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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 1, 1996)
ju s t o u t ▼ n o v tm b ar 1, 1 0 0 6 ▼ 2 5 Ann Murdock's F east Y our E yes The Northwest Film and Video Festival offers a banquet o f images and ideas ▼ by Kelly M . Bryan the continuation o f the human spirit, as the grit that he Pacific N orthw est, we keep hear will help us survive the madhouse we all find ing, is a pot bubbling over with cre ourselves in. (The film shows at 7 pm on Friday, ative cinem atic juices. So who are Nov. 8; the director, from Vancouver, B.C., will be these stum p-tow n Sayleses, these art- in attendance.) school A rakis, and what are they up o o f the most effective o f the queer shorts are to? The N orthw est Film and Video Festival Tw pre also the longest, at a half hour each: Meeting sents the perfect opportunity to see for yourself. Magdalene by M arilyn Freeman and Legacies by From Nov. 1 to 10 you can glim pse what film and Sean W eakland. Meeting Magdalene is a black- video makers in this neck o f the w oods are think and-white tale o f lesbian seduction, which blos ing about and pointing their lenses at. soms from a somewhat improbable beginning into a steamy dance and stand-off between the two excellently realized principal characters. The sharp photography is by one-tim e Portlander Laurie Meeker. The film is part o f Program 1 (see times below), along with Life Support, by Seattle’s Michael Misrok, an unflinching look at the video Pretty much all o f what I was able to screen was m aker’s battle with AIDS and encroaching blind queer stuff. I didn’t plan to be homocentric, it just ness as a result of CMV; and Gus Van Sant’s Four worked out that way. But it w on’t be easy for you, Boys and a Volvo, based on his Levi ’ s com m ercial. the ticket-buying public, to narrow your focus. Sean W eakland’s Legacies earned a Judges Striding boldly tow ard assimilation, y ou’ll find the A w ard for its alternately goofy and grim look at Northwest Film C enter has laced the gay and M orm onism and its attem pts to root out the hom o lesbian titles in with all the others. Some may sexuality w ithin its flock. Interviews with gay complain that they can’t take in an all-queer evening, m en who underw ent conversion “therapies” re but look at it this way: Y our “average” straight veal the barbaric pseudo-science o f the proce filmgoer is going to get a m ore com plex insight into dures, and the m ultifaceted torture they represent: gay male and lesbian reality than that afforded by O ne o f the interview ees relates how as a closeted H ollywood or television. In terms o f queer visibil but sexually active gay man he him self helped to ity, you can’t shake a stick at this kind o f publicity. perpetrate the procedures on willing victims. Lega H ere’s my take on the long and short o f it. cies is shown in Program 2 and in the “New In the first minutes o f Ileana Pietrobruno’s V oices” program , along with Andrea Stoops’ feature Cat Swallows Parakeet and Speaks!, you Adam, a wry anim ated look at a playground might suffer the uncom fortable pangs o f an attack T 503-289-9497 8527 N Lombard, Portland A cross the SL J o h n ’s Bridge i i See Vue Lodging— where mountain meets the sea 95590 H ig h w ay 101 6.2 m iles so u th o f Yachats, O re g o n 97498 ______ (541) 547-3227 ¡nema "W e 'd like to get to know you" A special introduction; Mention you saw this ad in Just Out and CUSTOM FRAMING IS Assembly is f r e e - You pay for the materials • Complete Projects only • Uniframes excluded ^Picture This’ FRAMING GALLERY 2801 SE Holgafe • Portland • 236-1400 Plenty o f F R E E parking at our convienent Eastside location Tara Frederick (above) and Rebecca Godin in Cat Swallows Parakeet and Speaks! o f the avant-garde. If your film diet has been running lately toward the easily chewed, facing a 75-minute plateful o f oddly angled black-and- white posturing can be a jaw -tightener. But there’s a wise and witty heart beating beneath the initial pallor this film presents. Tracing the increasing intimacy between two wom en incarcerated in a hospital— Scheherazade, a model with an uncer tain malady, and Kore, a dancer with an ambiguous eating disorder— Pietrobruno conjures an ethereal yet very earthly fairy tale that touches on tabloid sensationalism, the horrific undertones o f health care, the narrow corridor o f options society opens to women, and the power o f sisterhood. The layers of meaning threaded through much o f the story line can keep you thinking for days: The readily appar ent reference to The Arabian Nights, w here Scheherazade feels she must entertain her doctor with stories so that he doesn’t lose interest in her and let her die, yields upon consideration a chilling comment on the situation faced by many with “difficult” illnesses under the specter o f managed care. The nasty tendency o f minds and bodies to be “out o f control” or deviant— so lovingly and lu ridly reported by the tabloids— is elevated and celebrated in Cat Swallows Parakeet, as a hope for conquest by a butch baby dyke. Adam also figures in the “M idnight O asis” program, as do the en gaging gay shorts Boulevard of Broken Synch by W inston Xin, and One Night in Heaven, a queer karaoke by W ayne Yung. (Program 1, called "All Sorts o f Shorts,” opens the festival at 8 pm Friday, Nov. 1; Program 2, a k a “Shorts o f All Sorts,” plays at 7 pm Saturday, Nov. 2; the “ M idnight O asis” program is unspooled (yes, at midnight) on Nov. 2; ¿nd student works, in a program dubbed “New Voices, New V isions,” are shown at 7 pm M onday, Nov. 4. Each o f the shorts program s repeats once during the festival.) The 23rd Northwest Film and Video Festival has much to offer filmgoers, but it serves film and video makers, too: Check out a presentation at 2 pm Nov. 2, with producer John Pierson (who helped She's Gotta Have It, Roger and Me, Go Fish and Crumb to the screen), who will show clips and outtakes, answer questions and reveal an insiders’ view o f the independent scene, and other events. Screenings are held at the Berg Swann Auditorium, 1219 SW Park Ave.; tickets are $6 general, $5 students and seniors. Call fo r schedule, 221-1156. M o n .-Fri. 9:30 am - 6 pm • Saturday 10 am -5:30 pm Applies )o complete protects only NoMo be combined «ilk other offers TABOR PLORI57 Serving Portland and its suburban areas with unsurpassed quality and service 4848 SE Division St. Portland, OR 97206 7819 SE Stark St. Portland, OR 97215 236-4119 256-2920 o