The Out Film Festival

Last night I went with a couple of friends to the Out Film Festival at Trinity College. The feature film was preceded by a number of “Shorts” ranging from 41 seconds to 20 minutes, some of them were good others and others just… ah… lousy, one of the crazy shorts was “Gay Zombies.” The main feature was musical and was very good:

Were the World Mine
Tom Gustafson, USA, 2008, 95 min
As the gay outcast at an all-boys prep school, Timothy daydreams about the handsome jock. But his are no ordinary flights of fancy; they're musical theater extravaganzas, complete with show-stopping songs, dazzling sets, and pirouetting rugby player chorus boys. A devilishly funny and intoxicatingly romantic musical tale of empowerment - inspired by William Shakespeare’s, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

After the movies they Question and Answers session with members of the film; the Director, the Co-writer, the producer & production designer, the Director of photography and the actor who portrayed Jonathon/ the 'jock' They also had an opening night reception following the movies, I stayed for a little while and left around 11:30.

Monday I want to see...

She’s A Boy I Knew
Gwen Haworth, Canada, 2007, 70 min
Using interviews, animation and old family footage, Vancouver filmmaker Gwen Haworth documents her male-to-female gender transition partially through the voices of her anxious but loving family, best friend, and wife. A comic, heartbreaking, and uplifting autobiography that breaks away from the usual marginalized depictions of transsexuality and focuses on the interpersonal relationships of a family who unexpectedly find their bonds strengthening as they overcome their preconceptions of gender and sexuality.

and on Thursday I want to see...

XXY (Centerpiece Film)
Lucía Puenzo, Argentina/Spain/France, 2007, 91 min
XXY explores the painful search for gender identity of Alex (an outstanding performance by Inés Efron), a hermaphrodite, as she enters adolescence and is pressured by her parents to “choose.” While Alex’s ambiguity is apparent and raises concerns for her parents and peers, her resolve to be her own person is undaunted. The rugged Uruguayan coast provides a stunning backdrop to the roiling emotions of family turmoil and adolescent forays into relationship. This stunning coming of age tale was chosen to represent Argentina at the 2007 Oscars in the Best Foreign Language Film category. In Spanish with English subtitles