Queer – Page 11 – Nicolas Demers

Vancouver Queer Film Festival Review: The People I’ve Slept With

Oh my fucking gawd, that was amazing. I was a little hesitant to like it, since just before the screening I learned that director Quentin Lee also directed the short Little Love, which I wasn’t that crazy about. But good news, it looks like his forte is light comedy! 2% serious and 98% pants-wettingly hilarious, it hits every cliché in the gay-com and rom-com books with shameless abandon and makes it work. And I won’t even mention the over-the-top silly scenes, like Angela collecting her DNA samples.

Props to the actors (except the guy playing Lawrence, who was cute but bland) for their great work and especially the physical comedy. And though the comedy was heavy on clichés, it never descended into shallow stereotypes: all the main characters are nicely fleshed-out; we’re (mostly) laughing with them, not at them. A great job all around!

Vancouver Queer Film Festival Review: Pornography: A Thriller

Well, that was a mindfuck and a half! Hot porn stars, a mythical snuff tape and urban legends collide in this creepy nightmarish thriller. From the synopsis I expected weird horror, and at first that’s what it looked like I was getting. The first act, dealing with the life and disappearance of porn star Mark Anton, was really disturbing but had no overtly supernatural elements.

Well, that was a mindfuck and a half! Hot porn stars, a mythical snuff tape and urban legends collide in this creepy nightmarish thriller directed by David Kittredge. From the synopsis I expected weird horror, and at first that’s what it looked like I was getting. The first act, dealing with the life and disappearance of porn star Mark Anton, was really disturbing but had no overtly supernatural elements. The second act, following Mike’s research into porn stars of yesteryear, ramps up the horror with possession, mysterious photographs, disappearances, desperate phone calls, and our first glimpse at Anton’s snuff film.

The third act takes it up to 11 and twists off the knob, as past and present and reality and fiction collide, porn-star-turned-director Matt plans to recreate Mark Anton’s most famous video (though it came to him in a dream), but keeps getting glimpses of the past and various shadowy presents.

I expected Porn: A Thriller to be closer to The Ring, with the mysterious deaths, curses and deep dark secrets. But in fact it’s closer to House of Leaves in that it plays fast and loose with the fourth wall, and multiple layers of stories. That’s just fine by me, though not everybody thought so. From what I understand, this was an extremely polarising movie, with half the audience either confused or bored, and the other half enjoying the feel of their minds getting a good fucking. Me, I was in the second camp. I’ve read House of Leaves and love it, so I was ready to just sit back and go with the flow. I give this movie two (scared, shaky) thumbs up.

Vancouver Queer Film Festival Review: Strong and Silent Types

My first show of the festival was a collection of five short films about—as the name implies—men and masculinity. A little uneven, it was still a very good kickoff to my VQFF experience.

Last Call

A neat little fantasy of a broken man who, upon dying, must make peace with his messed up life before he can move on. The symbolism is clear: Gavin’s purgatory is a bar, perfectly fitting since alcoholism had been his actual purgatory for the last 2 years of his life. And his paradise? his first meeting with Mark. He’ll get to live a perfect moment forever, or possibly (this just occurred to me) get the chance to take his life in another direction. The ending’s deliberately ambiguous, and that’s okay.

Little Love

That was a miss, I feel. The love triangle story was predictable, the characters forgettable, the voiceovers annoying with their exposition of plot and inner feelings. Show, don’t tell!

Disarm

Take one butch, musclebound jock, comfortable in his gayness but lonely and withdrawn; add one somewhat-less-butch hustler, obsessively straight-acting and sneering at femmy guys; put them together, and you get a blisteringly intense conversation about masculinity, gay-bashing, identity, goals, repressed pain and being true to yourself. Overall I liked this film very much, the acting was quite good and the subject matter dense and engaging, though the writing felt forced at times, jumping from topic as though it had a long checklist to cover, and temporarily snapping me out of the story. Shame; with a little more editing, I think this could have been a real winner.

Promise

That was pretty fucking disturbing, and I’m still not sure how I feel about it. On the even of their wedding, the long-simmering tension between the two protagonists comes to a head in abuse and rape. Neither of the men comes off looking good: Stuart cheated on Chris, is a shameless attention whore and deliberately pushes his buttons, but Chris is also revealed to be a controlling dick and, well, ends up doing the raping. I don’t think we’re supposed to take sides—they’re both terribly flawed, and have to decide on their own where to go from here.

Professor Godoy

Math nerdery and intergenerational attraction between teacher and student combine in this nice, slow-paced Brazilian film. Unfortunately, for me it doesn’t go beyond “nice”. The characters were cyphers, and the story feels very by-the-numbers. I wanted to like it, especially since the director was in the audience, but… no, it just didn’t do it for me.

Vancouver Pride 2010: Liberate!

The day started out a little cool and overcast, and some were afraid it would rain (especially since it actually had rained for a little bit on Saturday). That would have been a first for me. The only rainy Vancouver Pride Day I remember was in ’96, and I wasn’t even in town for that. I’d moved to Vancouver in early August ’96, and remember seeing pictures of the parade in Xtra! West.

But no, there was no rain, and though the sun did come out in the afternoon, it never got terribly hot. Which was a good thing, because I had to move my ass for over two hours, either walking, dancing or volleying. I was with the VGVA group again this year; our setup didn’t change much, except for the lack of a net. That turned out to be a good thing, since it took up less space (an issue on crowded Robson Street), and we didn’t have to assign 2 people to hold it up. But the crowd-pleasers remained: dancers, volleyballs flying back and forth, and of course those two giant balls. They were too awkward to pass, so we just rolled them around and into the crowds. Kids love that, they push it back towards us, it gets them involved. It’s win-win!

A little after we turned on Denman, Symone joined us for a bit to toss balls around. I tell you, you haven’t lived until you’ve seen a six-foot drag queen, dressed so fine, volleying with perfect form—she used to play in VGVA, dontchaknow! Just not in drag.

All those hours of listening to ABBA’s greatest hits finally paid off!

And is it just me, or are there a lot more straight people in the parade lately? Besides the usual sponsors and politicians, I mean. I’m thinking especially of CFI Vancouver and the BC Humanists, most (all?) of whom had never been in a Pride parade. And maybe it’s because I’ve got my ear to the twitterverse more, but it seems to me they’re talking about Pride not just in terms of a fabulous party, but also in terms of human rights. I approve of this.

After the parade, I took a few hours to rest and recuperate, then I was off to the Big Gay Sing. Is there anything gayer than a couple hundred men singing along to an ABBA medley, Over The Rainbow or I Will Survive? I don’t think so! I had so much fun, and the aforementioned couple of hundred singers around disguised how totally off-key I was. And I’m glad that all those hours of listening to ABBA’s greatest hits finally paid off!

Pride Movie Night

This event, part of Vancouver Pride Week, and taking place on July 29^th, featured two excellent—and locally-made!—documentaries.

she’s a boy i knew

This film by Gwen Haworth chronicles her transition from male to female over the course of several years. It uses her own narration, as well as interviews with her parents, sisters and ex-wife along with old photos and home movies of her family, to weave a brutally honest and moving story. She takes us through every step of her (complex, often frustrating) transition process and, without judging, lets her loved ones express their feelings and concerns, in their own words.

The movie’s message (at least, what I got from it) is that finding and accepting yourself is hard work, but definitely worth it in the end. It looks like Gwen is now closer to her parents and siblings than she had ever been as Steven. And her mother was there with her at the screening. How awesome is that?

Beyond Gay: The Politics of Pride

I love this flag, no matter how many tchotchkes it’s been made into

These are the words of Ken Coolen, current President of the Vancouver Pride Society, in this documentary on Pride movements around the world: Vancouver (yay!), Toronto, New York, Sao Paulo, Warsaw and Moscow. It brings home the fact that while we’ve got it easy in Vancouver (and Toronto, and New York, and…) there are many parts of the world where waving a rainbow flag runs a real risk of getting you beat up, or worse. There are 70 countries where homosexuality is illegal, including a few carrying the death penalty.

Even when it doesn’t, things aren’t exactly rosy. Warsaw’s parade attracts a couple of thousand people (as of 2007), and at least that many police officers, to protect them from some really scary (nationalist/hard-right Catholic) protesters. Moscow has similar anti-gay forces, except that their parades are illegal. Mayor Lushkov has consistently denied Moscow Pride a parade permit, which forces them to sneak about and perform quick public actions (though with lots of media present). Things are changing, though. The police still does arrest marchers, but they’re not as rough and don’t detain arrestees as long. So that’s progress, and it’s thanks to a few score incredibly brave, incredibly stubborn individuals.

A couple of segments looked back on our history: Ken interviewed one participant of the Stonewall Riots, as well as Gilbert Baker (creator of the rainbow flag, and one of three Grand Marshalls in our 2008 parade). It’s easy to think that the old queer revolutionary spirit is gone, what with the relentless partying around Pride Week, the massive sponsorship and commercialisation. But no, it’s not gone: witness the hilarious (and unofficial) New York Drag March, witness InterPride, where Ken initially connected with many of the people we saw in this film; witness efforts in Vancouver events to put our rights and privileges in perspective, with (e.g.) posters on Vancouver/Canadian queer history at the Pride Picnic, as well as a map showing how queers are treated worldwide.

And it’s easy to think that these parades are pretty pointless, except as huge parties and billboards for corporations eager to court the queer dollar. But hey, there’s more to Pride than this. It’s about visibility, and empowerment, and connection. Ken argues that Pride marches/parades are not the end, but a step on the road to true equality and human rights. And that the rainbow flag—overexposed though it is, maybe—has meaning, beyond just a pretty pattern to put on your bath towel.

I’m not as cynical as I used to be, back when I stayed away from the parade altogether. But even when I went back to watch, and later participate, I think I was missing something, and now I know what it is: a sense of perspective. About where Vancouver Pride fits in the grand scheme of things, and how yours truly, with VGVA, fits in Vancouver Pride. Food for thought, definitely. And, a renewed belief in the value of the parade.

Nikolai Alekseev, founder of Moscow Pride, was one of the special guests at the screening, and will be one of this year’s parade Grand Marshalls. After the screening I plunked down $5 for a lovely Moscow Pride ’06 keychain (which they were selling to raise funds). It’s the least I can do; gawd knows it’s not like they’ve got corporate sponsors!

Pride Picnic in the Park

Vancouver Pride Week kicked off Saturday with the Pride Picnic in the Park, a fun and casual all day event at Brockton Oval, near the eastern tip of Stanley Park. I was there with a small group from VGVA to set up a volleyball net for picnickers to enjoy. Last year we put it up way over at the south end of the park, and hardly anyone came over until the end of the afternoon. This time we were playing near the booths and beer garden, and you know that’s where the action is.

The picnic’s a very casual, family-friendly event. There were lots of parents (queer and otherwise) with their kids and/or doggies, hanging out and enjoying the day. But there’s lots to do besides getting some sun (or staying out of the sun)! The kiddies (and kids-at-heart) can enjoy a number of fun queer games, such as the high heel toss:

(Unfortunately I snapped this picture a tiny bit too early, getting only the windup.)

Then came the sack race:

And the drag race. The challenge here is not to race in drag, but to put on your outfit piece by piece (bra, dress, scarf, purse, wig and hat), then race back to the starting line. No cheating by wearing your dress around your shoulders like a cape!

Then the tug of war. The picture here is (I think) of the second round, with gay men against lesbians. One of the guys said they were going to, quote “beat some pussy.” Joke’s on him, because the lesbians won.

Lastly, melon eating is a good way to cap off a scorching hot day.

We took down the nets around 5:00; the picnic was winding down by then, almost all the remaining people were sitting in the (cool, shady) beer garden. I got home, showered and changed, and got ready for some fireworks…

It’s not easy being a girl

Well, that was kind of fun. I don’t think I’m doing it again in a million years, but still. Fun.

So last night my volleyball league had our end-of-year party at Celebrities. Since the party is also our only fundraising event for the year, we wanted to bring in a big crowd. Something we’d never done before. The answer? The board would put on a drag show. After a bit of discussion we settled on George Michael’s “Too Funky” for music; the only female board member would be dressed as George, and the rest of us would walk around and pose like the models in the video. There was a bit more to the choreography, but that’s about it. Nothing too fancy.

Well, that was kind of fun. I don’t think I’m doing it again in a million years, but still. Fun.

So last night my volleyball league had our end-of-year party at Celebrities. Since the party is also our only fundraising event for the year, we wanted to do something we’d never done before, and bring in a big crowd. The answer? The board would put on a drag show. After a bit of discussion we settled on George Michael’s “Too Funky” for music; the only female board member would be dressed as George, and the rest of us would walk around and pose like the models in the video. There was a bit more to the choreography, but that’s about it. Nothing too fancy.

I wasn’t really keen on doing it, since I’d never done drag before, never felt comfortable performing in front of an audience, and frankly was afraid of looking like a hot mess. Of course, I realised I was totally going to look like a hot mess, but I had to just go with it and have fun, and it would all be over in a few minutes.

Self-consciousness aside, my biggest worry was whether I’d even be able to walk in heels. That part wasn’t so bad, though, since the shoes I ended up using (borrowed from a friend, along with my entire outfit) had fairly modest 2-inch heels. As long as I remembered to step with the toes first, I could get from point A to point B pretty efficiently, though not that gracefully.

And I learned something else, too: being a woman takes a lot of work! Hair, makeup, dresses, bras, shaving various bits as necessary, and the aforementioned shoes. But that’s the price you pay for being beautiful, I guess. Not that I really felt that beautiful, once the initial thrill wore off; with all due respect to my makeup artists (no, seriously), my face in makeup just looked weird, like some alternate-universe Joker-ised version of myself. That’s just me, though. The feedback I got from my performance ranged from “Good job, you were great!” to “scary but nice” to “I’m gonna need therapy.” So… on average, I did okay? Meh, I don’t really care. I did it once, kind of enjoyed it, we raised money, and now it’ll make a good story.

I feel like I just found the button that turns my car into a giant mecha

… though it’s still got some weird bugs, and the same clunky interface.

Okay, so I’ve been plugging away at the teamvancouver.net redesign. The new graphics are sort of coming along—I’ve been redoing them a dozen times, but a few days ago I had a burst of inspiration, so I think I’m finally on the right track. Then again, I’ve said that before.

Anyway. The thing about teamvancouver.net is that it’s built on an actual CMS: WebGUI, to be precise. The learning curve was steep and painful, since it was my first stab at mastering a CMS, the interface is pretty unfriendly, and it turned out I wasn’t even working with the real admin account! The one login I was given had a lot of editing privileges, but not nearly what I needed to do a proper job of redesigning and administering the site. Lots of functions were missing, whole directories were locked, etc…

So I eventually called the hosting provider’s support team to clear this all up, and figure out what I could and could not do. It might be that these restrictions were a matter of policy. But no, it turned out I was just using the wrong account. Finally, I have the godlike powers I’ve been been craving all along!

And now I’ve got a confession to make: part of the reason why I enjoyed working on VGVA.com more than teamvancouver.net was that working with WebGUI this was was like swimming through quicksand, and I wasn’t sure I could deliver on my ideas. vgva.com was under my complete control. Though my little PHP scripts did less, they were all mine and I knew exactly what they could do.

But that’s how it works, and the thing is, I’ve done this before. Long ago I dropped homemade PHP scripts for WordPress (still running on PHP, so not that big a stretch), with my blog. It may be that someday, if I’m still webmaster, I’ll do the same for vgva.com*. No rush, though. In the meantime I get to explore another CMS, with a different code base, it’s true, but no less interesting and powerful. I’m finally seeing it can do all I wish, and more.

(* Well, it probably won’t be WordPress)

Apology to Alan Turing

The UK government apologises for its treatment of Alan Turing.

The UK government apologises for its treatment of Alan Turing:

Earlier this year I stood with Presidents Sarkozy and Obama to honour the service and the sacrifice of the heroes who stormed the beaches of Normandy 65 years ago. And just last week, we marked the 70 years which have passed since the British government declared its willingness to take up arms against Fascism and declared the outbreak of World War Two. So I am both pleased and proud that, thanks to a coalition of computer scientists, historians and LGBT activists, we have this year a chance to mark and celebrate another contribution to Britain’s fight against the darkness of dictatorship; that of code-breaker Alan Turing.

Turing was a quite brilliant mathematician, most famous for his work on breaking the German Enigma codes. It is no exaggeration to say that, without his outstanding contribution, the history of World War Two could well have been very different. He truly was one of those individuals we can point to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war. The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely. In 1952, he was convicted of ‘gross indecency’ – in effect, tried for being gay. His sentence – and he was faced with the miserable choice of this or prison – was chemical castration by a series of injections of female hormones. He took his own life just two years later.

A pointless feel-good exercise? Too little too late? A fitting tribute to a national hero? I don’t know. Maybe all of the above, but on the whole I’m happy with it. Turing damn well deserves some recognition for being one of the founding fathers of computer science, not to mention his cracking of the Enigma ciphers. And who knows what other contributions he may have made, if he’d lived? In his last years Turing researched neural nets and artificial intelligence, amongst other topics. He might have helped drive not one but two information revolutions.

I read Andrew Hodges’ excellent biography Alan Turing: The Enigma not too long after coming out. Borrowed it from the library, which is a shame because I’d really like to reread it now. An abridged version (also maintained by Andrew Hodges) is available online which, shameless plug, was the basis of an article I co-wrote in my first semester at SFU.

And in all the discussion surrounding this apology, I found a link to an excellent short story that sort of answers my previous question. What might have Turing done, if he’d lived (and was helped by a time traveller)? Check it out

Queer Film Festival 2009: a few reviews

A good crop of movies this year! I didn’t see as many as I wanted, due to previous commitments (or in one case getting the show times mixed up), but I had a great time at this festival. Here are some of my thoughts on the movies I saw, in chronological order.

Ciao

Oh my God, was that painful. Awkward dialog, clunky directing, plodding pacing, and acting that could only be more wooden if Ents played the parts. I could see where the writers were going with the story—a weird kinda-romance between one guy and his dead best friend’s long-distance boyfriend had a lot of dramatic potential—but the execution was totally off. A friend of mine very accurately described it as “the most boring date ever.” And yes, this setup does justify the awkward “how-was-your-flight” and “so-tell-me-about-yourself-what-do-you-do-for-a-living” small talk, but the audience shouldn’t be bored to tears!

Things livened up a little when the two finally bonded over their memories of Mark, as well as Mark’s hilariously cheesy song, but I could never manage to suspend my disbelief and accept that these were real people doing real, natural things. And the story didn’t get any resolution. Sure, I could accept that Jeff and Andrea just shared one kiss and would never see each other again, but what about Jeff’s sleeping problems, mentioned several times near the beginning? Were they due to unresolved grief over Mark? Did that one crying jag (followed by that brief makeout) fix everything?

Ready? OK!

Sweet, fluffy, totally hilarious. An 11-year-old boy who dreams of becoming a cheerleader in his conservative Catholic school must deal with his hardass nun teacher, and his overworked single mother who’s afraid that her doll-playing, Maria-von-Trapp-dressing son might be… you know… that way. But nobody’s really bad in this movie, just misguided, and even the serious moments are eventually resolved through the power of love and pom-poms. Gimme a W! Gimme an I! Gimme an N! Gimme an N! Gimme an E! Gimme an R!

The Coast is Queer

I always look forward to this annual showcase of local queer filmmakers. There was some very good stuff this year—Coffee being my favourite, along with Asylum (hey, I drove by that mental hospital every day for a couple of years!), the catchily tragic Caught, the hilariously naughty Galactic Docking—but nothing as memorable as last year’s offerings, I’m sorry to say. And mixed in with that were some bizarre numbers that just left me scratching my head (Cindy Doll and Swans, I’m looking at you). So, a bit of a disappointment, but hey. They can’t all be winners.

I have to give props to the folks at the anti-homophobia youth filmmaking bootcamp. See, I don’t mind shelling out for a pass I won’t fully use, if it goes to fund things like this. And those anti-homophobia shorts showing before every film, made by fifth-graders! Fifth. Graders. The mind is blown.

Otto; or, Up With Dead People

Is it a spoof of pretentious indie films? Is it an homage to gory zombie flicks? Is it gay porn? The answer, of course, is “all of the above.” Otto, a young man who may or may not be a zombie, must deal with an egotistical movie director and her silent-film girlfriend, bashers, an ex-boyfriend from when he was alive, and the sad knowledge that he does not fit in the world of the living. But is he in fact alive, though insane? Was it all just part of Medea’s pompous gay zombie blockbuster? No. Or was it? Maybe.

Boycrazy

These four shorts are full of delicious eye candy, from the adorable Zak in Dinks, to hot FBI agents and hotter alien ass probers in Q-Case, to Corey and his parade of musical friends in Boycrazy. Okay, King County didn’t have so much eye candy, what with the dancing bears and the Top Gun stage musical with all-butch-lesbian cast, but I was too busy laughing my ass off to care.

Half-Life

I love a good mind-fuck on a Saturday night! This movie has gorgeous cinematography, bizarre dream sequences, a little boy with magical powers and a seriously messed-up family living in an increasingly messed-up world. There was no real plot, just a tapestry of interweaving stories that the characters and their issues brought to disturbing life: the overworked mother is dating a controlling asshole, the older sister bonds with her gay friend who just lost his virginity and dreams of flying planes, the boy yearns to reconnect with his long-lost father (who’s not dead, maybe, just… gone), and much more.

Global warming, geeky fundamentalists, teleportation, and everything ends (or begins?) with Timothy making the sun rise in the West. A perfectly weird end to a weird movie.