We begin our run at the coolidge-corner-theater with two midnight screenings of John Cameron Mitchell’s acclaimed film Hedwig and the Angry Inch which tells the story of an ‘internationally ignored’ rock singer, Hedwig, and her search for stardom and love. Born a boy named Hansel who searches for love, Hedwig reluctantly submits to a sex change operation in order to marry an American G.I. The operation is botched, leaving her with an ‘angry inch’. Finding herself divorced in a Kansas trailer park, she forms a rock band and encounters a lover, Tommy, who leaves her, steals her songs, and becomes a rock star. Touring with her pan-Slavic band, The Angry Inch, Hedwig shadows Tommy’s stadium tour, performing in near-empty restaurants for bewildered diners and a few die-hard fans. Somewhere between the crab cakes and the cramped motel rooms, between the anguish and the acid-wash, she pursues her dreams and discovers the origin of love.

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Director Thom Fitzgerald (The Wild Dogs; The Hanging Garden) evokes virtuoso performances from Oscar-winning actresses Olympia Dukakis and Brenda Fricker in this uproarious dramedy about two women – lovers for 31 years – who must go on the run in order to stay together. Fitzgerald’s film is especially timely against the backdrop of the current marriage battle in Maine taking place this summer. Dukakis plays Stella, an antagonistic, foul-mouthed old bull dyke who lives with her long-time lover– the near-blind and slightly dotty Dot (Fricker)–in their bucolic home by the sea. When Dot’s neurotic granddaughter Molly shows up, announcing that she’s putting Dot in an old folks home, Stella throws her out, giving her an earful in the process. Not to be put off, Molly returns with a policeman and takes Dot away, leaving Stella bereft, but not beaten. Stella soon breaks her out of the home, and the two head for Canada to get married, picking up a young hitchhiker on the way. Thus begins an alternately poignant and riotous comedy that has much to say about the true nature of love and commitment.

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