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.
