17th Annual Boston Gay & Lesbian Film/Video Festival

Taking full advantage of the unlimited access she received into an extraordinarily personal process, Julie Wyman chronicles the transformation of a transsexual named Theo from a woman to a man over the course of six years in her compelling documentary, A Boy Named Sue. The film successfully captures Theo’s physiological and psychological changes during the process, as well as their effects on his lesbian lover and community of close friends.

This universal romantic comedy about the quest for true love centers on two 20-something opposites thrown together by their respective best friends in the hopes of igniting a romance. Writer Dan Bucatinsky stars as the Jewish son of sensitivety group psychologists and RRichard Ruccolo (Two Guys and a Girl) plays his reluctant, Bruce Willis-esque soulmake. Refreshing for its depiction of a central couple who just happen to be gay, All Over the Guy focuses on troubles of the heart common to homosexual and heterosexual relationships alike. Executive produced by Don Roos (the gay writer/director of The Opposite of Sex), the film features Sasha Alexander (Twin Falls Idaho), Adam Goldberg (Saving Private Ryan), Lisa Kudrow, Christina Ricci, and Doris Roberts (Everybody Loves Raymond).

Winner of the Audience Award at lesbian & gay film festivals in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere, Bezucha’s feature film debut tells the romantic tale of a New York City artist, Henry Hart, who returns home to Big Sky country to care for his ailing grandfather. When he arrives, Henry is reunited with Dean, his first love, who has also recently returned home—separated from his wife with two sons in tow. To further complicate matters, the town’s general store has a sexy, enigmatic new owner. This heartfelt film explores long-simmering passions and the beauty and heartache of love.

Winner of the Teddy Jury Award at the 2000 Berlin International Film Festival, Chrissy is the story of an ex-runaway and street kid who was diagnosed HIV+ at age 18, and did not reveal her sexual orientation or her illness to her family until eight years later. As we follow Chrissy, her mother, and three younger sisters for the next year, we are given access to a world one must see to really understand. Filmmaker Jacqui North takes us on a personal journey of a family learning about acceptance and love. Breaking records as the most watched documentary on Australian television, where it first aired on World AIDS Day in 1999, Chrissy is an honest and daring film.

Desi’s been dumped for another woman. Her sidekick, J.T., a young Latina dyke, is obsessed with skateboarding, performer Marcia Gomez, and finding Desi a new girl. Desi’s family, friends, and her animated subconscious both help and hinder every step of the way. Desi’s Looking for a New Girl is a touching true-to-life comedy infused with the sights and sounds of San Francisco Latino culture.

John Cameron Mitchell, creator and star of the long running off-Broadway rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch, has adapted his stage hit for the screen. Winner of the Sundance 2001 Audience and Director awards and the 2001 Berlin Teddy Award, this film tells the story of a transsexual would-be rock star. East German teenage boy Hansel agrees to a sex change operation in order to marry an older American man, thus becoming Hedwig. Shortly after their arrival in Kansas, Hedwig’s husband abandons her and she falls in love with confused 17-year-old Tommy, who steals her songs to become a rock superstar. The former soulmates’ paths continue to intersect as the Glam Era-inspired Hedwig rocks her way through the tragic story of her life, singing her soul nightly to audiences at a local restaurant chain. Visual flash and a retro-kitsch sensibility create the campy, underground appeal.

A former teacher at the School of the MFA, Barbara Hammer is peerless in her career that spans over three decades as an experimental filmmaker focusing on the lesbian world. In a compelling, humorous, and empowering contribution to lesbian history, her most recent effort recontextualizes images that portray lesbian behavior as illicit, mannish, and perverse. By defying the intended meanings of these popular lesbian images taken from narrative, medical, education and adult entertainment films dating back to the nineteenth century, History Lessons reclaims and rewrites lesbian history without shame. Wonderfully playful, History Lessons is an irreverent reconstruction, a filmic lesbian history that dates back to the very dawn of cinema itself.

Life is an endless cycle of cooking, laundry, and dishwashing for New Jersey housewife Julie Johnson (Lili Taylor). But Julie’s been nurturing a secret passion: a flair for scientific theory. Taking a huge step, Julie enrolls in a night class at a local high school—a decision that her best friend Claire (Courtney Love) supports. When Julie’s domineering husband strongly disapproves, Julie finally gets up the nerve to throw him out. Claire moves in while Julie and, together with Julie’s children, they form an unconventional but loving family—but lingering issues threaten to tear them apart. A story about self-discovery and shaky potential, Julie Johnson explores one woman’s desire to break free of other people’s expectations and the bravery required to pursue her dreams.

The rose-colored glasses of memory always idealize one person from the past with whom everything could have been perfect – if it hadn’t gone so horribly wrong. Julie and Me explores a friendship and love that gets its second chance. Freshly single Juliet seeks out her childhood friend Julie with whom she hasn't spoken in fifteen years because of a misplaced kiss. Initially their relationship is strailed, but they try to reclaim their friendship, explore what went wrong and try to make sense of the chemistry and sexual tension boiling just below the surface. Cheeky and humorous animated vignettes keep this emotionally intense love story light. A modern romance, Julie and Me effectively looks at the underlying tensions in relationships and how those tensions can both enhance and destroy intimacy.

Love/Juice is a passionate, strikingly beautiful film about female friendships in contemporary Tokyo. Kyoko and Chinatsu aren’t lovers, just roommates who eat, sleep, go clubbing, do dope, and brush their teeth together. Chinatsu is a lesbian photographer who is working on a visual diary. Kyoko, less mature, develops a crush on a taciturn boy who runs a local fish store and barely acknowledges her existence. When Chinatsu is dumped by her girlfriend, Kyoko tries to console her and the two almost make love. And suddenly, it’s make-or-break time for the girls’ relationship. Without hyped-up melodramatics of any kind, Shindo Kaze’s directorial debut is one of the freshest and most believable films about female friendship ever made.

The collaboration between “sixth generation” director Liu Bingjian and openly gay screenwriter Cui Zi’en has resulted in a picture of homosexuality rare for Chinese cinema in its sympathy and realism. A shy young man arrives in Beijing to work in a clothes shop owned by the repressed wife of a boorish man. Meanwhile, the flamboyant host (Cui Zi’en) of a lonely hearts talk show on a pirate radio station is asked out by the editor of a fanzine that publishes graffiti from public toilets. At first nothing happens–feelings are hidden under a cloak of normalcy. When passions finally erupt, they are violent, unexpected, liberating and subversive.

Winner of the Prix de Jeunesse (Youth Award) at Cannes, this sensitive, seriocomic coming-of-age film explores the fragile emotions of adolescent sexual experimentation. Best friends Dani and Nico spend ten days together at a beach house on the coast of Spain while Dani’s parents vacation in Egypt. With extraordinary tact, the film observes the friends’ exploratory sexual fumblings in the bed they share during the visit. Tensions arise as their sexual identities begin to diverge – for Nico, the nightly sessions are mere convenience, while for Dani they are fraught with emotion and romantic hope. This unflinching, yet delicate take on the rides of adolescence affectionately transports us back to those awkward days of longing, curiosity, innocence and fear.

When it comes to gender, there is a truly Samoan way of seeing the world. Paradise Bent tells the story of the Samoan fa’afafine: boys who are raised as girls and play an important domestic role in traditional Samoan culture. The film explores the traditional roles of the fa’afafine, the anthropological records of this phenomenon, and the impact of westernization on Samoa, particularly the threat posed by the infiltration of the western drag scene.

Neither sensational nor sentimental, the remarkable Southern Comfort is a documentary about 52-year-old female-to-male transsexual Robert Eads who, dying of cervical and ovarian cancer, is neglected by doctors uncomfortable with treating him. “A hillbilly and proud of it,” Robert cuts a striking figure in his home in the Georgia black hills, where he falls deeply in love with male-to-female transsexual Lola Cola. Director Kate Davis functioned as a one-person crew in order to intimately capture this rare blend of humor, romance, and tragedy. Even though Southern Comfort (the title refers to a support group peopled by Eads and his transgender friends) is as much about generosity, courage, and tolerance as it is about a potentially discomfitting subject, the film sent shock waves through the Sundance Film Festival where it won the award for Best Documentary Film. As Eads tries to find help for his condition, his resolute kindness, dignity and compassion in the face of adversity help him build a community of friends and gives Southern Comfort its punch.

This film chronicles poet Audre Lorde’s broad social vision and the translation of that vision into a historic transnational conference, “I Am Your Sister: Forging Global Connections Across Differences,” which took place in Boston in October, 1990. Intrinsically important in the second wave of the US Feminist movement, Lorde (1934-1992), through her 15 books of poetry and prose, consistently challenged racism, sexism and homophobia, serving as a catalyst for change within and among social movements.

Stolen Y-fronts and an obsession with dust cause confusion in a Sydney apartment building in Above the Dust Level by Carla Drago (Australia, 1999, 12 min). Stark city landscapes provide a backdrop for dyke drama in Meep Meep! by Jenni Olson (2001, 1 min). Bare by Liz Baulch takes a playful look at living in close quarters (Australia, 2000, 9 min). Butch and her guest show us how to seduce her with dessert in Baking with Butch by Melissa Levin and Nina Levitt (2000, 5 min). An Australian lesbian discovers her ethnic background in Black Sheep by Lou Glover (Australia, 1999, 26 min). While mom is preparing the Christmas turkey, Anne comes out in Home for Christmas by Frank Mosvold (Norway, 2000, 5 min). A six year old falls for her older brother’s girl… and does something about it in Girl Under the Table by Dominique Zeltzman (USA, 2000, 3 min).

Audience award winner at five festivals, Crush by Phillip Bartell (2000, 29 min) is set during a long hot summer in a (very) small town in rural Illinois, as 12-year-old Tina bonds with 16-year-old Robbie over their favorite TV show. Tina soon develops a major crush on Robbie. Robbie, however, develops a crush of his own… The Mountain King by Duncan Tucker is a sensuously photographed film that depicts a relationship between a persuasive hustler and a quietly closeted young man at the beach. …lost by Dan Castle was made in response to growing complacency about the continuing threat of AIDS and captures a day in the life of a young man foundering in a world of drugs, anonymous tricks, and AIDS. When Joseph asks his lifelong partner, Caesar, to send for a priest in The Confession by Carl Pfirman, it leads to a dramatic struggle in this moving exploration of love, faith and commitment.