gardening. In fact, her her community garden was started by a queer woman. And, the movie is partly about her family history: she loves loves piecing together stories, stories that were lost when her family immigrated. It’s not always accurate, but it’s a start.

A Film For W.G.

Gwen Haworth delivers this short homage to Vancouver’s trans activists of the 90’s. It was then that trans people (mostly trans women at first, but then branching out to include trans men) started to come together and work for their rights. Featured is Jamie Lee Hamilton, still going strong today, and came very close to getting on the Vancouver City Council in 1996. There’s also the Zenith Foundation, maybe one of the earliest trans groups, who was distributing a newsletter in the early 90’s. An interesting look at a very young, but already very diverse, movement.

I See The Fear

Well, that was a punch in the gut, wasn’t it? This collage of photos and videos by Joe Average and Jamie Griffiths, displaying Joe’s progressing lipoatrophy starting in 2003. It’s raw and unforgiving, daring us to look away—the already troubling images then enhanced by other visual effects, giving them even more of a skeletal or demonic look. The main purpose of the movie, for his, was to make art as therapy and healing. But also to counter the media talking about AIDS as a manageable disease, thanks to new drugs. Younger generations believe there are no consequences to unsafe sex, but drugs still have serious side effects. With this movie and others like it, we can learn from history and hopefully avoid making the same mistakes twice.

Vancouver Queer Film Festival Review: The People I’ve Slept With

Oh my fucking gawd, that was amazing. I was a little hesitant to like it, since just before the screening I learned that director Quentin Lee also directed the short Little Love, which I wasn’t that crazy about. But good news, it looks like his forte is light comedy! 2% serious and 98% pants-wettingly hilarious, it hits every cliché in the gay-com and rom-com books with shameless abandon and makes it work. And I won’t even mention the over-the-top silly scenes, like Angela collecting her DNA samples.

Props to the actors (except the guy playing Lawrence, who was cute but bland) for their great work and especially the physical comedy. And though the comedy was heavy on clichés, it never descended into shallow stereotypes: all the main characters are nicely fleshed-out; we’re (mostly) laughing with them, not at them. A great job all around!