Just out., May 20, 2011, Page 19, Image 19

OREGON S LGBTO NEWSMAGAZINE
feature:QDoc
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[Becoming Chaz] follows Chaz.
born Chastity, through the process
of gender reassignment, recording
all the twists and turns. One of the
most interesting twists is something
rarely discussed in these stories:
the effect on the partner of the loss
of the person she was originally
attracted to.
era and the strategies the queens and dykes
used to combat them. (Subject Don Norman
will be in attendance.)
Saturday’s activism show continues by ex­
panding the view from local to global. I Am (4
p.m., USA/India, 71 min.) is the result of five
years of filming and interviews with 20 Indian
families. The story begins with director Sonali
Gulati’s regret at not having been able to come
out as a lesbian to her mother before the lat­
ter’s death. From there it opens out into a
wide-ranging profile of the varied situations
for LGBT people in India. The clichés of a
monolithically homophobic society quickly
vanish in the face of complex and changing
relationships between queer children and their
parents. While some of the familiar stories of
estrangement are here, it’s significant that in
some cases it’s the child who breaks the tie,
not the parent. In other instances, the parents
yield to social pressures, while others are
shown as clearly evolving—sometimes slowly,
sometimes quickly—and wanting to be part of
their child’s self-discovery. Filmmaker Gulati
has a keen eye for evocative images, but it’s the
moving story of the reclaiming of self that
ultimately makes this documentary shine.
(Gulati will be in attendance.)
Also on Saturday is Christopher Hines’
unsettling look at male body images, The
Adonis Factor (6:30 p.m., USA, 68 min.). The
film begins with intriguing profiles of a group
of “A-list gays,” the gym bunny-circuit boy
types who live only for “the look.” Dismissive
of, or downright nasty toward, anyone who’s
not “in their league,” these guys are studies in
grim narcissism: “I am obsessed with how I
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and a fascinating cultural creative who, like
Arias, appears to live his art. Like the Arias
doc, too, this is a double portrait of Gen and
collaborator/lover Lady Jaye. It’s tempting to
view Jaye as Gen’s “muse,’’but as the film un­
folds it’s clear that, like Genesis’ sexual iden­
tity (he’s had gender reassignment surgery),
the truth is more complex, with the two clearly
acting as each other’s inspiration.
While obviously not for everyone, Gen and
Jaye make even the most mundane activity
like washing dishes into a witty performance
piece. There’s also plenty of sampling of the
pair in concert, alone or together, along with
rare footage of 1970s Gen as a cute butch boy
punker. Gen is articulate in describing his vi­
sion of a third gender—the “pandrogyne”—
that, typically, this fearless character tests on
himself, though it took Lady Jaye entering his
life to “concretize” the idea.
Moving from art to activism, Saturday’s
lineup opens with Glenne McElhinney’s On
These Shoulders We Stand(2 p.m.June 4, USA,
75 min.). History lessons need not be dull,
and this one is anything but. Using archival
footage and photographs and interviews with
survivors, this doc shows exactly what life was
like for pre- (and slightly post-) Stonewall
gays in Los Angeles. The nightly battles in the
1950s and ‘60s with homophobic police are a
focal point, with pictures of lives ruined and
surprising victories, as when a fed-up drag
queen marshals her fellow trannies for a march
on L.A.’s Rampart police station. Armed with
huge bouquets of flowers and demanding their
incarcerated “sisters” be released, these queens
befuddled the police and won their point.
Some of the battles fought at the time—
like picketing the phone company to get the
word “gay” into the phone book—are un­
imaginable today. A fascinating section de­
scribes the “masquerading” laws that the police
used to arrest gay people wearing “gender-in-
appropriate”clothing. Nancy Valverde, a funny,
unapologetic dyke who was frequently jailed
for wearing men’s clothing, finally sued the
city of L.A. to overturn these laws. She and a
number of other subjects of a documentary
seen in a previous QDoc entry, A Place to Live:
The Story of Triangle Square, are among those
who vividly describe the oppressions of the
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Above: Bono shaving in Becoming Chaz
Right: A scene from Inspired: Voices
Against Prop 8
look,” says one. But the film soon uncovers
cracks in this parade of self-love. The satisfac­
tions of hanging out in an exclusive club can
fade quickly. “Mr. Hot Atlanta” talks about
abandoning the A-list gays and trying to meet
people based on their personalities after con­
tracting hepatitis and watching his huff friends
disappear. Nothing crashes their party, it
seems, like evidence of human frailty.
The doc interpolates commentary by psy­
chologists, Botox doctors, alternative thera­
pists and a group of happy Bears on the pitfalls
of the kind of body fascism pursued by some
desperate gays. Most alarming, perhaps, are
scenes of twentyish queens having “Botox
parties” to recapture their “lost youth” of last
year. Also showing on this bill is Crowned and
Bound (USA, 21 min.), a brief but thoughtful
history of Chicago’s International Mr. Leather
contest. The film focuses on what would have
horrified the party boys of The Adonis Factor
a hunky guy in a wheelchair.
The night’s lineup concludes with Angel-
ique Bosio’s 'The Advocate for Fagdom (9 p.m.,
France, 91 min.). Kurt Cobain’s favorite direc­
tor, Bruce La Bruce, is one of a small group of
queer edge artists who delight in pushing
—
boundaries—not only the ones set up by
straights to keep queers in line but also those
made by “good gays” who bristle at anything
deemed too “offensive” to mainstream sensi­
bilities. He’s known for political satires (in­
cluding sending up his own revolutionary
politics), grainy skater-boy dramas, queer
zombie flicks and, most notoriously, for inte­
grating hard-core sex into the story lines, even
hiring actual porn stars to perform. La Bruce
appears throughout the film in cable TV snip­
pets, hilariously camping it up as a Judy Gar­
land clone and, in an interview, deadpanning
4
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