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review: Out Twin Cities Film Festival
2010-Jun-03, Thursday 11:53 amNormally, a film festival would warrant a review of the films presented. In this case, however, a review of the festival itself seems more appropriate. Normally, again, a film festival is a dark theater where films are projected in somber sequence so the audience may soak up and quietly ponder the presented themes like passive little sponges. This film festival provided a stupendously bad environment for sponges. For what it was intending, though... it was actually pretty good.
You wouldn't normally expect a short break between films to include a drag queen, with music blaring at deafening levels, running through the theater with a microphone encouraging the audience to belt out the refrain "We're not going to take it anymore!" from the song by Twisted Sister. This festival had that scene. Perfectly appropriate after watching "Beyond Gay: The Politics Of Pride" in which we saw a Russian pride parade organizer with bruises on his face exclaim excitedly that they were making progress because this year the authorities held the bashers instead of the bashed. (We also heard another pride parade attendee talk about the people he'd known in his country who were beaten or murdered... by police.)
This film festival was obviously trying to be something more than just a sedate recounting of artwork. A lot of organizing obviously went into it, far beyond the usual headaches of arranging for reels to show. The problem, however, appeared to be that attendees were getting something that was simply not what they expected. Wrong expectations, and all that. I suspect the organizers will take a great deal of criticism from people who were downright offended by the imposition of this new concept in community involvement.
That's the thing, though. Is there really a market for this kind of community involvement? All the noise and commotion really isn't conducive to pondering, which is probably what most spongy film festival attendees are prepared to do. I think it could be a worthy experiment, getting various kinds of creative people together in a building for a few hours, in an environment where chatting is almost expected rather than discouraged. I don't know, though, that the experiment can rely upon the traditional film goer to support it. It may require a new audience. It remains to be seen what demographic that audience will include.
I knew I was out of my comfort zone when early on a drag queen in goggles came up and put her hand on my leg during her performance (with spotlight, I think, but I was mostly blanked out by that point). Over the course of the evening, the audience even joined in to sing "Happy Birthday" twice as edibles were presented to the recipients. There was traditional singing in addition to the many drag acts. Not your average film festival.
I enjoyed that Matt Thompson's father was there to go up to the spotlight and speak about the short film that his son created. That's a lot of progress, considering that two years ago Matt was coming to Bear Coffee in secret. I worried about the parents, though, when 2 short films after Matt's "Night Terrors" we got to see what was essentially a fictional snuff film. It was intended as horror, but all I got was creeped out. I couldn't see how it had any queer values to teach. I hope the parents left before that one played.
The closing film was excellent. It was called simply "Drool", a messy name for a messy (in an entertaining way) story. Do you remember that great song "Goodbye Earl" by the Dixie Chicks? Imagine if that music were the theme song for a movie. This movie would be the one that deserved the song. Well acted all around, including Oded Fehr (requisite *WOOF!*) as "the husband" that dies. Laura Harring as "the wife" even managed to pull off a convincing drab (in real life) to delicious (in fantasy sequences) visual shift. That feat is hard to do. Congrats to her for that one.
Out Twin Cities film festival was intended as a community-building event rather than a film review. It's certainly not what people expected, but I think it's an experiment worth continuing next year. Let's see how creative the Twin Cities can be!
You wouldn't normally expect a short break between films to include a drag queen, with music blaring at deafening levels, running through the theater with a microphone encouraging the audience to belt out the refrain "We're not going to take it anymore!" from the song by Twisted Sister. This festival had that scene. Perfectly appropriate after watching "Beyond Gay: The Politics Of Pride" in which we saw a Russian pride parade organizer with bruises on his face exclaim excitedly that they were making progress because this year the authorities held the bashers instead of the bashed. (We also heard another pride parade attendee talk about the people he'd known in his country who were beaten or murdered... by police.)
This film festival was obviously trying to be something more than just a sedate recounting of artwork. A lot of organizing obviously went into it, far beyond the usual headaches of arranging for reels to show. The problem, however, appeared to be that attendees were getting something that was simply not what they expected. Wrong expectations, and all that. I suspect the organizers will take a great deal of criticism from people who were downright offended by the imposition of this new concept in community involvement.
That's the thing, though. Is there really a market for this kind of community involvement? All the noise and commotion really isn't conducive to pondering, which is probably what most spongy film festival attendees are prepared to do. I think it could be a worthy experiment, getting various kinds of creative people together in a building for a few hours, in an environment where chatting is almost expected rather than discouraged. I don't know, though, that the experiment can rely upon the traditional film goer to support it. It may require a new audience. It remains to be seen what demographic that audience will include.
I knew I was out of my comfort zone when early on a drag queen in goggles came up and put her hand on my leg during her performance (with spotlight, I think, but I was mostly blanked out by that point). Over the course of the evening, the audience even joined in to sing "Happy Birthday" twice as edibles were presented to the recipients. There was traditional singing in addition to the many drag acts. Not your average film festival.
I enjoyed that Matt Thompson's father was there to go up to the spotlight and speak about the short film that his son created. That's a lot of progress, considering that two years ago Matt was coming to Bear Coffee in secret. I worried about the parents, though, when 2 short films after Matt's "Night Terrors" we got to see what was essentially a fictional snuff film. It was intended as horror, but all I got was creeped out. I couldn't see how it had any queer values to teach. I hope the parents left before that one played.
The closing film was excellent. It was called simply "Drool", a messy name for a messy (in an entertaining way) story. Do you remember that great song "Goodbye Earl" by the Dixie Chicks? Imagine if that music were the theme song for a movie. This movie would be the one that deserved the song. Well acted all around, including Oded Fehr (requisite *WOOF!*) as "the husband" that dies. Laura Harring as "the wife" even managed to pull off a convincing drab (in real life) to delicious (in fantasy sequences) visual shift. That feat is hard to do. Congrats to her for that one.
Out Twin Cities film festival was intended as a community-building event rather than a film review. It's certainly not what people expected, but I think it's an experiment worth continuing next year. Let's see how creative the Twin Cities can be!