2001 Image/Out Film Festival

Celluloid bent: nine days, 120 films, and a ‘Fluffer’ at ImageOut

ImageOut, Rochester’s Lesbian and Gay Film and Video Festival, celebrates its ninth anniversary this week with a nine-day extravaganza of over 120 feature length films and shorts, highlighted by a lecture from the Pope of Trash himself --- John Waters.

Read on for our take on the films selected by this year’s festival committee. And be sure to consult the full ImageOut schedule, and our interview with Mr. Waters.

The Monkey’s Mask (Samantha Lang, Australia, 91 minutes) - 7 p.m. Friday, October 5, Little Theatre

A story about a female private detective is genre-busting enough, but Jill Fitzpatrick (Susie Porter) is even more extraordinary because this dick is also a dyke. Jill is hired to investigate the disappearance of a Sydney college student named Mickey (Abbie Cornish) who, as we learn through Mask’s opening scene, has some issues about the male anatomy.

The clues lead Jill into the dark, sexually charged world of --- get this --- poetry readings (imagine the poor pimply kid at Blockbuster trying to figure out on which shelf to put a film with a murder mystery, poetry, and girl-on-girl sex). For some reason, the local cops don’t seem to care about the missing girl, which motivates Jill even more. And like any hard-boiled detective worth their weight in trenchcoats, she beds the prime suspect --- Mickey’s poetry teacher (Kelly McGillis).

Mask is based on Aussie Dorothy Porter’s novel, which was actually written in prose, leaving most of the film to play out in slow motion… which is sometimes just a nice way of saying it’s not paced very well. Keep an eye on Porter in next summer’s Episode II: Attack of the Clones.

Honorable MENtion (Total running time: 91 minutes) - 2 p.m. Saturday, October 6, Little Theatre

The Honorable MENtion program includes three documentary shorts about gay men put in unique situations because of their sexual preference. On the surface, one might wonder what makes photographer John Dugdale's life worthy of a film. Sure, his pictures are pretty, but what makes Dugdale's work so extraordinary aren't the pictures themselves --- it’s the fact their creator is legally blind.

Dugdale, a former commercial photographer, lost his eyesight in an AIDS-related illness and decided to forgo his profitable gig and become a purely artistic shutterbug. While Dugdale's story is somewhat uplifting and triumphant, director Karen Murphy uses depressing, wrist-slashing cello music throughout the video production of Life’s Evening Hour.

In addition to Hour, this program includes No Backup, a short about a gay LAPD officer who loves his job but can't stand his intolerant co-workers' refusal to back him up in the line of duty (among other horrible things).

Paradise Bent (Total running time: 94 minutes) - 4 p.m. Saturday, October 6, Little Theatre

In 1995, director Heather Croall went to Samoa to make documentaries for UNICEF and was introduced to the fa'afafine way of life. She returned to the island in 1998 to make Paradise Bent: Boys Will Be Girls in Samoa, a documentary about the fa'afafine lifestyle, their history and role in Samoan society.

What? You don't know what a fa'afafine is? Okay. For starters, it's pronounced like the nickname of a certain horse-toothed radio producer (faa-faa-feeney). It translates into "in the manner of a woman" and refers to boys who take on domestic roles in their households, and it's a pretty widely accepted practice in Samoa, with two to three fa'afafines in some large families.

The Paradise Bent program includes a half-dozen shorter documentaries exploring various sexual labels, such as About Vivien, which stars Australian drag queens from the World War II era.

The Adventures of Felix (Olivier Ducastel/Jacques Martineau, France, 97 minutes) - 8 p.m. Saturday, October 6, Dryden Theatre

Ducastel and Martineau, the creators of everyone's favorite AIDS-themed musical, Jeanne and the Perfect Guy, are back with the decidedly non-musical Felix, the tale of a young, gay Arab traveling from Normandy to Marseilles to meet the father he never knew. It's a typical art-house road-trip flick, in that nothing exciting happens and, despite his fear of being beaten because of his sexual preference and race, everyone Felix meets is nice, helpful, and unbelievably tolerant. While that's the kind of thing you'd like to see in everyday society, it doesn't make for a very exciting film.

Trembling Before G-d (Sandi Simcha Dubowski, USA, 84 minutes) - 2 p.m. Sunday, October 7, Little Theatre

Beginning with a quote from Leviticus 20:13, the infamous "gays are bad" passage in the Talmud, G-d studies the balance of religion and sexuality within the Hasidic and Orthodox communities, and does a good job showing Jews aren't any less judgmental than Christians when it comes to shunning their own.

Shot over five years in Los Angeles, Miami, San Francisco, London, Jerusalem, and, of course, Brooklyn, Dubowski interviews dozens of people, both in support of and against the religion’s hard-line stance on homosexuality, but focuses on a handful of people who have either been ostracized by their friends and family for coming out, or live in constant fear of being discovered and then ostracized. There are plenty of stories and anecdotes; some are interesting (like the first openly gay rabbi), some amusing (the vaguely dental-sounding word "Orthodykes" is coined), and some heartbreaking (like a man who hasn't had contact with anyone in his family for 30 years).

Even though it may sound interesting, G-d isn't that remarkable, at least as far as documentaries go. It's one-sided and nothing particularly revealing or shocking is uncovered by Dubowski (it's not like you can walk in expecting the film to be a lovefest). It's definitely geared toward a specific demographic, and it should serve that demographic well.

The Fluffer (Richard Glatzer and Wash West, USA, 94 minutes) - 10:30 p.m. Sunday, October 7, Little Theatre

Plenty of folks have come home from the video store with the wrong cassette in the case, but not too many have ended up in the gay porn business because of it. That’s what happens to Sean McGinnis (Michael Cunio) when he pops Citizen Cum into the VCR expecting to see Citizen Kane. Sean develops a crush on actor Johnny Rebel (Scott Gurney) and gets a job as an assistant at a production studio called Men of Janus.

Sure, there a lots of funny titles to make you titter (like Tranny Get Your Gun and Poke-a-Hot-Ass), but the wonderful world of gay film isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. For starters, Sean learns Johnny Rebel is merely a guy named Mike who isn’t even really gay, but “gay for pay,” which means he won’t kiss, won’t go down, and won’t be a bottom. Mike is strung out on meth, has a hot stripper girlfriend (Roxanne Day), and, to top it all off, he’s not even a nice guy. But Sean still gets to “fluff” his idol, so it’s all good.

The Fluffer starts out as a very funny comedy about the inner-workings of gay porn industry, but takes a sudden turn for the dramatic in the second act and becomes even more of a hokey downer in the third.

Lifetime Guarantee: Phranc’s Adventures in Plastic (Lisa Udelson, USA, 58 minutes) - 10:15 p.m. Tuesday, October 9, Nazareth College

Any film that contains the line "Did you know broccoli was a heavy breather?" deserves worldwide critical praise. The good news is Guarantee is good enough on its own to merit such over-the-top acclaim. Phranc, in case you didn't know, is a veteran of the L.A. punk scene (as a guitarist for Catholic Discipline, she was included in the rock doc The Decline of Western Civilization), who has since transformed herself into an "all-American Jewish lesbian folksinger." Guarantee doesn't focus much on Phranc's musical career, rather her gig that puts real money on the table. And here's a hint: It involves plastic and it's really sexy.

If you guessed Phranc was in Tupperware sales, you're right. Guarantee shows Phranc trying to accumulate enough sales to be invited to Jubilee, a gathering of the sales-force elite who meet at the ancestral Florida birthplace of the plastic creations. Amazingly, Phranc only gets the stink-eye from a few of her fellow salespeople.

Oh, we should probably explain what Phranc looks like. Imagine a Saturday Night Live skit portraying Pee-Wee Herman as a late night infomercial pitchman, and you're somewhere in the right neighborhood. A flattop haircut, polka-dot bowtie, white dress shirt, white apron, and blue jeans with cuffs big enough to house several puppies don't stop Phranc from peddling her wares to everyone from L.A. Weekly workers to strangers on the flight to Jubilee. Udelson cuts clips of hysterically dated Tupperware sales training films into the mix, as if there wasn't enough funny stuff going on here.

Come Undone (Sébastien Lifshitz, France, 100 minutes) - 8 p.m. Wednesday, October 10, Little Theatre

Undone is a real challenge to watch --- not because of its content (although there are lots of penis shots), but because of its structure. It could take viewers a good 30 to 40 minutes to finally settle into Lifshitz's story, which almost haphazardly flops around using flashbacks and flashforwards like they're going out of style. But if you can claw your way through it all, Undone becomes increasingly interesting as it approaches its finale.

Lifshitz's story (co-written by Stéphane Bouquet) focuses on the first love of college-bound 18-year-old Matthieu (Jérémie Elkaïm), who is vacationing with his family near Nantes. One day while at the beach with his sister, Matthieu locks eyes with a hunky local lad named Cédric (Stéphane Rideau), a more experienced boy (and ex-hustler, to boot) who works at a local waffle vendor. Sparks fly and a physical relationship quickly follows, despite the fact that Matthieu has apparently had no previous sexual experience, gay or otherwise. Passionate trysts turn into ugly spats, and Matthieu becomes somewhat unhinged, leading up to Undone's gut-wrenching finale... which you kind of see at the beginning because of the film's screwy construction.

The high point here is the acting, which never once seems like acting. But the story is essentially about a shy, quiet boy falling for a rough partner from the other side of the tracks. It's nothing new, but worth a viewing if only for the performances of Elkaïm and Rideau.

Coming To Terms (Total running time: 97 minutes) - 4 p.m. Thursday, October 11, Little Theatre

It’s October 1999 when Just Call Me Kade opens, and Kate Farlow Collins is a 16-year-old from Tucson with divorced parents. She likes to skateboard and hosts a public access show called Katester and G-Man. When the documentary short (shot on video) ends in March 2001, Kate has become Kade, and all the stuff in between shows the journey taken by the teenage FTM (female-to-male transgendered person) to get from Point A to Point B.

Also appearing with Kade in the Coming to Terms program is Colour Me Gay, a informercial-type spoof on coming out of the closet; and Coming to Terms, the story of a college student pressured into outing himself over the phone to his family, and then dealing with the consequences of the fallout.

Kings and Queens (Total running time: 104 minutes) - 10 p.m. Thursday, October 11, Little Theatre

You’ll probably never see the Ms. Whole Wide World pageant on broadcast television, but thanks to ImageOut, you finally have a chance take in the international competition for the world’s top drag queens. Well, okay --- these ladies aren’t international, and they probably don’t register on whatever it is they use to rank drag queens. The whole thing started 12 years ago with a bunch of friends trying to upstage the bigger, straighter pageants, but has evolved into a fundraising bash with celebrity judges (including Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Eric McCormack) and an emcee who we’re not totally convinced isn’t in drag himself (Bruce Vilanch).

Queens of the World is a nicely structured documentary, first introducing us to the contestants (like Kay Sedia from Mexico) and then having them explain their first experiences in cross-dressing. We hear, between all the catty bitching, about plans for hair, dresses, and ideas for the all-important talent competition, but as the pageant date draws near, the queens start worrying about deadlines, monetary investment, and --- the horror! --- potentially scaling back their ambitiously detailed plans.

The pageant itself is very funny, and kicks off with an opening number performed to --- what else --- “Man, I Feel Like a Woman.” The Kings and Queens program also includes Kings, a documentary short about drag kings.

Big Eden (Thomas Bezucha, USA, 118 minutes) - 8 p.m. Saturday, October 13, Dryden Theatre

If there was such a place as Gay DisneyWorld, Bezucha would have you believe it was located not in San Francisco, Provincetown, or Key West, but in Big Eden, Montana. That's right, Montana --- the place that's just one state removed from Matthew Shepard's murder. If that seems an unlikely scenario to you, welcome to the club, but it's one of the things that has made Bezucha's film so endearing to audiences across the country.

Eden is about a hopelessly unattached gay Manhattan artist named Henry (Arye Gross), who, on the eve of his big opening, gets a call conveying some bad news --- his grandfather has had a stroke. So Henry blows off his opening and races home to Montana to take care of his widower granddad (and if there was ever a theme that would scare off homophobes, it'd be gay artists and their big openings... not to mention strokes and blowing things off).

From the minute he steps foot in Big Eden, all Henry can think about is his old high-school crush and hetero best friend Dean (Tim DeKay), who, coincidentally, has just split up with his wife. In the meantime, Pike (Eric Schweig), a Native American who runs the town's general store, has developed an attraction to Henry.

Because all of this is happening in a rural Montana town, you'd expect there to be some kind of anti-gay backlash, but there isn't. In fact, most of the townsfolk bend over backward to help Pike win over Henry, because it's, like, so obvious Dean matches up better with the town's mayor. Eden is nothing more than a small-town gay love triangle with no antagonist and very little conflict.

Then again, what do we know? Eden has won oodles of awards from various gay and lesbian festivals, but also took home the top two trophies at the Cleveland fest, beating critically praised stuff like Memento, Amores Perros, and With a Friend Like Harry. Eden is a formulaic mess, but does have some breathtaking scenery and yet another chance to see Louise Fletcher teamed up with a really tall Indian, a la One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.