Film Feast
Mercury Cinema
6 - 9 July 2006



While films like 'Brokeback Mountain' are edging homosexuality slowly towards the mainstream, the need for gay film festivals continues. Gay filmmakers making gay stories are still marginalised within the film industry at large and queer film festivals remain the only opportunity for the gay and lesbian population (and adventurous heterosexuals) to get a concentrated dose of contemporary gay cinema.

Encouraged by the success of the November festival Film Feast, organisers decided to run an inaugural winter season - and if the quality of the product and the number of punters is any indication, Winter Film Feast is here to stay.

As usual, the program featured films with 'coming out' narratives. In '50 Ways to Say Fabulous' Billy (Andrew Paterson) is a portly and effeminate twelve year old growing up in rural New Zealand. The only thing standing between Billy and a bashing at school from his peers is his rugby mad tomboy cousin and protector Lou (Harriet Beattie). When the outsider Roy (Jay Collins) arrives at school, he becomes attracted to Billy, awakens Billy to his sexuality and alienates Billy from Lou. Billy's hormones and Lou's anger are further stirred by the arrival of a strapping new farmhand Jamie (Michael Dorman), to whom Lou also becomes attracted. Eventually, Billy comes to understand and accept himself as he is, although Roy is abandoned in the process in favour of Lou. While Billy had learned a lot by the film's conclusion, he seemed to be doing so at his own cost by remaining in a poisonous environment. It was all too palatable for my activist taste.

In the German film 'Balls', Ecki (Maximilian Bruckner) is a goalkeeper in his provincial town's soccer team. When his sexuality is uncovered and he is sacked by his own teammates, Ecki challenges them to a match in four weeks' time with a team of gay footballers that he vows to recruit from nearby Dortmund. Along the way, he discovers love with Sven (David Rott) and that coming out requires bravery above and beyond sporting machismo.

Dortmund is a long way from Los Angeles if the 2-part documentary 'Sex/Life In LA' is any guide. In 1997, German film director Jochen Hoch took his camera to Los Angeles and made a disarmingly frank and explicit documentary about its thriving gay porn industry by following the lives of a number of would-be and real stars. What is apparent from the outset is the fickle nature of the business and the tenuous boundaries between porn star and hustler, gym junkie and Crystal junkie. Everyone works on and sells their body, and fame and fortune are as transient as youth. We see the star of Madonna's Justify My Love video Tony Ward reduced to wanking on camera. Performance artist Rick Athey rejoices that "Everyone is so insipid" in this hyperbolic and superficial environment.

Hoch returned to LA in 2004 to make Part 2 catching up with most of the participants from Part 1 only to discover that the primacy of the Internet and the need for real interaction has placed the fictional porn film on the endangered species list. We see an Internet hotel where chatters interact with the all-male residents, order their own live sex shows and eventually get to evict the residents when they tire of them. Predictably, the stars of Part 1 become the also-rans of Part 2, working 'nine to five' jobs and unable to form relationships. As former pin-up boy Kevin Kramer laments, the Internet has made everyone more horny, but even more fussy and indecisive.

Insecurity in post 9/11 gay New York is at the centre of Craig Chester's comedy 'Adam And Steve'. Adam (Chester) and Steve (Malcolm Gets) meet in 1987 (when George Michael was 'straight') in a dance-bar and have the worst date of their lives culminating in a cocaine induced shitting and vomiting spectacular. When they meet again seventeen years later, they don't recognize each other and fall in love - but will they still love each other when the past reemerges? The film is a blatant attempt to subvert the traditional straight romantic comedy genre complete with wacky best friends and parents, plot improbabilities and a schmaltzy ending. I also felt that Chester was sending a message to New Yorkers to snap out of their malaise and rediscover the romantic city adored by filmmakers like Woody Allen.

Congratulations to Feast organisers for delivering another diverse program balancing gay history with gay evolution - bring on November!

Mal Byrne