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Tuesday, June 1st, 2021

QUEERGURU @ THE MOVIES : INSIDE OUT, TORONTO

 

For nearly three decades, Inside Out has brought Toronto’s 2SLGBTQ+ community together in celebration of the best queer film from Canada and around the world. Through their annual Festivals in Toronto and Ottawa, their filmmaker initiatives, their youth engagement, and their year-round events and screenings, Inside Out is engaged every day in challenging attitudes and changing lives.

Inside Out is back, online, and ready to present the best in queer cinema, less than a year after our postponed 2020 Festival. It is a fabulous diverse program (as usual) which we have gone through with a toothcomb to come up with QUEERGURU TOP TEN PICKS.  This doesnt mean they qualify as the very best BUT they are definitely are our favorites, which we swear you shouldn’t miss.

P.S. You don’t have to go to Toronto to see this program BUT you must reside in Ontario Province to be able to stream them online. 

 

Here then in alphabetical order : 

BEING THUNDER Is the heart-touching tale of Sherenté Harris, a two-spirit genderqueer teenager from the Narragansett tribe in Rhode Island.  Sherenté an articulate and determined teen has the full support of her family and most of her tribe.  However French filmmaker Stephanie Lamorre‘s camera captures bias from some of the judges in the traditional shawl dance competitions  Sherenté loves to participate.  No spoilers here but there is a scene when Sherenté is surrounded by her family waiting to see which Colleges will offer her a place that will bring tears to your eyes.

 

BEYTO: Talented swimmer, motivated apprentice, cool buddy: Beyto is in the midst of life. But when the only son of a Turkish migrant family falls in love with his coach Mike, an ideal world falls to pieces. His parents only see one way out: They lure him to their home village and plan his wedding with Seher, his childhood friend. Suddenly, Beyto finds himself in a disruptive love triangle. This multicultural story about love and emancipation  by Gitta Gsell is a rare LGBTQ film from Switzerland

 

 

Boy Meets Boy : In this film by Daniel Sanchez Lopez two gay men meet each other on the dancefloor in Berlin after 24 hours of clubbing. At first, it’s the hazy intimacy of drugs that bring them together but soon, as they talk and chill, they fall into the comfort of compatibility.  The magic of the film creeps up on you unaware. Its structure hides behind the ebb and flow of the two central characters’ dialogue. The easy-flowing conversation is the side effect of Hannah Renton and Lopez’s script never drawing attention to itself. Its visual appeal is from camerawork that disappears. The use of silence is the most powerful part of the sound design

 

 

GENDERATION Monika Treut is a queer German filmmaker with some 20 films under her belt.  Her very first feature with Seduction:The Cruel Woman, a film that explores sadomasochistic sex practices..  With Genderation, Treut goes back to the West Coast of the US to do a follow-up on Gendernauts a documentary that she made some 20 years. Most of her protagonists are artistic and intellectual trans who have enjoyed varying degrees of success and happiness, and all, without exception, finding time to bitch about how expensive the cost of life is nowadays.  It’s an intriguing look back to a time when transitioning was just becoming public in enlightened communities in places like San Francisco.

 

 

LEADING LADIES: For her latest feature film, Spanish queer filmmaker RUTH CAUDELI continues with her fixation with ‘navel-gazing’ which was the topic of her sophomore movie SECOND STAR ON THE RIGHT. Leading Ladies, filmed in Colombia,  is the tale of five young women who have gathered together for a celebratory dinner for one of their number who has been away for the past two months.  They have no idea why Marce (MARCELA ROBLEDO) disappeared suddenly without warning and it soon appears that they will not necessarily believe or accept her explanation anyway.

 

 

MOFFIE: The fact that ‘moffie’ is the South African equivalent of ‘faggot’ sets the tone for one of the most harrowing coming-of-age films we have ever seen.  It is set in South Africa in 1981 in the midst of apartheid where the white minority still dominates and persecutes the ‘colored’ population.  They however are not the enemy in this war drama, as the country is obsessed with fighting neighboring Angola with its Soviet-backed troops.  If there is one thing that the South Africans hate as much as ‘colored’ people it is Communists.  It goes without saying that ‘moffies’  are on that list too.

 

 

POTATO DREAMS OF AMERICA : queer filmmaker Wes Hurley’s excellent autobiographical tale of his journey from Russia as a young gay immigrant is the perfect choice for the opening night gala.  Maybe a tad patchy in parts but it’s a joyous wee film with some wonderful surprises like an almost unrecognizable Lea Delaria giving a scene-stealing performance.

 

Let’s start by saying Carlos Lopez Estrada’s SUMMERTIME gets away with a lot. A lot. It is an intertwined series of poems and characters that alliterate, rhyme, and expound their way through the LA summer heat. The satire is deft but the homage is sincere as each seeming stereotype is elevated by the heroism of verse. There are very few movies that could successfully deliver the rhyme “I was walking down Santa Monica, Without my harmonica, The only thing I had to say, is that I love all the people in LA”. But it does.

 

 

TRANS IN TRUMPLAND Just 4 days after American/Iranian filmmaker Tony Zosherafatin finished his transitioning, Trump was elected President.  Despite his occasional rhetoric about wanting to be the President for all Americans, what followed was the most divisive and hate-ridden four years in our country’s history. Some of the worst-hit were the transgender community which Trump and the Far Right were hell-bent on completely destroying.

From his relative comfort in liberal New York City Zosherafatain decided to hit the road with a camera crew to see how other transgender people were faring in the ultra-conservative States. By observing and talking to four people at different parts of their own journey, Zosherafatain manages to give us such an intimate look at so the obstacles they had to overcome.  Many of which will come as such a surprise to most of us resulting in giving us a better understanding of some of their enormous personal struggles.

 

 

YES I AM : THE RIC WEILAND STORYWe all need heroes and role models.  Especially in the LGBTQ community.  Most of the ones we have are very colorful and loud.  However, there are some like RIK WEILAND who are far from that.  Yet this very quiet private man, who sadly took his own life in 2006, is probably the most important queer activist and philanthropist of his generation.   Thanks to Aaron Bear’s new film we hope Weiland’s name and memory will be recognized for who he truly was.

 

 

INSIDE OUT

Ontario-Wide  May 27th - June 6th

For the full program check out https://insideout.ca/festival/schedule/

 

P.S. To read the full reviews of these, and over 1200 other LGBTQ films go to www.queerguru.com


Posted by queerguru  at  12:04


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