Category Archives: Documentary

Newly available on DVD this week: I’M A PORN STAR

Charlie David’s look at a handful of men making a living in gay porn debuted at Vancouver’s Out on Screen last year. It’s screened at LGBT fests around the world, including Belgrade, New Zealand, Durban, Rio, Calgary, Tampa, Atlanta, Chicago, Mix Mexico, and Rochester’s ImageOut.

David, a personable Canadian actor/filmmaker known within gay film circles for projects like the TV series DANTE’S COVE and the film JUDAS KISS, takes a mildly graphic look behind the scenes of gay porn in this apparent webseries-turned-feature. Perhaps to fill out the feature length, David adds an extended introduction, breathlessly narrating an archivally-aided and not uninteresting condensed history of gay porn from the birth of film to the present day, a portion of the film that is stylistically completely different from the rest of the project. Once that’s dispensed with, he cuts together very conventionally shot profiles of four likeable working performers in gay porn – three who identify as straight (Johnny Rapid, Colby Jansen, and Rocco Reed) and one as gay (Brent Everett) – with additional commentary from a straight director and other crew. Young father Johnny describes his polar opposite approach to sex with men vs women; Colby reveals how he fell in love with and married a MTF performer, and his conflicting feelings around his wife having bottom surgery; Rocco, who also does straight porn, contrasts the opportunities for men in that realm; and Brent recounts the supportive role played by his parents and husband in his career. Talking heads dominate, as does incessant, distracting music, and frenetic editing that often leads to repetition in the interviews. Despite some occasionally interesting and refreshing soundbites from the stars about their fluid approach to sexuality, these technical deficiencies unfortunately compromise the doc as a whole.

Coming to PBS’s America ReFramed series tonight, Tuesday, September 9: THE LULU SESSIONS

S Casper Wong’s personal record of her ex-lover’s struggle with breast cancer debuted at the LA Asian Pacific Film Festival in 2011. It played a number of LGBT fests, including Boston, Inside Out, Austin, Seattle, Mix Copenhagen, Q Doc, and Vancouver, and Asian fests in NYC, Washington DC, and San Diego, among others.

Wong agrees to start filming LuLu from the moment that her friend calls to find out the results of a lump biopsy. Following her intermittently from treatment through death, Wong constructs a sometimes intriguing, non-chronological portrait of the foul-mouthed LuLu – ironically, we eventually find out, a cancer researcher – and of their complicated connection. Supporting her when LuLu’s apparently insane sisters reject her, theirs is a complex, enmeshed relationship that has taken on several permutations – mentor, lover, and friend – though neither is this as surprising to the viewer as it seems Wong thinks it will be, nor does it always translate into the most gripping footage. Add Wong’s excessive narration, and it makes for an uneven project, and one largely buoyed by the appealing LuLu.

Coming to VOD tomorrow, Tuesday, September 9: ELENA

Petra Costa’s meditation on family premiered at the Festival de Brasília in 2012. It went on to IDFA, SXSW, Hot Docs, Planete+ Doc, ZagrebDox, Havana, and Rooftop Films.

I included the film in my SXSW coverage here.

Coming to theatres today, Friday, September 5: THE RULE

Marylou and Jerome Bongiorno’s profile of a Newark prep school debuted at the Montclair Film Festival this year. It now comes to NYC, with a Los Angeles run to follow next week.

Founded in 1868, St Benedict’s Prep is run by the monks of the Newark Abbey and operates according to the principles of the Rule of Saint Benedict, stressing community, trust, leadership, commitment, and several other virtues that have helped its predominantly African- and Latin-American students to succeed where so many other inner city schools instead see dismal drop out rates and underperformance. Monks go through each of these principles at length through the course of the Bongiornos’ film, offering practical lessons for how they apply them to their students and their particular circumstances – often involving broken homes, the lack of male role models, gangs, and the like. While students are heard from on occasion, more of their voices would have helped to cement the effectiveness of the pedadogy. Instead, intermittently, the filmmakers interject with crude animation and strange computer-voiced factoids which unfortunately cheapen the proceedings as a whole. Similarly, an extended consideration of the school’s history would be welcome – what’s related here – the internal schism that came after the 1967 Newark riots and eventually led to the closure of the school and the exodus of several of the monks – is more intriguing than the rule play-by-play offered instead.