Welcome back --
Hope everyone had a good summer!
If you have an event to post please send the information to siqueira@uwm.edu
Feel free to send corrections and/or suggestions as well.
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
Tuesday, September 4
UWM Union Theater
7pm - FREE
The Tailenders (Adele Horne, US, 72 min., video, 2005)
Adele Horne's documentary “The Tailenders” is a captivating look at a missionary group's use of ultra-low-tech audio devices to evangelize indigenous communities facing crises caused by global economic forces. The video traces Global Recordings Network on their journeys within the Solomon Islands, Mexico, India and the United States, where they distribute their recordings of Bible stories in indigenous languages, along with hand-wind audio players, to "the Tailenders": the last people to be reached by worldwide evangelism. In The Tailenders, Horne takes a critical look at Global Recordings' remarkable fusion of evangelism, technology and marketing, and also explores how meaning changes as it crosses language, culture, borders, and economic divides.
7pm - FREE
The Tailenders (Adele Horne, US, 72 min., video, 2005)
Adele Horne's documentary “The Tailenders” is a captivating look at a missionary group's use of ultra-low-tech audio devices to evangelize indigenous communities facing crises caused by global economic forces. The video traces Global Recordings Network on their journeys within the Solomon Islands, Mexico, India and the United States, where they distribute their recordings of Bible stories in indigenous languages, along with hand-wind audio players, to "the Tailenders": the last people to be reached by worldwide evangelism. In The Tailenders, Horne takes a critical look at Global Recordings' remarkable fusion of evangelism, technology and marketing, and also explores how meaning changes as it crosses language, culture, borders, and economic divides.
Wednesday, September 5
DocUquarium Series
Every Wednesday September 5-December 5
Beginning this Wednesday, September 5th, “dive deep” into the newest independent documentaries this fall as filmmaker/professor Brad Lichtenstein opens up his film 301 class to the public. Nine premieres, guests every month and deep exploration guaranteed. A few highlights include Please Vote for Me, Banished, King Korn, Miss Navajo, and Revolution 67.
This Week’s DocUquarium:
UWM Union Theater
7h30pm *FREE*
Please Vote For Me
(dir. Weijun Chen, China, 2007, 55 Minutes, Mandarin with English subtitles)
What does democracy look like in the world’s largest Communist country? Start small, very small. This impossibly charming film features a third grade class in Wahun province and the intense politicking in the race to become Class Monitor.
“Please Vote For Me” captures many elements of life in China today missed by all the magazine cover stories and astounding growth statistics. This story unfolds far from the giant factories, crowded markets, or even picturesque villages. These classrooms are state-of-the-art and the children’s homes look remarkably like middle class urban homes in the West. The film provides a private view of a microcosm of contemporary Chinese culture.
For more information visit www.whydemocracy.net
Every Wednesday September 5-December 5
Beginning this Wednesday, September 5th, “dive deep” into the newest independent documentaries this fall as filmmaker/professor Brad Lichtenstein opens up his film 301 class to the public. Nine premieres, guests every month and deep exploration guaranteed. A few highlights include Please Vote for Me, Banished, King Korn, Miss Navajo, and Revolution 67.
This Week’s DocUquarium:
UWM Union Theater
7h30pm *FREE*
Please Vote For Me
(dir. Weijun Chen, China, 2007, 55 Minutes, Mandarin with English subtitles)
What does democracy look like in the world’s largest Communist country? Start small, very small. This impossibly charming film features a third grade class in Wahun province and the intense politicking in the race to become Class Monitor.
“Please Vote For Me” captures many elements of life in China today missed by all the magazine cover stories and astounding growth statistics. This story unfolds far from the giant factories, crowded markets, or even picturesque villages. These classrooms are state-of-the-art and the children’s homes look remarkably like middle class urban homes in the West. The film provides a private view of a microcosm of contemporary Chinese culture.
For more information visit www.whydemocracy.net
Thursday, September 6
UWM Union Theater
7pm *FREE*
The Tailenders (Adele Horne, US, 72 min., video, 2005)
Milwaukee LGBT Film/Video Festival
September 6-16
The 20th edition of one of the community's longest running film festivals, sharing once again 11 nights of an international array of narrative features, documentaries, shorts, and experimental media. Unless otherwise noted all screenings will take place at the Union Theatre. Full schedule and ticket information available at http://arts.uwm.edu/lgbtfilm. Email lgbtfilm@uwm.edu for more information.
OPENING NIGHT
Oriental Theater - 7:30pm
2230 North Farwell Avenue / (414) 276-8711
Nina's Heavenly Delights (Pratibha Parmar, UK, 35mm, 92 min., 2006)
Community Co-Sponsor: Cream City Foundation
Community Co-Presenter: Lesbian Alliance
An intoxicating and wonderfully funny mix of lesbian romance, family melodrama, and a whole showcase of delicious food.
Upon hearing the news of her father's death, prodigal—and closeted—daughter Nina returns home to Glasgow, only to learn that the family's Indian restaurant is set to close. Overcoming her family's resistance—her grieving mother wants to sell; her brother resents his sister's insistence; and her younger sister could give a fig (she's busy secretly pursuing Scottish dance)—Nina decides to enter a televised curry cook–off competition to save her family's business. And, when her old college friend Lisa agrees to help, love becomes part of the recipe. Meanwhile, her gay friend Mohan auditions for a choreographer's job with an Indian film company. With a nod to Bollywood, director Parmar knows exactly how to serve up this tale of family secrets and simmering love: with a dash of ghost story, a musical number or two and a genuine embrace of sentiment. Unabashed and buoyant, warmly humorous and refreshingly pleasurable, Nina's Heavenly Delights is like the work of a great chef who can conjure up something surprising and unexpectedly satisfying from a familiar recipe. Don't arrive with an empty stomach!
7pm *FREE*
The Tailenders (Adele Horne, US, 72 min., video, 2005)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Milwaukee LGBT Film/Video Festival
September 6-16
The 20th edition of one of the community's longest running film festivals, sharing once again 11 nights of an international array of narrative features, documentaries, shorts, and experimental media. Unless otherwise noted all screenings will take place at the Union Theatre. Full schedule and ticket information available at http://arts.uwm.edu/lgbtfilm. Email lgbtfilm@uwm.edu for more information.
OPENING NIGHT
Oriental Theater - 7:30pm
2230 North Farwell Avenue / (414) 276-8711
Nina's Heavenly Delights (Pratibha Parmar, UK, 35mm, 92 min., 2006)
Community Co-Sponsor: Cream City Foundation
Community Co-Presenter: Lesbian Alliance
An intoxicating and wonderfully funny mix of lesbian romance, family melodrama, and a whole showcase of delicious food.
Upon hearing the news of her father's death, prodigal—and closeted—daughter Nina returns home to Glasgow, only to learn that the family's Indian restaurant is set to close. Overcoming her family's resistance—her grieving mother wants to sell; her brother resents his sister's insistence; and her younger sister could give a fig (she's busy secretly pursuing Scottish dance)—Nina decides to enter a televised curry cook–off competition to save her family's business. And, when her old college friend Lisa agrees to help, love becomes part of the recipe. Meanwhile, her gay friend Mohan auditions for a choreographer's job with an Indian film company. With a nod to Bollywood, director Parmar knows exactly how to serve up this tale of family secrets and simmering love: with a dash of ghost story, a musical number or two and a genuine embrace of sentiment. Unabashed and buoyant, warmly humorous and refreshingly pleasurable, Nina's Heavenly Delights is like the work of a great chef who can conjure up something surprising and unexpectedly satisfying from a familiar recipe. Don't arrive with an empty stomach!
JOIN US FOR A POST-SCREENING RECEPTION
Beans & Barley
1901 E. North Ave.
AND AN AFTER PARTY
Post-reception party with PUMP! and DJ John Murges
at Red Light above Trocadero, 1758 N. Water St.
Beans & Barley
1901 E. North Ave.
AND AN AFTER PARTY
Post-reception party with PUMP! and DJ John Murges
at Red Light above Trocadero, 1758 N. Water St.
Friday, September 7
Milwaukee LGBT Film/Video Festival
September 6-16
UWM Union Theater
5pm
Oh Happy Day (Ian Poitier, UK, video, 96 min., 2007)
A touching—and genuinely romantic—romantic comedy about the complications of sex and work and family and the possibility of ecstasy (pharmaceutical and otherwise).
The morning after lands a bit hard for Jonathan, an ambitious ad man who hooks up with David, an American he meets at a work-related awards show. The next day he discovers that David is one of his ad firm's new clients—David's company produces an Ecstasy-type pill for everyday use. Trouble is, his new amorous situation is a little harder to swallow: Jonathan works in a firm where sleeping with a client is decidedly verboten, and Jonathan must put David on hold to put work first. A new relationship that's all sparky gets a little snarky. A very funny workplace comedy, nicely textured with no-big-deal representations of race and alternative families, “Oh Happy Day” is also very sweet in its recommended prescriptions for life and love.
7pm
Four Minutes (Veir Minuten, Ian Poitier, Chris Kraus, Germany, in German with English subtitles, 35mm, 112 min., 2006)
Co-Sponsor: Wolfe Releasing
Community Co-Presenters: Lesbian Alliance & SAGE-Milwaukee
Winner - Audience Award & Best Feature - San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival
Winner - Best Actress & Best Young Actress - 2007 Bavarian Film Awards
A beautiful and powerful tale of two women who unleash the power of music against the barbarity of history, personal and political.
Frau Krüger teaches music in a women's prison, only caring, she insists, about music. But her rigid facade barely contains feelings of grief and remorse: she feels responsible for the death of her lover, a dissident, at the hands of the Nazis decades earlier. Jenny von Loeben, in prison for a ghastly crime, is an unlikely pupil for the orderly Frau Krüger. She was once a piano prodigy who now, on the brink of adulthood, is openly anarchic in her ferocious piano banging (à la musique concrète and/or Jerry Lee Lewis) and in her brutal reflex to violence (she nearly kills the guard supervising her piano lessons). But both women have had to endure enormous cruelty and atrocity in their lives and, however they disagree about matters of form, they both find in music the only possible, only available liberation from the past. The two forge a turbulent partnership as they prepare, in fits and starts, surmounting obstacles personal and institutionally imposed, for a prestigious piano competition, the finale of which will allow Jenny the chance to deliver, in the mere four minutes of the title, a declaration that expresses the rage, defiance, endurance and beauty of her life, and that of her mentor.
Four Minutes will also screen at the 5 th Annual Milwaukee International Film Festival which runs September 20 – 30. See http://www.milwaukeefilmfest.org for show times.
9pm
Shelter (Jonah Markowitz, USA, video, 88 min., 2007)
Community Co-Sponsor: Milwaukee GAMMA
Winner - Audience Award & First Dramatic Feature - Outfest 2007
A touching, surfside family drama about a most responsible young man's coming out, and coming into his own.
Forced to give up his dreams of art school, Zach spends his days working a dead end job and helping his dependent sister care for her son. In hisfree time he surfs, draws—frequently with spray paint on the walls of public buildings—and hangs out with his best friend Gabe, who lives on the wealthy side of town. When Gabe's older brother Shaun returns home, he is drawn to Zach's selflessness and talent. Zach, in turn, falls in love with Shaun while struggling to reconcile his own desires with the needs of his family. This award-winning first feature maintains an appealing, low-key SoCal vibe as it profiles a young man whose issues around coming out are entwined with his larger negotiations with the world and those he loves. Another attraction is star Brad Rowe (Shaun)—from both Wauwatosa and “Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss”.
September 6-16
UWM Union Theater
5pm
Oh Happy Day (Ian Poitier, UK, video, 96 min., 2007)
A touching—and genuinely romantic—romantic comedy about the complications of sex and work and family and the possibility of ecstasy (pharmaceutical and otherwise).
The morning after lands a bit hard for Jonathan, an ambitious ad man who hooks up with David, an American he meets at a work-related awards show. The next day he discovers that David is one of his ad firm's new clients—David's company produces an Ecstasy-type pill for everyday use. Trouble is, his new amorous situation is a little harder to swallow: Jonathan works in a firm where sleeping with a client is decidedly verboten, and Jonathan must put David on hold to put work first. A new relationship that's all sparky gets a little snarky. A very funny workplace comedy, nicely textured with no-big-deal representations of race and alternative families, “Oh Happy Day” is also very sweet in its recommended prescriptions for life and love.
7pm
Four Minutes (Veir Minuten, Ian Poitier, Chris Kraus, Germany, in German with English subtitles, 35mm, 112 min., 2006)
Co-Sponsor: Wolfe Releasing
Community Co-Presenters: Lesbian Alliance & SAGE-Milwaukee
Winner - Audience Award & Best Feature - San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival
Winner - Best Actress & Best Young Actress - 2007 Bavarian Film Awards
A beautiful and powerful tale of two women who unleash the power of music against the barbarity of history, personal and political.
Frau Krüger teaches music in a women's prison, only caring, she insists, about music. But her rigid facade barely contains feelings of grief and remorse: she feels responsible for the death of her lover, a dissident, at the hands of the Nazis decades earlier. Jenny von Loeben, in prison for a ghastly crime, is an unlikely pupil for the orderly Frau Krüger. She was once a piano prodigy who now, on the brink of adulthood, is openly anarchic in her ferocious piano banging (à la musique concrète and/or Jerry Lee Lewis) and in her brutal reflex to violence (she nearly kills the guard supervising her piano lessons). But both women have had to endure enormous cruelty and atrocity in their lives and, however they disagree about matters of form, they both find in music the only possible, only available liberation from the past. The two forge a turbulent partnership as they prepare, in fits and starts, surmounting obstacles personal and institutionally imposed, for a prestigious piano competition, the finale of which will allow Jenny the chance to deliver, in the mere four minutes of the title, a declaration that expresses the rage, defiance, endurance and beauty of her life, and that of her mentor.
Four Minutes will also screen at the 5 th Annual Milwaukee International Film Festival which runs September 20 – 30. See http://www.milwaukeefilmfest.org for show times.
9pm
Shelter (Jonah Markowitz, USA, video, 88 min., 2007)
Community Co-Sponsor: Milwaukee GAMMA
Winner - Audience Award & First Dramatic Feature - Outfest 2007
A touching, surfside family drama about a most responsible young man's coming out, and coming into his own.
Forced to give up his dreams of art school, Zach spends his days working a dead end job and helping his dependent sister care for her son. In hisfree time he surfs, draws—frequently with spray paint on the walls of public buildings—and hangs out with his best friend Gabe, who lives on the wealthy side of town. When Gabe's older brother Shaun returns home, he is drawn to Zach's selflessness and talent. Zach, in turn, falls in love with Shaun while struggling to reconcile his own desires with the needs of his family. This award-winning first feature maintains an appealing, low-key SoCal vibe as it profiles a young man whose issues around coming out are entwined with his larger negotiations with the world and those he loves. Another attraction is star Brad Rowe (Shaun)—from both Wauwatosa and “Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss”.
Saturday, September 8
Milwaukee LGBT Film/Video Festival
September 6-16
UWM Union Theater
1pm
Blueprint (Kirk Shannon-Butts, USA, video, 75 min., 2007)
Community Co-Presenters: Charles “D” Productions & Project Q
A film about a tentative courtship between two African American college students that is resourceful and risky, lean and leisurely, daring to take and find its own time.
Keith is a beatnik, excessively confident—even about his unhappiness—and proud of his precision. Nathan is laid back, amusingly garrulous and probably high. On their first date, Keith and Nathan hit the road on a motorcycle with only a hint of an itinerary: they smoke pot and take a dip in a stream. The two are on the cusp of something—adulthood, a relationship, a plan?—and the movie enjoys their hesitancy, the charmed time before an agenda looms, when possibilities are part of the atmosphere. Blueprint has the conventionally comedic friction of opposites attracting, but first time filmmaker Shannon-Butts designs a winning debut out of the less schematic and far richer pleasures and promises of irresolution.
shown with:
Float (Kareem Mortimer, Bahamas, video, 35 min., 2006)
Set in the acutely homophobic Bahamas , two men risk falling in love.
3pm
FtF: Female To Femme (Kami Chisholm & Elizabeth Stark, USA, video, 48 min., 2006)
Campus Co-Sponsor: Women's Resource Center
Community Co-Presenters: Milwaukee Femme Mafia , FORGE & Lesbian Alliance
Sexy, smart and funny, FtF: Female to Femme explores femme dyke identities as radical gender practices.
A film that envisions more than it documents, FtF pushes for an understanding of femininity as multiple rather than singular, constructed rather than natural. FtF features a host of fabulous femmes, including actress Guinevere Turner, novelist Jewelle Gomez, rock stars Leslie Mah and Bitch, along with professors, activists, artists and dancers. FtF makes use of parody and costuming much the way femme does: to create a saucy, indelible impression of a people and a politics central to the gender revolution. To be screened with a series of shorts assembled with Milwaukee Femme Mafia.
5pm
Tuli (Auraeus Solito, Philippines, in Tagalog with English subtitles, video, 107 min., 2006)
Winner - Outstanding International Narrative Feature - Outfest 2007
A beguiling film of feminist defiance and lesbian courtship in rural Philippines.
In this new film from the director of last year's delight, The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros, Solito's subject is another willful young queer challenging the law of the father. Headstrong Daisy, daughter of a preeminent patriarch, assists her father in performing the male circumcision ritual (tuli). Daisy resists the life—and the marriage—chosen for her and instead devotes herself to her childhood girlfriend Botchok in a relationship that stirs the wrath of the superstitious village. Ethnographically rich, Solito's film offers a complex portrait of a rural life caught between Christian and local shamanistic rituals. Daisy's defiance and the changes it prompts suggest the politics and feel of an Alice Walker novel, wherein outsiders find power in confederacy and feminist utopias can be realized through personal declarations however challenging, however disobedient.
7pm
The Bubble (Habuah, Eytan Fox, Israel, in Hebrew and Arabic with English subtitles, 35mm, 117 min., 2006)
Community Co-Sponsor: Milwaukee GAMMA
Community Co-Presenter: Milwaukee Jewish Film Festival
Winner - Audience Award & Best Narrative Feature - Outfest 2007
A love story between an Israeli and a Palestinian in today's fractious Middle East.
Yali works as a waiter but aspires to something more romantic, say consummating his desire for his roommate Noam. An oblivious Noam works as a record store clerk when he is not enduring his military service at a border checkpoint. Lulu bristles at accepted opinion—and piggish men—and hazards a career in fashion when not organizing a rave for peace. And Ashraf, fleeing political strife and family pressures, sneaks across the border into this “bubble” of Tel Aviv twenty-somethings, perhaps to find the soldier he spied at the border. Israeli filmmaker Eytan Fox (Yossi and Jagger , Walk on Water) crafts a valentine to the in-spite-of-it-all exuberance of the young people of Tel Aviv and a heart-rending mapping of the conflict in today's Israel through the antics and loves and stabs at responsibility of these not-quite adults. At the epicenter of the tragedy is the charged romance between Noam and Ashraf, whose devotion across fraught territories can only ultimately manifest itself in desperate measures. A powerful gay narrative, “The Bubble” broadens its concerns to acknowledge the impossible aches of a wider world.
The Bubble will also screen at the 5th Annual Milwaukee International Film Festival which runs September 20 – 30. See http://www.milwaukeefilmfest.org for show times.
9pm
iLESBIAN: An Evening of Women's Shorts
Campus Co-Sponsor: Women's Resource Center
Community Co-Presenters: Lesbian Alliance & Project Q
Scroll! Touch! Join us for the an evening of the finest and newest in short films and videos about courtship, first dates, innovative uses of cell phone technology and communities resourcefully invented in locker rooms. The standout may be “Pariah” (Dee Rees, video, 28 min., 2006), the powerhouse—and multiple award-winning—short that tells the tale of one young African American girl's struggle to bust out of the closet, of the confines of her family's ideas. Also to screen: “A Passing Rain” (Kim Myoung-Hwa, South Korea, video, 8 min., 2006); “Flowers at the Park (or First Kisses)” (Mariel Macia, Spain, video, 10 min., 2006); “Filled With Water” (Elka Kerkhofs, Australia, video, 5 min., 2006); “Eddie” (Quentin Kruger, USA, video, 10 min., 2007); “Vibracall” (Esmir Filho, Brazil, video, 5 min., 2006); “Spinning” (Heide Arnesen, Norway, video, 8 min., 2006); & more!
11pm – FREE!!
Born in Flames (Lizzie Borden, USA, 16mm, 80 min., 1983)
Community Co-Presenters: Broad Vocabulary & Queer Zine Archive Project
A rare big screen presentation of this radical, still - provocative feminist classic of the struggle of alternative politics and the control of the media – the inspiration for this year's Itty Bitty Titty Committee. In Borden's troubled imagined future, the government celebrates the tenth anniversary of the US's own Social Democratic War of Liberation. But the citizenry of New York City are increasingly agitated. In this alternate America, government oppression and violence against women is rampant, and the feminist response is increasingly powerful. Born in Flames chronicles the activities of the Women's Army, a formidable if loosely organized faction of female vigilantes and counterrevolutionaries, and two pirate radio programs trying to rally the sisterhood and shake up the system. When the outspoken leader of the Women's Army dies in police custody, a united front emerges to take direct action and potentially dangerous measures. “Born in Flames” uncorks a bracing mode of independent film no longer evident, however much its concerns with the plight of women and people of color, the government policing of its citizenry, and media control remain most relevant.
September 6-16
UWM Union Theater
1pm
Blueprint (Kirk Shannon-Butts, USA, video, 75 min., 2007)
Community Co-Presenters: Charles “D” Productions & Project Q
A film about a tentative courtship between two African American college students that is resourceful and risky, lean and leisurely, daring to take and find its own time.
Keith is a beatnik, excessively confident—even about his unhappiness—and proud of his precision. Nathan is laid back, amusingly garrulous and probably high. On their first date, Keith and Nathan hit the road on a motorcycle with only a hint of an itinerary: they smoke pot and take a dip in a stream. The two are on the cusp of something—adulthood, a relationship, a plan?—and the movie enjoys their hesitancy, the charmed time before an agenda looms, when possibilities are part of the atmosphere. Blueprint has the conventionally comedic friction of opposites attracting, but first time filmmaker Shannon-Butts designs a winning debut out of the less schematic and far richer pleasures and promises of irresolution.
shown with:
Float (Kareem Mortimer, Bahamas, video, 35 min., 2006)
Set in the acutely homophobic Bahamas , two men risk falling in love.
3pm
FtF: Female To Femme (Kami Chisholm & Elizabeth Stark, USA, video, 48 min., 2006)
Campus Co-Sponsor: Women's Resource Center
Community Co-Presenters: Milwaukee Femme Mafia , FORGE & Lesbian Alliance
Sexy, smart and funny, FtF: Female to Femme explores femme dyke identities as radical gender practices.
A film that envisions more than it documents, FtF pushes for an understanding of femininity as multiple rather than singular, constructed rather than natural. FtF features a host of fabulous femmes, including actress Guinevere Turner, novelist Jewelle Gomez, rock stars Leslie Mah and Bitch, along with professors, activists, artists and dancers. FtF makes use of parody and costuming much the way femme does: to create a saucy, indelible impression of a people and a politics central to the gender revolution. To be screened with a series of shorts assembled with Milwaukee Femme Mafia.
5pm
Tuli (Auraeus Solito, Philippines, in Tagalog with English subtitles, video, 107 min., 2006)
Winner - Outstanding International Narrative Feature - Outfest 2007
A beguiling film of feminist defiance and lesbian courtship in rural Philippines.
In this new film from the director of last year's delight, The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros, Solito's subject is another willful young queer challenging the law of the father. Headstrong Daisy, daughter of a preeminent patriarch, assists her father in performing the male circumcision ritual (tuli). Daisy resists the life—and the marriage—chosen for her and instead devotes herself to her childhood girlfriend Botchok in a relationship that stirs the wrath of the superstitious village. Ethnographically rich, Solito's film offers a complex portrait of a rural life caught between Christian and local shamanistic rituals. Daisy's defiance and the changes it prompts suggest the politics and feel of an Alice Walker novel, wherein outsiders find power in confederacy and feminist utopias can be realized through personal declarations however challenging, however disobedient.
7pm
The Bubble (Habuah, Eytan Fox, Israel, in Hebrew and Arabic with English subtitles, 35mm, 117 min., 2006)
Community Co-Sponsor: Milwaukee GAMMA
Community Co-Presenter: Milwaukee Jewish Film Festival
Winner - Audience Award & Best Narrative Feature - Outfest 2007
A love story between an Israeli and a Palestinian in today's fractious Middle East.
Yali works as a waiter but aspires to something more romantic, say consummating his desire for his roommate Noam. An oblivious Noam works as a record store clerk when he is not enduring his military service at a border checkpoint. Lulu bristles at accepted opinion—and piggish men—and hazards a career in fashion when not organizing a rave for peace. And Ashraf, fleeing political strife and family pressures, sneaks across the border into this “bubble” of Tel Aviv twenty-somethings, perhaps to find the soldier he spied at the border. Israeli filmmaker Eytan Fox (Yossi and Jagger , Walk on Water) crafts a valentine to the in-spite-of-it-all exuberance of the young people of Tel Aviv and a heart-rending mapping of the conflict in today's Israel through the antics and loves and stabs at responsibility of these not-quite adults. At the epicenter of the tragedy is the charged romance between Noam and Ashraf, whose devotion across fraught territories can only ultimately manifest itself in desperate measures. A powerful gay narrative, “The Bubble” broadens its concerns to acknowledge the impossible aches of a wider world.
The Bubble will also screen at the 5th Annual Milwaukee International Film Festival which runs September 20 – 30. See http://www.milwaukeefilmfest.org for show times.
9pm
iLESBIAN: An Evening of Women's Shorts
Campus Co-Sponsor: Women's Resource Center
Community Co-Presenters: Lesbian Alliance & Project Q
Scroll! Touch! Join us for the an evening of the finest and newest in short films and videos about courtship, first dates, innovative uses of cell phone technology and communities resourcefully invented in locker rooms. The standout may be “Pariah” (Dee Rees, video, 28 min., 2006), the powerhouse—and multiple award-winning—short that tells the tale of one young African American girl's struggle to bust out of the closet, of the confines of her family's ideas. Also to screen: “A Passing Rain” (Kim Myoung-Hwa, South Korea, video, 8 min., 2006); “Flowers at the Park (or First Kisses)” (Mariel Macia, Spain, video, 10 min., 2006); “Filled With Water” (Elka Kerkhofs, Australia, video, 5 min., 2006); “Eddie” (Quentin Kruger, USA, video, 10 min., 2007); “Vibracall” (Esmir Filho, Brazil, video, 5 min., 2006); “Spinning” (Heide Arnesen, Norway, video, 8 min., 2006); & more!
11pm – FREE!!
Born in Flames (Lizzie Borden, USA, 16mm, 80 min., 1983)
Community Co-Presenters: Broad Vocabulary & Queer Zine Archive Project
A rare big screen presentation of this radical, still - provocative feminist classic of the struggle of alternative politics and the control of the media – the inspiration for this year's Itty Bitty Titty Committee. In Borden's troubled imagined future, the government celebrates the tenth anniversary of the US's own Social Democratic War of Liberation. But the citizenry of New York City are increasingly agitated. In this alternate America, government oppression and violence against women is rampant, and the feminist response is increasingly powerful. Born in Flames chronicles the activities of the Women's Army, a formidable if loosely organized faction of female vigilantes and counterrevolutionaries, and two pirate radio programs trying to rally the sisterhood and shake up the system. When the outspoken leader of the Women's Army dies in police custody, a united front emerges to take direct action and potentially dangerous measures. “Born in Flames” uncorks a bracing mode of independent film no longer evident, however much its concerns with the plight of women and people of color, the government policing of its citizenry, and media control remain most relevant.
Sunday, September 9
Milwaukee LGBT Film/Video Festival
September 6-16
UWM Union Theater
3pm
The Believers (Todd Holland, USA, video, 80 min., 2006)
Community Co-Presenters: FORGE, First Unitarian Society-Interweave, Men's Voices Milwaukee, Milwaukee Metropolitan Community Church & Wisconsin Cream City Chorus
Winner - Audience Award & Best Documentary - 2006 San Francisco LGBT Film/Video Festival
A feature documentary that shatters assumptions about faith, gender and religion.
The Transcendence Gospel Choir faces a dilemma: how to reconcile their gender identity—as the world's first transgender gospel choir—with the widespread belief that changing one's gender goes against the word of God? The film takes us from the choir's shaky beginnings — a heartwarmingly chaotic, cacophonous group unable to agree on much of anything, arguing over appropriate wardrobe and learning to sing with transitioning voices—through their transformation into the polished, award-winning choir and close-knit family they are today, garnering major shows and winning an Outmusic Award in 2004 for the album Whosoever Believes. The intimate personal stories shed light on the difficulties of balancing social change, family history, religion and identity as the singers struggle for acceptance within two worlds historically at odds with one another.
5pm
Vivere (Angelina Maccarone, Germany, in German with English subtitles, 35mm, 97 min., 2006)
Community Co-Presenters: Lesbian Alliance & SAGE-Milwaukee
Winner - Outstanding Artistic Achievement - 2007 Outfest
A poignant road movie about three women of different generations fleeing—and perhaps finding—reasons to live.
When she is not busy driving a cab, duty-bound Francesca tends to her father and her restless younger sister Antoinetta in their motherless home. When Antoinetta flees on Christmas Eve—chasing a boy in a rock band—Francesca has to go look for her. En route she comes across an injured older woman by the side of the road: abandoned by her girlfriend, Gerlinde is bereft, untethered even. Director Maccarone (Unveiled) poetically portrays characters seeking desperate resolution and proffers the possibility of hope as these women, through their encounters with each other, find ways of addressing what they've lost and tentatively hazard new directions.
7pm
Prisoners of Love: Jean Genet on Film
Un Chant D'Amour (A Song of Love) & Querelle
Campus Co-Sponsor: UWM Festival of Films in French
Community Co-Sponsor: Outwords Books
A Song of Love (Un Chant D'Amour, Jean Genet, France, in French with English subtitles, 35mm, 26 min., 1950)
A fantasia of power and desire, with stolen glances, surveillance and prison walls only penetrable by gay reverie and maybe a whisper of smoke. “Un Chant d'Amour” is Genet's only film and a classic of erotic cinema, here presented in a new 35mm restoration.
Querelle (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Germany/France, 35mm, 103 min., 1982)
Fassbinder's final film, a passionately rendered exploration of Jean Genet's novel about a sailor and outcast named Querelle. Fassbinder shared Genet's sense of a love imbricated with betrayal, and Genet's port of Brest, populated with sailors, whores, and thieves, is a perfect setting for Fassbinder's consideration of the ensnarements of masculinity, power and desire. Presiding over the film is the sailor Querelle who beguiles all—his commanding officer; the barkeep who “wins” him with a roll of the dice; the madame of the bar where the sailors dally; and most especially his twin brother, whose unspoken love for Querelle underscores the entire milieu's muffled desire for the unattainable. Fassbinder platforms this material with a maddening range of Brechtian devices: overpowering tableaux and choreography; textual interruptions; dubbed voices; and the casting of a distractingly international fleet of actors that includes Jeanne Moreau, Franco Nero and the Adonis-like Brad Davis. Like its central object of desire, the film is seductive and challenging, strategically strange and always alluring.
September 6-16
UWM Union Theater
3pm
The Believers (Todd Holland, USA, video, 80 min., 2006)
Community Co-Presenters: FORGE, First Unitarian Society-Interweave, Men's Voices Milwaukee, Milwaukee Metropolitan Community Church & Wisconsin Cream City Chorus
Winner - Audience Award & Best Documentary - 2006 San Francisco LGBT Film/Video Festival
A feature documentary that shatters assumptions about faith, gender and religion.
The Transcendence Gospel Choir faces a dilemma: how to reconcile their gender identity—as the world's first transgender gospel choir—with the widespread belief that changing one's gender goes against the word of God? The film takes us from the choir's shaky beginnings — a heartwarmingly chaotic, cacophonous group unable to agree on much of anything, arguing over appropriate wardrobe and learning to sing with transitioning voices—through their transformation into the polished, award-winning choir and close-knit family they are today, garnering major shows and winning an Outmusic Award in 2004 for the album Whosoever Believes. The intimate personal stories shed light on the difficulties of balancing social change, family history, religion and identity as the singers struggle for acceptance within two worlds historically at odds with one another.
5pm
Vivere (Angelina Maccarone, Germany, in German with English subtitles, 35mm, 97 min., 2006)
Community Co-Presenters: Lesbian Alliance & SAGE-Milwaukee
Winner - Outstanding Artistic Achievement - 2007 Outfest
A poignant road movie about three women of different generations fleeing—and perhaps finding—reasons to live.
When she is not busy driving a cab, duty-bound Francesca tends to her father and her restless younger sister Antoinetta in their motherless home. When Antoinetta flees on Christmas Eve—chasing a boy in a rock band—Francesca has to go look for her. En route she comes across an injured older woman by the side of the road: abandoned by her girlfriend, Gerlinde is bereft, untethered even. Director Maccarone (Unveiled) poetically portrays characters seeking desperate resolution and proffers the possibility of hope as these women, through their encounters with each other, find ways of addressing what they've lost and tentatively hazard new directions.
7pm
Prisoners of Love: Jean Genet on Film
Un Chant D'Amour (A Song of Love) & Querelle
Campus Co-Sponsor: UWM Festival of Films in French
Community Co-Sponsor: Outwords Books
A Song of Love (Un Chant D'Amour, Jean Genet, France, in French with English subtitles, 35mm, 26 min., 1950)
A fantasia of power and desire, with stolen glances, surveillance and prison walls only penetrable by gay reverie and maybe a whisper of smoke. “Un Chant d'Amour” is Genet's only film and a classic of erotic cinema, here presented in a new 35mm restoration.
Querelle (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Germany/France, 35mm, 103 min., 1982)
Fassbinder's final film, a passionately rendered exploration of Jean Genet's novel about a sailor and outcast named Querelle. Fassbinder shared Genet's sense of a love imbricated with betrayal, and Genet's port of Brest, populated with sailors, whores, and thieves, is a perfect setting for Fassbinder's consideration of the ensnarements of masculinity, power and desire. Presiding over the film is the sailor Querelle who beguiles all—his commanding officer; the barkeep who “wins” him with a roll of the dice; the madame of the bar where the sailors dally; and most especially his twin brother, whose unspoken love for Querelle underscores the entire milieu's muffled desire for the unattainable. Fassbinder platforms this material with a maddening range of Brechtian devices: overpowering tableaux and choreography; textual interruptions; dubbed voices; and the casting of a distractingly international fleet of actors that includes Jeanne Moreau, Franco Nero and the Adonis-like Brad Davis. Like its central object of desire, the film is seductive and challenging, strategically strange and always alluring.
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