21.2001
Christina Ricci and Richard Ruccolo
star in All Over the Quy, a comedic,
bittersweet love story
T HE
S h o w M u st
r
Go o N
P ullin g together this y e a r's film festival
h as been a b ig g e r challenge than u su al
by
C h r i s t o p h e r
M c Q u a i n
This awesome foursome does it all: (from left) Debbie Caselton,
Maura King, Gabriel Mendoza and John Campos
E
ven under normal circumstances, orchestrat-
ing the Portland Lesbian Gay Bi Trans Film
Festival is a daunting and complex task for the
four core members of Sensory Perceptions
who, along with a small army of volunteers,
are responsible for bringing the annual event to Cinema
21 on Sept. 21.
A s operations director John Campos says: “A festival
that is planned and executed by a core group of four or
five people makes for a very heavy workload. Many hats
need to be worn by everybody.”
But the tragic events of Sept. 11— only 10 days before
the premiere screening of The Monkeys Mask —have
caused a national ripple effect. Upon waking up to the
frantic news coverage on that memorable Tuesday, the
first reaction of festival director Maura King was shock.
“It was horrible,” she says. “A bit of a haze washed over
me for a couple of days.”
Publicity director Gabriel Mendoza agrees: “It’s so sur
real thinking, ‘My God, there are people in New York
who we work with and they might be dead.’ Obviously
you can’t really work, but you can’t really stop either. I
sent an e-mail to everyone saying, ‘I’m just going to see
who’s alive right now.’ It’s the weirdest thing. It’s been a
very strange week.”
Still, after recovering from the initial shock
of the events, the Sensory Perceptions peo
ple— King, Mendoza, Campos, development
director Debbie Caselton and volunteer coordi
nator Steven Sandrowski— began to regroup
and assess the effects of the destruction in New
York on the long (and carefully) planned festi
val. The main concern is “print traffic,” the
ability of distributors to get the films to Port
land in time for their scheduled screenings.
King is guardedly confident that the poten
tial disruptions won’t occur. “It sounds like we’re
not in really bad shape,” she
says. "There are one or two
prints that may not show up.
We have four prints coming
from Canada and, given that’s
international, I’m a little more
nervous about that. It’s boiled
down to how well Federal
Express is going to operate,
how much they’re delayed.
Provided Fed Ex operates the
way it’s supposed to, we’re in
really, really good shape.”
After an emergency dis
cussion Sept. 11, it was
decided that the victims of
the terrorist attacks would be
acknowledged by making col
lection boxes available at
every screening for patrons who wish to make
cash donations to the Red Cross National
Disaster Relief Fund. King hopes the boxes,
along with the perseverance of the festival
alongside the rest of America’s day-to-day
endeavors and enterprises, will give the gay and
lesbian community a chance to deal in its own
way with the events. “I think it’ll be really
good to have this opportunity.. .for the com
munity to come together, whether it’s a distrac
tion, a little relief for a couple of hours or a
chance for people to meet up and talk with
each other.”
But, as it must for the rest of the country,
the show will, indeed, go on. “It’ll be interest
ing to see,” King says. “This year’s festival will
T he Weekend is an ensemble piece about
a man who returns to the family home
of his lover, who he lost to A ID S
have a flavor that we obviously can’t necessari
ly anticipate, one that’s not really intrinsic to
the festival itself.”
According to King, anticipation of this
year’s festival is higher than it ever has been.
“Ticket sales are really good. People are looking
at the Web site.”
Mendoza adds, “There seems to be an inter
est that’s stronger than usual to begin with, and
in light of what’s happened, it’s an even more
surprising interest.”
T he F estival
T
vast, extended human family
he festival has been expanded from two
weekends last year to a full nine days, an
entire week of screenings bookended by two
weekends beginning Sept. 21. That kind of
large-scale event couldn’t have been foreseen
in 1996, when, in response to a Just Out editor
ial lamenting the defunct status of Portland’s
Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, Cinema 21
operator and indie film champion Tom Ranicri
collaborated with film editor Amy Duddlcston
and a group of volunteers to revive it.
King, then a junior at Reed College, was a
volunteer that first year. It was also her first
experience with film exhibition.