In Production

Joe Graham aims for exploitation, gets "Strapped" instead

“I wish gay cinema would die.” Joe Graham declares. “It would be nice to move past this strange subgenre to a place where gay makers who want to tell stories with gay characters will just be independent filmmakers telling personal stories.” See, it’s not queer movies the San Francisco filmmaker hates, though he’ll vent at scathing (and hilarious) length about titles that stoke his ire. Graham’s fed up with categories and pigeonholing, and negative associations generated by countless artless, formulaic, direct-to-DVD flicks targeted to lesbian and gay viewers. “People perceive gay cinema as meaning cheap and crappy,” he says, an approach he rejects in his feature debut, Strapped, now in postproduction.

topics: actors, bay area, diy, drama, gay lesbian cinema

Report

Jennifer Phang on "Half-Life" and identity

Filmmaker Jennifer Phang’s experienced more than enough culture shocks in her life to empathize with the identity challenges of the men and women in her first feature, Half-Life, which is being released via VOD and DVD from Wolfe Video and Warner Digital this month. In Half-Life’s psychological drama, part live action, part animation, Pam, the 19-year old daughter, and Timothy, the 8-year old son of an Asian American mother, try to cope with their father’s disappearance and their mother’s affair with a young white lover. In the meantime, Pam’s only friend, a Korean adoptee, trying to find some sense of individualism and self-worth, has to find a way to reveal the existence of his African American lover to his fundamentalist Christian white parents.

topics: activism, asian american cinema, audiences, bay area, diy, film festivals, gay lesbian cinema, immigration, sf international asian american film festival, women, women filmmakers, world cinema, youth

In Production

Nani Walker finds "Other Nature" at 15,000 feet

Nani Sahra Walker went to Nepal for seven months, and came back with a one-hour documentary. OK, a rough cut. No big deal? Try this, you hard-to-impress types: In 2007, Nepal’s Supreme Court struck down laws discriminating against homosexuals, then a year later approved same-sex marriages—and directed the government to provide full rights to gays and lesbians. Enlightenment guaranteed, indeed. The central thread of Other Nature, as it happens, is a pilgrimage by the main characters—a female-to-male transgender and a male-to-female trans—to the sacred place of Muktinath in the Mustang region. “There’s no real arc,” Walker says, disavowing the shape of Western documentaries. “There’s journey, and we keep coming back to the journey.”

topics: activism, bay area, distribution, diy, documentary, gay lesbian cinema, immigration, world cinema

Report

Thoughts on the aughts: best/worst trends of the year and decade

A decade as odd as this one, with George Bush and Barack Obama as its bookends, deserves to be examined. While the U.S. moved from rebuilding decimated skyscrapers to the rebuilding of an entire economy, film moved from the multiplex to the mailbox to the cell phone. But did the pictures really get small? We tried to find out by surveying Bay Area film-industry professionals as well as everyday fans on the trends that moved them. We found love for animation and hate for the ascendancy of the first-person narrator-star in documentary films. We saw pleas for more collaboration and less ego. We encountered disdain for CGI and hope for independent exhibitors and filmmakers. The comments below were selected from many we received; needless to say, we couldn’t publish everything. If you feel we missed anything in particular, we encourage you to issue a few opinions of your own in the "comments" box at story’s end.

topics: activism, actors, animation, bay area, cinephiles, critics, critics year end polls, digital distribution, digital filmmaking, directors, distributors, diy, documentary film, drama, environmental films, gay lesbian cinema, genre films, tv, world cinema, youth

Experience

The Cockettes' celluloid afterglow still strong at 40

As a performing ensemble, The Cockettes were relatively short-lived. (So, sadly, were many members due to the AIDS crisis a decade later.) But their influence has been large, and seems ever more recognized. At present next-generation alternative S.F. theatre troupe Thrillpeddlers is passing the six-month mark with its surprise smash-hit revival of the Cockettes’ camp operetta Pearls Over Shanghai, currently extended through January 23.

It now includes an “Afterglow Floorshow” reprising numbers from other original Cockettes shows to honor the 40th anniversary of the troupe’s founding. That same milestone is marked Thursday by a one-night-only SFMOMA program you might kick yourself from here to eternity for missing.

The Cockettes on Film, at 40! sounds as good as it could possibly get for those of us too young or geographically disadvantaged to have experienced the group’s heyday in the flesh.

topics: activism, actors, diy, experimental film, film history, filmmakers, gay lesbian cinema, genre films, sfmoma

Experience

Welcoming French Cinema Now—and then

The year 2009 marks the golden anniversary of a watershed event in international cinema: The launching of the Nouvelle Vague, that agitating generation of young filmmakers (many former critics) who laid siege to the perceived creative atrophy of the French film industry, in the process having a huge influence on movies everywhere.

You can argue exactly what the first “New Wave” feature was, but in terms of popular impact, the one that first resonated around the world was undeniably François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows. That 1959 classic is being revived as part of San Francisco Film Society’s second annual French Cinema Now festival, which runs the week of October 29 through November 4 at the city’s Clay Theatre.

topics: comedy, critics, dramatic films, film festivals, french cinema, gay lesbian cinema, genre films, reviews, world cinema

Critic's Notebook

Lee, Schamus, Woodstock and a back catalogue of genius

Traversing an extraordinary thematic and cultural range in less than two decades, Ang Lee and his writing-producing partner James Schamus have arguably never made a bad movie—possibly excepting Hulk, their sole attempt so far at the megabudget Hollywood blockbuster. (The answer to “Is there anything they can’t do?” may thus be, "Well, that.")

topics: activism, asian american cinema, features, gay lesbian cinema, music, world cinema