Mexican filmmaker Ernesto Contreras’s fourth feature film with a script by his brother (Carlos Contreras) is a magical mythical tale about the search for a language that is on the brink of extinction, because the last two remaining elderly speakers are bitter enemies who haven’t exchanged a word for the past 50 years.

Martin (Fernando Álvarez Rebeil ) is a young linguist expert who has traveled to a remote part of Mexico in the hope of recording some conversations with these last two people known to be fluent in Zikril. There was a 3rd person but she dies practically as soon as Martin arrives in the tiny hamlet in the jungle, so he is left with no alternative than trying to get Don Isauro (José Manuel Poncelis) and Don Evaristo (Eligio Meléndez)to agree to talk to each other.

Isauro never married but widowed Evaristo lives with his granddaughter Lluvia (Fátima Molina) who is the one who eventually shares with Martin how the two men who had been blood brothers had fallen out over a girl when they were teenagers. The twist was the fact that Evaristo had only married her to suppress his true sexuality and stop her from sharing what she had witnessed on the beach one hot summers day.

It takes time, and the bribe of a new television, to get the two men to now agree to have a conversation, and to everyone’s relief it is a great success and they actually start to renew their friendship. However this new turn of events doesn’t last long as though both men still have this deep bond for each other, whilst Isuaro remembers it fondly, Evaristo is still very ashamed and violently turns on his old friend yet once again.

This is all set against the story of trying not just trying to save this lost language, but be a witness to an ancient fading culture that is steeped in mysticism such as the mammoth cave in the jungle where the spirits take all the Zikril people’s bodies when they die. It’s a society that sees things differently than most others, but obviously not when it comes to sexuality.

It’s an intriguing movie with the back story told in flashbacks, and one that makes a great use of the rather stunning dramatic vistas. It unfolds at a slow gentle pace and even the side plot of Martin hooking up with Lluvia, doesn’t ease the sadness of the way these two men led such unhappy lives simply because they were never allowed to their true selves.

“I Dream In Another Language” will be shown at Outwatch – Wine Country’s LGBTQI Film Festival Sunday, November 5 at 2:45 p.m. at Third Street Cinema in Santa Rosa.  For more information, go to: www.outwatchfilmfest.org.  All profits from the film festival will be donated to Wildfire Relief Funds for LGBTQI folks.

When 14 year old Ulysses’s (Luka Kain) father suddenly dies, his mother (Margot Bingham) has to take on a second job to make ends meet. She somewhat reluctantly accepts an offer from Ulysses’ ultra-conservative Aunt Rose (Regina Taylor) to come to take care of him and his younger sibling after work until she gets home. The teenager is in the throws of discovering his sexuality and identity, and when Rose finds out he has been secretly trying on his mother’s shoes she doesn’t let up on him for one single moment.

On a whim he takes himself off on the subway to the West Village and after wandering around aimlessly for hours stumbles on a small group of friends who befriend him and persuade him to join them at Church.  This is not for any religious service but is for the weekly LGBT drop-in center in the crypt where they get a meal and support.

He is still being bullied at school and Aunt Rose keeps up her meanness, but now encouraged by his very first group of friends to consider entering an upcoming Vogueing competition, the young teenager happily buys himself a rather wicked pair of studded stiletto shoes.  However when Aunt Rose is spying in his bedroom, and discovers them, an almighty row breaks out ending up with Rose throwing him out.

He immediately flees to the Church, but as this is midweek there is no sign of anyone and so left to his own devices he ends up at a homeless shelter where his shirt gets taken, and next day on the streets he gets picked up and loses his virginity.

This cute and compelling coming-of-age tale which does have a realistic and conclusive ending is by no means a new story, but its take on it is refreshing and innovative.  It is aided by the fact that openly gay newbie filmmaker Damon Cardasis turned this into a hybrid musical with catchy original songs accompanied by some impressive choreography.

The central performance from its young star is totally stunning with his wonderful sense of innocence and abandonment, and it is what really makes this drama feel so authentic and so extremely watchable.

“Saturday” Church” will be shown at Outwatch – Wine Country’s LGBT Film Festival, Saturday November a at 12:30 p.m. at Third Street Cinema in Santa Rosa.  For more info, go to:  www.outwatchfilmfest.org.

If David France’s Oscar nominated ‘How To Survive a Plague‘ is recognized as the seminal movie on AIDS in the US, then Robin Campillo’s stunning new masterpiece BPM (Beats Per Minute) is undoubtably Europe’s candidate for the title.  His sprawling and somewhat harrowing tale that centers on the ACT UP group in Paris is based on his own experiences as an activist in the 1990’s, but he adds a fictional love story that makes his account of the pandemic in France that much more personal and highly emotional.

The story starts at the Group’s volatile weekly meetings (WM) where the leaders insist on a rigid procedure so that they can get through their usually packed agenda.  Everyone participating is fueled by anger and frustration, and they are passionate about getting the Authorities and Pharmaceutical Companies to actually take stop stalling and take some action as the current early regime of drugs are proving useless at keeping the Virus from being fata

As figures are released showing that the rate of new people being diagnosed as HIV+ are higher in France than any other European countries at that time, and many of the Paris collective see their T Cell counts drop down to to dangerous low levels quickly, the need to take action takes on a greater urgency.

At the WM’s there are plenty of heated discussions on what form of guerrilla actions they should take to not just get their case across, but to also force the hand of both Mitterand’s inactive Government and the reluctant Drug Companies.  The cast of characters include Thibault (Antoine Reinartz) their articulate leader who along with Sophie (Adèle Haenel) one of the organizers, prefers a more diplomatic approach to how they should carry out the group’s avowed aims.  This however does nor sit well with more militant members such as Sean (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart) who want to adopt more aggressive and confrontational tactics which they firmly believe is the only way to make the Authorities take them seriously.

Sean’s passionate determination attracts the attention of Nathan (Arnaud Valois) one of the group’s newest members, and one of the rare ones who is HIV negative.  Whilst the first half of Campillo’s drama focuses on the trials and tribulations of the ACT UP group and their activities, the latter part centers on the romantic relationship of the two men as they first become lovers, and then eventually as Nathan takes on the role of carer as Sean ‘s health rapidly deteriorates.

Campillo so perfectly captures the bewilderment of a community that struggles hard just to stay alive and abreast of every single development such as new reactions to the existing regime of AIDS drugs which were proving so ineffective. This was the era immediately before the advent of the arrival of protease inhibitors which would finally change the playing field for nearly everyone who had been diagnosed HIV+.   It is however the sheer authenticity of his script that makes this such a chilling and painfully disturbing film to watch, and by including the story of Nathan and Sean’s brief but intense relationship, makes it also devastatingly heartbreaking .

The cast most of whom were born after this period are pitch perfect in their portrayal of the indignant dying youth, particular the two lead actors. Valois as the slightly mysterious and compassionate Nathan was a real revelation, even more so when you discover that he had given up on acting a few years ago to focus on being a masseur. 30 year old Argentinian actor Pérez Biscayart playing Sean may not have looked his age, but he had this piercing intensity that made his superb performance so utterly compelling.

Campillo’s shockingly brilliant movie deservedly swooped up 4 major awards when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year. However the accolade that it would be honored for, and which in many eyes is even more important,  is the fact that Campillo gives us a telling of this crucial part of our history actually through queer eyes, something that Hollywood would never dare to do.

For his first feature film writer/director Mike Roma reunites with actor Patrick Reilly who starred in his successful TV series Danny the Manny about a cute gay out-of-work actor in Hollywood having to become a nanny to a surly 6 year old simply to survive.  This time round Reilly plays Danny a rather obnoxious, aspiring but unemployed gay screenwriter, and even though his character is beyond annoying, Reilly the actor puts in such a winning performance that we cannot help but like him.

The story is a fresh take on the whole mother/son dynamic in what appears to be an unhealthy relationship with Joan (Kathryn Erbe) a single-parent indulging her spoilt teenage son to the point of letting him even share her bed. We should hasten to add that this is no oedipus complex just the case of a lazy youth who considers this part of the home comforts he wants to make life in New Jersey bearable whilst he waits to return to L.A. where he just graduated from college.

However the whole arrangement has to drastically alter when Joan is egged on by her best friend Lisa (the wonderful Kathy Najimy) to jump back into the dating pool again by creating an online profile. Danny, with more than a hint of jealously, is dismissive of his mother’s efforts particularly as he never manages to have any success on gay hook-up sites.  He is then more than annoyed when she has possibly hit the jackpot on her very first attempt when she meets Chester (James Le Gros).

Now forced to move back into his own bedroom and take on a part time menial job at the Library, Danny seeks refuge with Kris (Michael Rosen) one of his old school pals who has a steady supply of pot to smoke. As the two of them start to bond more, Danny suggests they take a road trip to L.A. together as he is determined to get back there somehow.  Kris is more than keen to go along with this, but then when Danny misreads all the friendliness and plants a kiss on the horrified straight-boy’s lips, this immediately blows all his chances of both the trip and his continued friendship.

He is not the only one who has to deal with some of the harsher elements of the real world as Lisa has just discovered that her husband of 30 years has been continually unfaithful and she throws him out of the house.  Meanwhile Joan who had been the only one who seemed to have no future, is now radiant in her new found happiness with a boyfriend who looks like he is going to be around for a long time.

Roma however who had evidently used elements from his own life for the story does however ensure that before it all plays out Danny does in fact wake up and smell the roses giving this very entertaining and touching comedy the happy ending that it so deserved.

Probably the funny part of the piece is the way Roma portrays how the generations differ when it comes to ‘dating’ as Joan is all about billing and cooing on the phone for hours, whereas Danny is trying to swipe right on the endless array of dick pics that he is sorting through to find a ‘suitor’ online.

God’s Own Country a breakout hit at both Sundance and Berlinale Festivals (where it was nominated for a Teddy for Best Queer Feature) is a remarkable debut from openly gay Brit writer/director Frances Lee, and unquestionably one of best queer love stories for a very long time.  Set in the wilds of Yorkshire (hence the title) with two young sheep farmers, the comparison with Brokeback Mountain is inevitable, but frankly Lee’s film offers entirely different perspectives on the unexpected relationship between these two rough country men, and most of all, it offers hope.

24 year old Johnny (Josh O’Connor) is a man of few words. Forced to take over the running of his family’s farm single-handedly since his rather gruff father (Ian Hart) became ill, and with his mother having walked out years ago, the only other person at home was his grandmother  (Gemma Jones) who acted as the housekeeper. The farm nestled in the bleak Yorkshire moors offering Johnny little respite from all the pressures of physically managing all the endless daily chores in the most inhospitable of weathers. Added to the fact that his father was constantly complaining anytime he deviated from doing things the way that he wanted them done and told that his ideas were ‘daft’.

Married lesbian couple Cari Searcy and Kim McKeand who live with their son in Mobil, say that their friends always ask “Why Alabama? You must be crazy.”  It is the exact same question that any LGBTQ person will probably also ask at the beginning of this new compelling documentary that tells the story of their lives, and that of another lesbian couple who have to deal with so much more intransigence and unabashed homophobia in this the most conservative State in the US.  However what we initially perceive will be a tale of almost sheer helplessness, turns out in the end as story of how  hope,  love and sheer determination can still make Alabama the right place for these particular families to call home.

Cari and Kim’s problems started with the birth of their son who was born with a hole in his heart, and Kim was denied any involvement in his treatment as a co-parent. Using the fact that her California marriage to Ceri was not recognized by Alabama, the Judge  denied her the right to be able to adopt him too.  This starts almost a whole decade long through the Court system, which although gave them some victories along the way, they still had to deal with their own State’s judiciary and officialdom who refused to comply with the rulings.

When Kinley separated from the birth father of her child, he easily won full custody of their son, once his lawyer told the Court that Kinley was a lesbian.  She and her wife Autumn then have to deal with several legal rebuttals to right the situation, and even when the boy has to be hospitalized because his stepmom had whipped him so hard, the Judge still actually treated Kinley in court as if being a lesbian was far worse than an actual child beater.  It took her almost two years of several aborted Court appearances for Kinley to win the case and be able to keep her son, but as the final credits roll, there is a cautionary note that the father is still trying to challenge the decision.

These two stories are sandwiched between the tale of Patricia Todd a disarmingly charming lesbian who gets elected as  the first openly gay state representative in Alabama, and the lone legislative voice of its LGBTQ community. Todd, ever a pragmatist, works hard to personally win over as many of the ultra-conservatives of the House in her attempt to stop the flow of potential anti-LGBTQ legislation becoming law in her State, and bristles when her colleagues tell her ‘not to take it personally’ as they seek to reduce our rights.

Like the others in this documentary, Todd is inspirational, although in her case it came at a personal cost when she chose her political career over her marriage.  It may not be enough to want anyone to pack up their bags and move to this part of the Deep South at any time  …….. especially whilst Judge Roy Moore is still hovering around ….. but it is now very clear why these woman are still happy to call Alabama home.

Alabama Bound is directed by Lara Embry & Carolyn Sherer and will have its world premiere at Frameline Film Festival, and is highly recommended

Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Jeffrey Schwarz has added another subject to his series of documentaries on iconic LGBT figures which so far have included Wrangler: Anatomy of an Icon, Tab Hunter Confidential, I Am Divine, and Vito. This time his subject Allan Carr may be not quite so well known to the general public, but his successful career as an infamous larger-than-life flamboyant Hollywood Producer and Agent make him a natural fit for one of Schwarz’s excellent and very compelling profiles.

Carr was born Allan Solomon in 1937, the only son of a wealthy Jewish family in Chicago and his parents spoilt him rotten, and indulged his  every whim.  From an early age he was fascinated to the point of being obsessed with everything to do with show business, especially with stars. One of his first ventures as a young man was that he opened Chicago’s Civic Theater and financed The World of Carl Sandburg starring Bette Davis who was touring with her then husband Gary Merrill.

Carr moved to L.A. in 1966 and changed his name and opened up his own talent agency Allan Carr Enterprises, and quickly demonstrated that he was not just a first-class salesman, but that he had a lot of chutzpah too as he  was soon managing major stars such Tony Curtis, Peter Sellers, Rosalind Russell, Dyan Cannon, Melina Mercouri, and Marlo Thomas.

Carr was first and foremost a showman,  and as well as managing his Clients, he started to achieve a reputation for mounting extraordinary lavish promotional parties like the one the Australian impresario Robert Stigwood employed him to do for the rock musical movie Tommy, and then after that for the premiere of Saturday Night Fever.  These events propelled Stigwood into making Carr the producer of the movie Grease who’s phenomenally world-wide success became the high-point of Carr’s roller-coast career.

Without doubt Carr’s best talent was in self-promotion and in publicizing his own involvement in his projects which were always at the expense of others who got totally overlooked, as in the case Grease’s director Randal Kleiser who was all but forgotten.  Carr took the full credit for everything because he always made it about himself, so when he faced failure as with the campy musical he followed Grease with Can’t Stop The Music which totally bombed at the box office and was savaged by the critics, he took it all very personally.

Schwarz makes no attempt at hiding the very obvious fact that Carr had his own personal demons. He was a compulsive overeater who in the end took to wearing nothing but voluminous kaftans to hide his enormous figure, and as a gay man he surrounded himself with scantily clad pretty boys, yet never had his first sexual experience until he was in his 30’s.  When  it came to sex it seems that he was more of a voyeur than a player and at his celebrated pool parties in his lavish and glamorous mansion he would entertain ‘A’ list movie stars and Hollywood royalty alongside with some of the gay demimonde. When the stars left, then the party would quickly become nothing less than an orgy to satisfy Carr’s predilection for watching his stable of boys make out together, and occasionally even getting involved.

Carr always coveted professional respectability and acceptance which he finally got when in 1983 he produced La Cage Aux Follies the first stage musical on Broadway to tackle a gay theme head on.  It was a mega success running for five years and 1,761 performances, and winning an impressive six Tonys, including a “Best Musical” win for Carr.

This success however was followed by a spectacular failure in 1989 when Carr landed his dream job of producing the 61st Annual Academy Awards.  He was hired to create a show based on his promise that he would turn it around from the dry, dull show it had been in previous years, but the end result was panned by both the critics and the members of the Academy who publicly denounced Carr. Being censored by the Hollywood elite who he considered were his peers and friends was the worse thing ever for the overly sensitive Carr who never ever managed to salvage his reputation in the movie community after that.

It is hard not to warm to the opportunistic Carr who mixed his extraordinary flair with a great deal of charm and this very scary aspect of knowing that he was so out of his depth so very much of his time, a fact that never seem to daunt him in the very least.  Carr’s life may be a mystery to many of us which in itself is a great pity but at least Schwarz’s affectionate profile will quite rightly change all that. Going into the movie you may struggle recalling who he was, but after 9o minutes you have had a glimpse at the star-studded rather glamorous life that would sadly seem so out of place in the more overly micro-managed of today.

The Fabulous Allan Carr is not only an essential piece of our community’s history that should be seen by everyone, it is also a rather fabulous movie too.

Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Jeffrey Schwarz has added another subject to his series of documentaries on iconic LGBT figures which so far have included Wrangler: Anatomy of an Icon, Tab Hunter Confidential, I Am Divine, and Vito. This time his subject Allan Carr may be not quite so well known to the general public, but his successful career as an infamous larger-than-life flamboyant Hollywood Producer and Agent make him a natural fit for one of Schwarz’s excellent and very compelling profiles.

Carr was born Allan Solomon in 1937, the only son of a wealthy Jewish family in Chicago and his parents spoilt him rotten, and indulged his  every whim.  From an early age he was fascinated to the point of being obsessed with everything to do with show business, especially with stars. One of his first ventures as a young man was that he opened Chicago’s Civic Theater and financed The World of Carl Sandburg starring Bette Davis who was touring with her then husband Gary Merrill.

Carr moved to L.A. in 1966 and changed his name and opened up his own talent agency Allan Carr Enterprises, and quickly demonstrated that he was not just a first-class salesman, but that he had a lot of chutzpah too as he  was soon managing major stars such Tony Curtis, Peter Sellers, Rosalind Russell, Dyan Cannon, Melina Mercouri, and Marlo Thomas.

Carr was first and foremost a showman,  and as well as managing his Clients, he started to achieve a reputation for mounting extraordinary lavish promotional parties like the one the Australian impresario Robert Stigwood employed him to do for the rock musical movie Tommy, and then after that for the premiere of Saturday Night Fever.  These events propelled Stigwood into making Carr the producer of the movie Grease who’s phenomenally world-wide success became the high-point of Carr’s roller-coast career.

Without doubt Carr’s best talent was in self-promotion and in publicizing his own involvement in his projects which were always at the expense of others who got totally overlooked, as in the case Grease’s director Randal Kleiser who was all but forgotten.  Carr took the full credit for everything because he always made it about himself, so when he faced failure as with the campy musical he followed Grease with Can’t Stop The Music which totally bombed at the box office and was savaged by the critics, he took it all very personally.

Schwarz makes no attempt at hiding the very obvious fact that Carr had his own personal demons. He was a compulsive overeater who in the end took to wearing nothing but voluminous kaftans to hide his enormous figure, and as a gay man he surrounded himself with scantily clad pretty boys, yet never had his first sexual experience until he was in his 30’s.  When  it came to sex it seems that he was more of a voyeur than a player and at his celebrated pool parties in his lavish and glamorous mansion he would entertain ‘A’ list movie stars and Hollywood royalty alongside with some of the gay demimonde. When the stars left, then the party would quickly become nothing less than an orgy to satisfy Carr’s predilection for watching his stable of boys make out together, and occasionally even getting involved.

Carr always coveted professional respectability and acceptance which he finally got when in 1983 he produced La Cage Aux Follies the first stage musical on Broadway to tackle a gay theme head on.  It was a mega success running for five years and 1,761 performances, and winning an impressive six Tonys, including a “Best Musical” win for Carr.

This success however was followed by a spectacular failure in 1989 when Carr landed his dream job of producing the 61st Annual Academy Awards.  He was hired to create a show based on his promise that he would turn it around from the dry, dull show it had been in previous years, but the end result was panned by both the critics and the members of the Academy who publicly denounced Carr. Being censored by the Hollywood elite who he considered were his peers and friends was the worse thing ever for the overly sensitive Carr who never ever managed to salvage his reputation in the movie community after that.

It is hard not to warm to the opportunistic Carr who mixed his extraordinary flair with a great deal of charm and this very scary aspect of knowing that he was so out of his depth so very much of his time, a fact that never seem to daunt him in the very least.  Carr’s life may be a mystery to many of us which in itself is a great pity but at least Schwarz’s affectionate profile will quite rightly change all that. Going into the movie you may struggle recalling who he was, but after 9o minutes you have had a glimpse at the star-studded rather glamorous life that would sadly seem so out of place in the more overly micro-managed of today.

The Fabulous Allan Carr is not only an essential piece of our community’s history that should be seen by everyone, it is also a rather fabulous movie too.

In this documentary that tells the story of the leading Argentinian LGBT activist Carlos Jáuregui, someone comments at one point ‘it’s important for our community to know where we have come from’  to which we would add, it is equally vital that we know who propelled us along the way too.  Every LGBT community has a hero, often unsung and unknown to people outside of their reach, and this movie tells the story of one in particular who was the outspoken driving force for equality in Buenos Aires.

When Carlos Jáuregui finished his University degree in the late 1970’s he then went on to graduate school in Paris, followed by a couple of years in N.Y. which opened his eyes to how other countries had progressed on gay rights so much more than the Argentina that he returned too in 1982.  That was however about to very slowly changed and after the Military Dictatorship fell and was replaced by an openly elected President, Carlos founded the country’s very first LGBT organization Argentina Homosexual Community (CHA) and became its first leader.

What he wanted for the fledging community was visibility and so he and his lover at the time became the first openly gay couple to be featured in a major magazine spread which was extremely controversial at the time.  This also cost him his job as a University Professor,  but renewed his ambition to raise the stakes even higher.

By this time his brother Roberto who was also gay had moved to Buenos Aires and as he loved performing wanted just fame and glory and not  activism like his brother.  However when they both were diagnosed with HIV, Roberto went public with the news ….. again a first for the community … and became a AIDS activist.  Oddly enough Carlos kept his own diagnosis private, initially to protect Pablo his lover, who not only had the virus but was beginning to decline, but he still never revealed his status even after Pablo died.

Like so many other gay partners, the moment that Pablo died after Carlos had nursed him for ages, his late partner’s family turned up at the apartment and literally threw Carlos and his belongings out on to the street.

In 1992 Carlos led  Argentina’s very first Gay Pride March, which although it was sparsely attended and most of the marchers wore face masks for fear of being recognized and losing their jobs, it was deemed a major success. In 1994 when the Catholic Cardinal made an outrageous public statement saying amongst other things that the LGBT  community should be banished to their own country, it was Carlos who instigated legal proceedings against him.

However what seems to be Carlos’s biggest legacy is the fact that he insisted that to survive and prosper the LGBT community should really totally unite. The movement he claimed had four ‘legs’ : gays, lesbians, transexuals and transvestites , and if any one of the ‘legs’ were missing the ‘table’ would fall down.  It set him aside as one of few gay male leaders anywhere that insisted that we should all be totally inclusive.

When the country’s National Constitution was changed in 1994, it gave Buenos Aires the right to write its own constitution.  So two years later Carlos drafted what would be known as Article 11 of the Statute of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires that proposed that you co no longer legally discriminate against people on the grounds of their sexual orientation or gender identity.  However as soon as he submitted it Carlos started getting very ill and the clock started ticking for both the passing of the Law and his own life.

His very last public appearance was in that year’s Gay Pride March, but by now there were newer and younger voices prepared to take over his mantle.

After he died all of his colleagues from the political group GAY DC sat in the public gallery of City Hall as the Law was debated. Each of them had a photo of Carlos pinned to their chest, and Article 11 passed unanimously paving the way for more important laws in the future that would cover issues such as civil unions.

There was one final march where Carlos was still the figurehead when his coffin was paraded through the streets because people wanted to say goodby to him publicly  and with dignity exactly like he had taught them to be about their own lives.

Whether his story will really resound with audiences outside of Argentina is a moot point, but as a global LGBT community it is important that we document our history of all the courageous men and women who devoted their own lives to improving the quality of ours that would follow. Technically writer/director Lucas Santa Ana  (Bromance) had to rely heavily on some patchy archival footage and a collection of personal photographs of varying qualities, but despite these drawbacks Carlos’s story shines through so bright and was so very worthwhile knowing.