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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (June 13, 2008)
62 JUStOUt JUNE 13, 2008 television hereO Films Double Feature llinh+ The Political at the movies and the Personal Films document queer senior citizens, Tel Aviv clothier, roller derby revival JbT by Christopher McQuain s its acknowledgment of Gay Pride a partner dies or being put on a waiting list for Month, Sundance Channel is dedi decent public housing to open up. cating its weekly “DocDay” premieres In this way, the film pinpoints where the to films centered on queer lives and struggle of queer senior citizens dovetails with the issues. Their subjects are sometimes struggle of all sexual minority people, who face fun, sometimes quite serious, but always direct meaty financial discrimination from our govern and interesting. The variety of perspectives and ment until same-sex partners are legally recog the many examples of queer history and struggle nized at the federal level. For now, these struggles in these films make for a great reminder of one share the same fate: Jacoby follows some specific of the principal concepts of queer visibility, activ action proposals on queer senior issues to the 2005 ism and pride: that the political and the personal White House Conference on Aging, where they frequently intersect and are never very far away are stonewalled by the Bush White House. from each other. Against this frustrating background, a picture emerges of the many ways in which our communi Ten More Good Years ty can function as family, in addition to the ways Ten More Good Years (9 p.m. June 16) employs we can do better; the generational divide between a prismatic approach to tackle the oft-neglected younger queers and their elders is painfully illus issue of queer senior citizens, and its cumulative trated by interviews with young men who seem thoroughness adds up to an impressively wide- somewhat baffled to learn that gay lives really do ranging take on the topic. go on after 30. Filmmaker Michael Jacoby uses interview Ten More Good Years is “serious” public service footage with several senior citizens—a New programming that’s also compelling and enter York City artist, a retired San Francisco building taining. Beyond the audience of queer seniors manager, an ex-sailor who became a mime and that shares the immediate concerns of the film’s a transgender African American who was at the subjects, this is important viewing for younger Stonewall riots—as the film’s core. Complemen queers, who, as the film illustrates, are in danger tary interviews with queer senior advocates and of neglecting our history by ignoring our elders. researchers detail various sociopolitical etiologies of, and potential solutions to, the problems the Stefan Braun seniors describe. The story documented in Itamar Alkalay’s Foremost among those problems is the very Stefan Braun (9 p.m. June 23) is like something basic matter of attaining and keeping sufficient out of Dynasty: It has forbidden love, infidelity, income and housing, a difficulty compounded for upper-crust glamour and a bitter battle over an queer seniors by institutionalized homophobia and inheritance. But the fact that it all happened the tendency for the heterosexual peers of a queer for real makes the story less frivolous and much senior to be “old-fashioned” (read: homophobic). more deep and captivating than its soapy events Facts, figures and research underpin the real-life might suggest. details of seeing one’s Social Security income ar Braun was one of Tel Aviv’s most celebrated bitrarily decreased, being left in near-poverty after clothiers, a furrier who moved in the highest so- A KISS-, DEADL Y PG 13] /I JACOB KEANE ASSICNMENJ Wallli here() Gay lelevi‘»ion On Demand Subsaibe loday on (oaiiasl Ditjilal (able I 8118 III l\l NOW heielv <oni
