22nd International San Francisco Lesbian and Gay Film Festival
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Special Report By Andrea Chase
The 22nd San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival has over 250 films from around the world. It's impossible not to find something to love. Lots of things, as a matter of fact.
How about "Finding north" by Tanya Wexler? It's is a post-modern Cinderella story. This time out, though, the glass slipper is a hush puppy, the prince charming is gay, and instead of the magic kingdom, the prince and his surprised princess find themselves in Texas. It's a complicated, enchanting story.
"Homo Heights," from director Sara Moore, is a surreal soap-opera about the gay mafia played strictly for camp laughs. It stars Quentin Crisp and Lea DeLaria at her most hard-boiled and hilarious.
"The Diane Linkletter Story," part of a program of short films grouped under the title "Performing Identity: Parody & Punk" is a rarely seen flick that was originally intended as nothing more than a screen test for "Mulitiple Maniacs." The festival will be showing John Waters personal copy.
"The Real Ellen Story," by Fenton Baily and Randy Barbato, who also did "Party Monster," aims the camera at the media circus that erupted when Ellen De Generes decided that both she and her TV persona would bolt from the closet.
Jeff Dupre's "Out of the Past" is a documentary about how one student's attempt to found a gay/straight alliance club at her high school set off a controversy that ultimately held her state, Utah, up to national ridicule for it's extreme homophobic reaction. The film puts such bigotry in context by spotlighting the struggles of the gay community over the years and the early crusaders for gay rights. More interesting is the way it contrasts the gradual acceptance of racial equality with all too ample evidence that anti-gay rhetoric has changed little over the years.
For more information about the 22nd San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, call 415 703 8663.
© 1998 - Andrea Chase - Air Date: 6/10/98
