Category Archives: Film

Southern California’s largest LGBT film event, Outfest, kicks off its 31st edition this Thursday, July 11. Over eleven nights, the festival will present nearly 60 features, close to 100 shorts, as well as panels and other special events, for an estimated audience of 55,000. Included among the lineup are more then 20 feature documentaries from which I’ll offer highlights below:

Like last year, nonfiction takes two of Outfest’s coveted Gala slots: Roger Ross Williams’ Sundance alum GOD LOVES UGANDA screens as the Documentary Centerpiece, while Pratibha Parmar’s ALICE WALKER: BEAUTY IN TRUTH (pictured) takes the Fusion Centerpiece position.

The bulk of the fest’s docs screen in the main program, which includes: Lily Keber’s BAYOU MAHARAJAH: THE TRAGIC GENIUS OF JAMES BOOKER (pictured), a portrait of the unheralded African American gay jazz pianist; Liam Sullivan’s IAN HARVIE SUPERHERO, the trans standup comedian’s concert film; Timothy Wheeler’s THE OTHER SHORE, following lesbian long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad’s attempts to finally swim from Cuba to Key West after a disappointing failed attempt three decades prior; Lisa Biagiotti’s DEEPSOUTH, exploring the inadequacies of HIV/AIDS healthcare in the American South; Fan Popo’s MAMA RAINBOW, a profile of mothers of LGBT kids in China; and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason’s Tribeca winner BRIDEGROOM, about tragedy befalling a young gay couple.

Finally, Platinum, the experimental and cutting edge section, includes two docs: Travis Mathews and James Franco’s Sundance hybrid, INTERIOR. LEATHER BAR., inspired by CRUISING; and Charles Atlas’ TURNING (pictured), a concert film on Antony and the Johnsons’ 2006 European tour.

Running tomorrow, July 4 through Saturday, July 13, the Jerusalem Film Festival celebrates its 30th anniversary. Long established as one of the region’s key film events, the festival annually showcases a broad range of both international and new Israeli productions. More than 40 documentary features and hybrids are included in this year’s lineup, appearing in a standalone competition as well as in various other sections of the festival. The following spotlights a few select titles:

Among the ten local titles vying for the main documentary awards are: Ilan Moskovich and Dan Bronfeld’s APOLLONIAN STORY, about a father and son, and the elaborate cave in which they live; Nurit Kedar and Yaron Shani’s LIFE SENTENCES, on the different paths taken by the children of a Jewish woman and an Arab father discovered to be a terrorist; Nissim Mossek’s WILD WEST HEBRON, which finds the tables turned on a German convert to Judaism turned militant settler; Itamar Alcalay’s FOUR YEARS OF NIGHT (pictured), following a photographer as he revisits the French neo-Nazi gang he documented thirty years ago; and Shosh Shlam and Hilla Medalia’s ELECTRONIC HEROIN, an up-close look at the treatment for China’s Internet “addicts.”

Other Israeli titles screening include: Irit Gal’s THE FADING VALLEY, an exposé of the embattled Palestinian farmers in the Jordan Valley; Nurith Aviv’s ANNONCES, in which women offer their own interpretations of holy scripture; and Helen Yanovsky’s JERUSALEM BOXING CLUB (pictured), presented as a work-in-progress, about a bomb shelter turned gym that unites and inspires youth. Finally, from outside Israel in the fest’s Jewish Experience strand is Diana Groo’s REGINA, recounting the life of the first modern female rabbi, who perished at Auschwitz in 1944.