Film

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Chicago’s Most Popular Gay Bar’s Long Life Explored “Art & Pep” at Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival Friday, March 17

Director Mercedes Kane’s touching and surprisingly expansive feature documentary Art and Pep, which received its world premiere at the 40th anniversary Outfest Los Angeles LGBTQ+ Film Festival, introduces us to two Chicagoans, Art Johnston and José Pepe Peña, who’ve been at the centre of the city’s queer community together for nearly fifty years. Partners in life and in business, they’ve owned and run the popular Boystown’s bar Sidetrack since April 1982. Signless and windowless, the bar first opened with homophobic spray-painted graffiti on the front door that read, ‘fag bar’. At least its patrons knew where to come. That first night was such a success that Art and Pep had to borrow beer from a neighboring bar after they’d run out. 

The line to get into Sidetrack in the 1980s; a scene that’s echoed later in the film when patrons lineup to show their Covid vaccination records and ID to get into the bar in summer 2021. Courtesy of Outfest. 

Over the decades, Sidetrack has thrived and become a vibrant and inclusive LGBTQ+ community space, with its absence deeply felt during the pandemic-induced shutdown of 2020 as the film documents. There may not have been a “sip-in” there like at Julius in 1966, or a riot like at Stonewall in ’69 or the Black Cat Tavern two years before that, but Art and Pep makes a strong case for Sidetrack’s place among the nation’s most significant queer bars; a watering hole that’s helped to sustain the community through its gains and losses and aided with activism fundraising. With Sidetrack, Art and Pep have not only created local jobs, but a sense of family among their many employees, with several contributing interviews throughout the film, including one barman who tearfully recalls the owners offering to adopt him if he couldn’t successfully apply for US citizenship. 

An archive photograph of Art Johnston and José Pepe Peña as featured in Art and Pep. Courtesy of Outfest. 

With a wealth of archive video footage and photographs (including the bar’s opening night), and stylish comic strip style animated sequences (by Dom Soo, Jackie Chand, and Bobby Sims), Kane engagingly chronicles the entwined narrative of Art and Pep’s love story and the history of Sidetrack. It’s a history that inevitably leads to the height of the AIDS crisis, with countless members of the community and the bar’s staff lost, while Art stood at the forefront of the fight for the city to take action. 

An archive photograph of Art Johnston and José Pepe Peña as featured in Art and Pep. Courtesy of Outfest. 

Through Art and Pep’s story, Kane traces the history of LGBTQ+ activism in Chicago, including ACT UP, leading to the formation of Equality Illinois, co-founded by Art, and the continuing fight for equal rights for all. Many of the demonstrations in the late 80s and early 90s targeted the city’s then Mayor Richard Daley, who eventually began to listen and take action. One surprising detail is the support that queer activists found among the city’s Catholic nuns. When it comes to documentaries and narrative features, the focus has generally been on ACT UP in New York and Los Angeles, so it is refreshing to see Chicago’s chapter receive attention here, along with recognition for the city’s key activist figures such as Laurie Dittman, Jon-Henri Damski, Rick Garcia, and Danny Sotomayor, who died of AIDS in 1992 aged 33. 

A behind the scenes shot of Anna DeShawn interviewing Art Johnston and José Pepe Peña for E3 Radio. Courtesy of Outfest. 

As Art and Pep take part in Chicago’s 2020 pride march, they’re moved by its refocused, less corporate, more grassroots and political purpose, and its centering of Black trans lives; reminding them of the AIDS activism that they’d been such a vital part of. Art has clearly been an admired mentor and inspiration to many, including two current Black queer community leaders, State Senator Mike Simmons (Illinois’ first openly LGBTQ+ state senator) and Anna DeShawn, founder of E3 Radio. As we see them interact there’s a sense of the baton being passed on to a new generation.

Sidetrack patrons throw their napkins in the air at one of the bar’s long running Musical Monday show tune nights. Courtesy of Outfest. 

Always at Art’s side, Pep is the quieter interview subject of the two, but becomes particularly animated when talking about the much-loved Musical Mondays night he created and has VJed at Sidetrack since 1983, which includes the tradition of exuberantly throwing paper napkins in the air. It’s moving to see this couple, often in intimate fly-on-the-wall footage shot by DP Sanghoon Lee, who’ve spent so much of their lives together navigate aging, the prospect of retirement, and the health issues that come along when Art is hospitalized with Covid. It’s also fascinating to get a behind-the-scenes look at what it was like to reopen a bar in 2021 with severe restrictions still in place and their efforts are a testament to the resilience of queer bars across the nation that have managed to operate over the past two years. At its core, Art and Pep is an inspiring reminder of what the LGBTQ+ community can be at its best, and a tribute to the vital role that our cherished bars continue to have at the centre of it.

Showings – select to order tickets:

Fri, Mar 17th, 7:00 PM @ Rialto Cinemas® #9

[Available March 20, 12:00 AM – March 30, 12:00 AM, 2023] Stream online…

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“All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” a Documentary Film about Queer Photographer Nana Goldin Opens Friday at Rialto Cinemas in Sebastopol

Directed by Academy Award®-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is an epic, emotional and interconnected story about internationally renowned artist and activist Nan Goldin told through her slideshows, intimate interviews, ground-breaking photography, and rare footage of her personal fight to hold the Sackler family accountable for the overdose crisis.

READ THE REVIEW HERE: https://thequeerreview.com/2023/01/10/film-review-all-the-beauty-and-the-bloodshed-neon/#more-101728

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Coming Out Cannes Film Festival Grand Jury Winning Film “Close” Opens Run at Rialto Cinemas in Sebastopol February 24

CloseOpens Friday, February 24thMultiple Showings a Day

Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival

“Close” centers on two inseparable 13-year-old boys who find their bond tested with the start of a new school year. When the film opens, the best friends, Leo and Remi, live an idyllic existence, spending afternoons biking between each other’s homes and nights whispering under the covers. But those halcyon summer days soon come to an end when the new term begins and a group of unfamiliar classmates begin to question their closeness.

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“Of An Age” Opens Friday, February 17 at Rialto Cinemas


Cinema might have progressed beyond burying its gays but that doesn’t mean it can’t assign them a fate worse than death – lifelong pining. This is so prevalent in culture that it has its own term: queer yearning, an achey, all-consuming desire in which years of repression spill forth into a crush so forbidden, so unquenchable, that the only way to relieve its pains is by penetrating a peach.
Hurtling into this lineage is the Macedonian-Australian film-maker Goran Stolevski’s Of an Age, a pinwheeling, decade-spanning odyssey of teenage kicks and their prolonged aftershocks. And I mean hurtling: from the off, Stolevski’s direction possesses the same frantic kineticism as the Safdie brothers’, inducing all the stomach-churning anxiety of Uncut Gems – and then some.


Unlike that film, the stakes here are much lower, though it probably doesn’t seem that way to the adolescent pair at its heart: coltish, wide-eyed Nikola (Elias Anton, seen in Barracuda) and his friend Ebony (a spectacularly bratty Hattie Hook, in her feature debut). They’re meant to be competing in a local dance competition, except Ebony’s woken up on a beach somewhere in Melbourne after an all-night rager involving – in her own terms – only “a hyphen” of speed.
It is 1999, which means she has to scrounge for coins to make a desperate payphone call to Nikola, who is busy cutting shapes in his family garage. Also, it is 7.30am, and they’re waking up half the city with their anguished yowls down the line.

Before long, a plan is hatched involving Ebony’s older, cooler brother Adam (Thom Green, of Dance Academy) driving Nikola to find Ebony, the two men forming an unlikely search party. But something shifts on that drive: there’s an easiness that neither could have expected. They talk books, films, girls – until Adam lets slip, cannily, that his ex was a man. (He’s later shown listening to Tori Amos with a poster of Almodóvar’s Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown in his bedroom, so the confession was probably unnecessary – but it’s sweet, nonetheless.)
Nothing comes of it in that instant – and nothing will come of it for a painfully long while – but Nikola’s thoughts are suddenly astir with an eddy of closeted desires. The camera sneaks glances at Adam’s muscles, just as Nikola does; this summer’s day seems to stretch endlessly into the horizon as they cross paths again and again, each time almost, but not quite, acting on their barely sublimated impulses.

Someone in the audience at opening night audibly whispered ‘yes!’ when the film finally caved to its characters’ urges

As if it’s not agonising enough, they only have 24 hours to make it happen, mirroring the temporal challenge set by another modern classic of queer yearning: Andrew Haigh’s Weekend, where two strangers share a brief, astounding encounter before they must go their separate ways. Adam is about to jet off to study in South America – but the expiration date of any possible romance only makes it all the more tempestuous.
For a film that begins so frenetically, any moment of stillness automatically contains a gut punch, whether it’s the sticky, sobering comedown of a crush or the debilitating awkwardness that being in love can entail. Golevski is a master of protracted tension: the car, so often a means of escape, can also become a silo of suffocation, as it does in one of Adam and Nikola’s many farewells. “It was really nice to meet you … I guess,” Nikola fumbles, birdsong cutting through a pregnant pause. “Have a safe and cool PhD.”

I won’t spoil the moment of sweet relief – suffice to say, someone in the audience at the opening-night screening at the Melbourne international film festival audibly whispered “yes!” when the film finally caved to its characters’ primal urges under a lightening sky. That moment imprints itself on to both parties’ minds, even when they reunite 11 years later. As the memory tumbles to the fore, so too does the pain of the intervening decade, the rift between teenage fantasy and the crushing weight of reality growing ever wider.
A bait-and-switch, then: what starts as a queer coming-of-age tale becomes a meditation on ageing itself; how choices made one fateful summer can linger well into adulthood. Of an Age’s bifurcated structure, split between 1999 and 2010, tempts us to discern each character’s evolution – or lack thereof; as adults, Ebony is still mouthy, Nikola is still a mess and Adam is still frustratingly out of reach.
In other hands, Of an Age could have been gimmicky or indulgent but Stolevski imbues his characters with such lived-in specificity that we can’t help but be swept away.

LGBTQI Films at the Rialto Cinemas, Sebastopol in February
https://rialtocinemas.com/sebastopol/
Of An AgeOpens Friday, February 17th
Multiple Showings a Day

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San Francisco Independent Film Festival (SF IndieFest) Happens February 2-12

It’s the 25th anniversary of the San Francisco Independent Film Festival (SF IndieFest) and it takes place February 2-12, 2023. This year’s festival includes 62 shorts and 35 features from 14 countries. There are 34 films that are local to the Bay Area. 

“While the city might have changed over the last 25 years, SF IndieFest’s mission and curation hasn’t,” says Festival Director Jeff Ross. “We still seek the new and unusual to present to San Francisco film fans.” 

For 25 years, the mission of the San Francisco Independent Film Festival has been to seek out new film discoveries for Bay Area film fans to enjoy. Now, with the age of computerized algorithms, a human touch is needed more than ever to curate a unique cinematic experience. SF IndieFest continues to provide new and unusual alternatives to the Hollywood Industrial Complex. As in the past 24 years, SF IndieFest brings the freshest new independent films and digital programs from around the world to San Francisco audiences. These are films you won’t find at the multiplex or popular streaming services.

The SF IndieFest is pleased to screen the related LGBTQIA+ films as part of the 25th anniversary of the festival which returns February 2-12, 2023. More information at www.sfindie.com.

FEATURES

#LookAtMe

Director: Ken Kwek

When brothers Sean and Ricky are invited to attend church with Sean’s girlfriend, they are treated to a bizarre Evangelical affair capped by a searing anti-LGBT sermon. Sean, a Youtuber, soon gets into trouble for dropping a video lampooning the megachurch’s homophobic pastor. As Sean struggles to survive prison, Ricky gains prominence as an LGBT activist. Both find themselves at the heart of a culture war teetering on the edge of violence.

The Affairs of Lidia

Director: Bruce LaBruce

Lidia, a fashion model, discovers her husband Michelangelo, a boxer, is having an affair with Sandro, a fashion photographer. She deviously plots her revenge in this erotic comedy set against the backdrop of the fashion world.

Written and directed by Bruce LaBruce, the Canadian independent filmmaker and provocateur who has been assailing the sexual status quo for over thirty years.

Let’s Meet Halfway

Director: Dana Dveris, Max Schmitz

A long distance couple meet in a small town between them once a month in an attempt to preserve their relationship. Over the course of six months they begin to lose grip on what they once ha

Naked Gardens

Director: Ivete Raquel Lucas, Patrick Xavier Bresnan

Naked Gardens follows the stories of individuals drawn to an unusual community, which promises both non-conformist values and a cheap place to live. As its aging owner Morley and his residents prepare for the largest gathering of nudists in the U.S., they are faced with challenges both as a community and as individuals.


Below are highlights of the festival’s programming.
 

OPENING NIGHT

Documentary
CIRCUS OF THE SCARS: THE INSIDER ODYSSEY OF THE JIM ROSE CIRCUS SIDESHOW
Director: Chicory Wees
Thursday, February 2nd, 6:30pm
A scrappy sensational sideshow revival act playing Seattle dive bars is suddenly propelled into the big time, riding the same wave that brought grunge rock crashing into mainstream culture. Sold out audiences gape in horror and howl with laughter, but behind-the-scenes, inner struggles and battles with their maniacal ring leader push the troupe ever closer to an early implosion.

Director Chicory Wees will be in attendance, along with special guest appearance/performances by Jim Rose Circus Sideshow Marvels Zamora the Torture King, The Enigma and Matt the Tube Crowley!

Narrative
ROUGH EDGES
Director: Charles Lyons
Thursday, February 2nd, 8:45pm
A San Francisco technical writer and a San Jose artist hook up at a BDSM club, their one-night stand evolving into a tentative relationship in which they explore each other’s kinks and try to keep things casual. 

Stay for the Q&A after the screening, then come to the after-party at Cat Club, 1190 Folsom Street. 
 

CENTERPIECE

WARM BLOOD
Director: Rick Charnoski
Saturday, February 4th, 9:00pm
Red, a runaway in the 1980s, returns to the outskirts of her NorCal hometown to track down her wayward father and falls in with a young drifter in this grungy, politically subversive mix of narrative, documentary, and trash B-movies about the underbelly of America.

Director Rick Charnoski and other members of the cast and crew are scheduled to be in attendance.
 
SPECIAL SCREENING 
PUNK ROCK VEGAN MOVIE
Director: Moby
Saturday, February 4th, 2:15pm
In his directorial debut, Moby tells the story of how punk rock became such a fertile and surprising breeding ground for vegan activism. It’s also a call to action, unapologetically reminding people that in a deeply broken world it is incumbent upon each of us to stand up and fight intelligently, passionately, and loudly against injustice.

Director Moby is scheduled to appear for an on-stage Q&A following the film. 
 

CLOSING NIGHT

Documentary
THIS IS NATIONAL WAKE
Director: Mirissa Neff
Thursday, February 9th, 6:30pm
National Wake was formed by two black brothers from Soweto and a white guitarist from Johannesburg whose collaboration broke all of apartheid’s laws. 

Director Mirissa Neff scheduled to be in attendance. 

Narrative
THERAPY DOGS
Director: Ethan Eng
Thursday, February 9th, 8:45pm
Don’t bring your parents. Don’t bring your kids. THERAPY DOGS is a high school film that’s wrong in all the right ways. More than a coming-of-age story, it’s a high-intensity time capsule fueled by adolescent angst and rebellion.

ADDITIONAL NOTABLE FILMS

CHERRY
Director: Sophie Gailbert
When 25-year-old Cherry discovers she is ten weeks pregnant, she has a few urgent decisions to make. Drifting between her job at the costume shop, rollerblading dance team, semi-serious boyfriend, and still living with her parents, the young protagonist is caught between a curiosity for motherhood and a desire to follow her unfulfilled dreams.

Director Sophie Gailbert is scheduled for a Q&A following the film. 

CHOP & STEELE
Directors: Berndt Mader, Ben Steinbauer
Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher didn’t have all that much to do growing up in suburban Wisconsin. To bide their time, they collected castaway VHS tapes from thrift stores and played increasingly elaborate pranks. Their passion for cringeworthy absurdity eventually parlayed into The Found Footage Festival, a curated roadshow of bonkers obscurities from the annals of discarded VHS collections across the United States.
 

SPECIAL EVENTS

Masks are encouraged at events, but not required. 
 
Thursday, February 2nd, 8:00 PM to 11:00 PM
OPENING NIGHT PARTY, 518 Valencia, 518 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110
Celebrate 25 years of independent film presentation with SF IndieFest. The party will feature an art show by 2023 festival poster artist Alberto Ybarra with special guest appearances from the Opening Night Film, CIRCUS OF THE SCARS. Complimentary beverages courtesy of Lagunitas and Athletic Brewing. Tunes and ambience crafted by DJ The Barbary Ghost.
21up. Free admission with ticket.
 
Sunday, February 5th, 1:00 PM
SCREENWRITING RECEPTION & PANEL, 518 Valencia, 518 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110
Join SF IndieFest’s Screenwriting Competition Director Jessica Waters and this year’s award-winning writers Roberto Fatal (Electric Homies) and Kyle Casey Chu & Roisin Isner (After What Happened in the Library) for a panel discussion about script writing.
All ages. This is a free non-ticketed event.

Tuesday, February 14th, 9:00 PM
ANTI-VALENTINE’S DAY, Roxie Theater, 3117 16th St, San Francisco CA 94103
It’s back! Join the SF IndieFest After Party as the Anti-Valentine’s Day Power Ballad Sing-A-Long returns to the Roxie Theater. The festival may be over, but the fun is not. For those of us who can’t stand Valentine’s Day, there is an entire genre of music made just for our pain, and it just happens to also be the most badass music ever: 80’s power ballads. This event is co-presented by Roxie Theater and Sketchfest.
All ages. General admission tickets are $15. Discounts available.
 
GENERAL PASS AND TICKET INFORMATION
Roxie Theater show tickets are $15.
All virtual show tickets are $10. 

Live + Virtual Pass: $150
Virtual Screening Pass: $90

For more information and tickets, visit sfindie.com or call 415-662-3378. 
 
INDIEFEST 2023 STAFF
Founder/Director Jeff Ross; Programming Chris Metzler, Sarah Flores, Jeff Ross; Screenplay Competition Manager Jess Waters; Publicity Larsen and Associates; Graphic Design Subliminal SF
 
SCREENERS AVAILABLE (as of 1/11/23)
To request a screener, please email publicity@larsenassc.com.

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Mostly British Film Festival Happens Feb 9-16 ay SF’s Vogue Theatre



The 15th Mostly British Film Festival runs February 9-16 with something for every moviegoer’s taste.The annual tribute to English language foreign films opens with the Northern California premiere of EMILY, a romanticized and sensual perspective on the life of Wuthering Heights author Emily Bronte. Opening night features actress-turned-director Frances O’Connor on Zoom discussing her rapturously-reviewed debut film. In this Sunday’s Pink, Chronicle film critic Mick LaSalle named EMILY first in his list of “Movies to Look Out for in 2023.”

The festival closes with ALL THAT BREATHES. This poignant story of brothers who run a bird hospital in New Delhi is shortlisted for the 2023 Oscar for best documentary feature. It is followed by the whimsical crowd pleaser THE LOST KING, another Northern California premiere, starring Sally Hawkins as a real-life amateur historian-sleuth who discovers the remains of Richard III buried under a parking lot in Leicester.

In total, 25 new and classic movies are scheduled from the UK, Ireland, Australia, India, New Zealand and South Africa.British offerings include the Northern California premiere of BLUE JEAN about a dilemma faced by a closeted lesbian teacher in the homophobic era of Margaret Thatcher and AFTERSUN, a father-daughter drama that captured Best First Film from the New York Film Critics, also sweeping the British Independent Film awards with seven wins, Best Picture among them.

Brit Box, a Mostly British Film Festival partner, this year presents REEL BRITANNIA, a documentary featuring celebrated British filmmakers as they ponder the question: What constitutes British cinema? Cinephiles are sure to relish this rich, informative mini-series.

On February 11, the festival pays tribute to THE THORN BIRDS on its 40th anniversary by showing extensive excerpts from the sexy scenes. The Australian TV saga about a forbidden love between a Roman Catholic priest and an heiress to a sheep farm in the 1920s outback remains the second-highest rated miniseries in television history exceeded only by ROOTS. Series stars Richard Chamberlain, Rachel Ward and Bryan Brown gathered with Mostly British co-director Ruthe Stein on Zoom to talk about the making of this show, programming as riveting today as it was in 1983.Festival audiences will be treated to behind-the-scenes exchanges including a budding romance between Ward and Brown, who met on the set and today are celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary. Ward reveals how co-star Jean Simmons urged her to flirt with Brown, telling Ward were she younger, she would pursue the rugged-looking Aussie with the great pecs (the first thing Ward noticed about him). Chamberlain offers us a delicious anecdote about his nude scene with Barbara Stanwyk.

Now that Ward has moved from acting to directing, the festival will show PALM BEACH, in which she turns the camera on her husband. An appealing movie about older people, it features life-long friends at a reunion where secrets unexpectedly spill out.

The always-popular Irish Spotlight on February 12 begins with a documentary centered on Nobel prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney followed by RÓISE & FRANK a narrative feature about a grieving widow who comes to believe a dog is her husband reincarnated. Also showing is MY SAILOR, MY LOVE, a touching story of a shift in a relationship between a widowed father and his daughter when he begins a romance.

A series of documentaries every day highlight the strong submissions in this category. Subject matter ranges from bios of swinging ‘60s fashion designer Mary Quant and Pulitzer prize-winning Irish poet Paul Muldoon to an insider’s look at the Beatles’ famous studio Abbey Road directed by Paul McCartney’s daughter Mary.

The New York Times named the Indian documentary A NIGHT OF KNOWING NOTHING one of “The Best Genre Movies of 2022.” Winner of the Golden Eye Award for Best Documentary at Cannes, the film offers an intimate look at the social life at a Mumbai university.Dames Helen Mirren, Maggie Smith and Judi Dench are honored in an afternoon series Great Dames…When They Were Young, a program of selected early films from the stars’ careers.

The Mostly British Film Festival is presented by the San Francisco Neighborhood Theatre Foundation. A series pass including all 25 films and opening and closing night parties, with early access into the theatre and reserved seating is $300/$250 (discounted price).

Opening night including the reception beforehand is $40/$30. Closing night including after party is $30/$20. All other films are $20/$15. Discounts available to members of SFFILM, the Fromm Institute, the Calvary Presbyterian Church and seniors (65 and over).

Tickets can be purchased at mostlybritish.org and the Vogue Theatre box-office, 3290 Sacramento Street in San Francisco.

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New Gay Film “Spoiler Alert” Opens at Rialto Cinema Friday

Even if you didn’t know the full title of the bestselling memoir by entertainment journalist Michael Ausiello that this film is based on—Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies—within the opening moments you’ll find out where it’s eventually headed. We see a heathy looking, but distraught Michael (Jim Parsons) in a hospital bed lovingly facing an ailing Kit (Ben Aldridge) with Michael’s voice-over telling us, “this isn’t how our story was supposed to end”. He then takes us back through their lives together, from the moment he first caught sight of the “sweatband-wearing matinee idol” on jock night at a New York gay club he was dragged to by his colleague Nick (an appealingly effervescent Jeffery Self), through the highs and lows of their relationship, right up until this tragic point. No spoiler alert required: you’ll need to keep the Kleenex handy.

Ben Aldridge as Kit and Jim Parsons as Michael in Spoiler Alert. Photo Credit: Linda Källérus. Courtesy of Focus Features. 

When Michael takes us back to the start, he’s working as a staff writer for TV Guide, pitching stories about Gilmore Girls to his editor who is more interested in him covering the reality show Fear Factor. Both of which are airing at the time, given that this is the early 2000s, with Felicitybeing Michael’s favourite contemporary series. His passion for and deep knowledge of television informs how he views the world and his relationship with Kit, which is nicely woven into the fabric of the film by director Michael Showalter (The Eyes of Tammy Faye, The Big Sick). In a bold stylistic choice, the flashbacks to Michael’s childhood are in the form of an imagined family sitcom, The Ausiellos. Complete with canned laughter and intentionally treacly incongruous music, the sequences both playfully and poignantly take us through a youth spent watching soaps with his mom and being bullied at school for being an overweight gay kid with a dead dad, with actor Brody Caines capturing the sweetness and insecurities of the young Michael. 

Jim Parsons as Michael Ausiello and Ben Aldridge as Kit Cowan in Michael Showalter’s Spoiler Alert. Photo Credit: Linda Källérus. Courtesy of Focus Features. 

As our leading men have their nightclub meet-cute, Michael immediately makes a connection to a TV show—the 80s hit with a killer theme tune, Knight Rider—in which David Hasselhoff’s character, Michael, had a talking car named Kit. Meanwhile, photographer Kit who doesn’t even own a TV and has never heard of the show, kindly humours Michael that the coincidence must mean that their meeting is kismet. Kit’s rather full-on and tipsy bff Nina (a fun Nikki M. James making the most of every second she’s on screen) is on hand to inform Michael that he’s just Kit’s type: “a tall dweeb”. While Kit—”the hero” of the book’s title—is the epitome of cool in Michael’s eyes, not to mention dashingly handsome. There’s instant chemistry there and I was quickly rooting for them get together and for their relationship to work. Early on at least, there’s a similar dynamic to the central relationship in Bros, with Michael feeling a little inadequate next to the attractive and assured Kit, who has until now been happily playing the field and never committed to having a boyfriend. As Michael puts it—in TV terms of course—he’s a “network soap” entering Kit’s sophisticated world that’s more “premium cable”. 

Jim Parsons as Michael and Ben Aldridge as Kit in Spoiler Alert. Photo Credit: Linda Källérus. Courtesy of Focus Features. 

Sprinkled with the kind of quirky details that tend to only come from a story based on real life, Spoiler Alert captures all the excitement and uncertainty of getting to know someone and falling in love; the significance attached to creating some closet space for their things, who says I love you first, and the anxiety over whether our secret obsessions once revealed might be a deal-breaker. David Marshall Grant and Dan Savage’s well-crafted screenplay requires a skillful blend of comic timing and emotional depth from its leads, and crucially Parsons and Aldridge both deliver excellent performances that are precise yet feel effortless and natural and invite us in. Parsons brings a sharp wit combined with an adorable vulnerability to the tightly-wound Michael, who has some self-esteem issues as a self-described “FFK” (former fat kid) and doesn’t quite realize he’s a catch too. Aldridge (who appeared in the first season of Fleabag and stars as Thomas Wayne in Pennyworth) might be a dreamboat with a smile that has Julia Roberts levels of disarming charm but, like his character, he never rests on his looks, grounding Kit in a sense that he hasn’t quite got life figured out yet despite his alluring confidence and charisma. Although this story is told from Michael’s perspective looking back on his lost love, he doesn’t canonize Kit, or ignore the issues in the relationship. 

Bill Irwin stars as Bob, Sally Field as Marilyn, Ben Aldridge as Kit and Jim Parsons as Michael in Spoiler Alert. Photo Credit: Linda Källérus. Courtesy of Focus Features. 

While Michael and his mother simultaneously realized that he was gay as a pre-teen watching Days of Our Lives together, Kit’s queer awakening and self-acceptance came more recently, and when we first meet him he hasn’t yet come out to his parents, Marilyn (Sally Field) and Bob (Bill Irwin). Cue a deliciously awkward sequence when they unexpectedly come to stay at Kit’s apartment. Although Michael has throughly “de-gayed” Kit’s room by the time they arrive—with the help of Kit’s “monosyllabic” queer roommate Kirby (a hilariously deadpan Sadie Scott)—removing any telltale clothes, books, DVDs, and photographs, the one thing that remains is the rainbow flag of giveaways, Michael himself. Field and Irwin make for an endearing double act, with the rhythms of people who’ve spent a lifetime in each other’s company, bringing levity and an affecting warmth to this loving couple who quickly embrace Michael as part of the family.

Ben Aldridge stars as Kit, Jim Parsons as Michael, Sally Field as Marilyn and Bill Irwin as Bob in Spoiler Alert. Photo Credit: Linda Källérus. Courtesy of Focus Features. 

When it comes to Kit’s inevitable illness, the scenes of medial appointments, treatment, and agonizing pain are just raw enough to make things feel authentic, without becoming too distressing for the audience. It’s easy enough to imagine what we don’t see or hear, like the effective scene of Kit telling his parents about his diagnosis, which we observe out of earshot through a closed window from outside the house.

Jim Parsons as Michael Ausiello and Ben Aldridge as Kit Cowan in Michael Showalter’s Spoiler Alert. Photo Credit: Giovanni Rufino. Courtesy of Focus Features. 

With the help of Peter Teschner’s tight editing, Showalter keeps things pacey and continually engaging. Knowing how it’s all going to end, particularly given that this is based on a real relationship, gives even the most buoyant and romantic scenes an edge and encourages us to pay close attention, conscious that all of their time together is precious. The desire to capture a fleeting moment is represented in the photographs that the men take of each other, including their annual self-timed portrait next to their Christmas tree. Along with soap operas, one of Michael’s lifelong obsessions is the festive season and as he reflects back on his life with Kit he measures their years together in Christmas trees. It’s an element that makes this romantic gay weepie a welcome addition to the growing number of LGBTQ+ Christmas movies. Well, if Gremlins and Die Hard count as Christmas flicks, this one definitely does. 

Jim Parsons as Michael Ausiello and Ben Aldridge as Kit Cowan in Michael Showalter’s Spoiler Alert. Photo Credit: David Scott Holloway. Courtesy of Focus Features.

Along with Kylie, Robyn, and Drag Race, there’s added queer culture in the form of Queer Eye’s Antoni Porowski as Kit’s coworker Sebastian, who Michael jealously refers to as Tom Daley’s doppelgänger. In a nice visual flourish at one point, we see a ripped Porowski through Michael’s eyes in a Speedo ready to take a dive at the Olympics. Although Michael has his suspicions that something is going on between the men, he stews in his concerns rather than directly addressing it with Kit, villainizing him in the TV show playing out in his head. As the years go by, the film tracks the decline in open communication between the two, leading to a simple but powerfully moving scene as the end draws near with them discussing what lies ahead for both of them. 

Sally Field as Marilyn and Jim Parsons as Michael in Michael Showalter’s Spoiler Alert. Courtesy of Focus Features.

When we hear, or even speak the words “till death do us part” as a promise to another human, their overfamiliarity can rob them of some their meaning. Happily ever after only happens in fairy tales. In real life, if a relationship goes the distance, then sooner or later its eventual conclusion is inevitable. For obvious reasons, most of us don’t spend too much time dwelling on death, but when we’re forced to face it in our lives with the loss of a loved one, or vicariously through movies or television, it tends to remind us to appreciate and cherish those who we care about most. Spoiler Alert is heartbreaking but beautifully life-affirming, and made me hold me husband’s hand that bit tighter, and hug him that bit closer.

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Mill Valley Film Festival (Oct. 6 – 60) to Screen Many LGBTQI+ Films

BLUE CAFTAN (France/Morocco/Belgium/Denmark, narrative feature, dir. Maryam Touzani) Set at a bespoke dress shop in Morocco, this unusual love-triangle tale avoids heated melodrama, instead exploring the lives of its three main characters with intimacy and great tenderness. Expert performances and a stirring resolution reveal the complexities and profundities of enduring love. In Arabic with English subtitles – California Premiere

BODY PARTS (US, documentary feature, dir. Kristy Guevara-Flanagan) Hollywood stars and relative unknowns alike share their experiences shooting sex scenes for TV and movies in this wide-ranging primer on the perils of being female in Hollywood. Deftly intercut among the interviews, including with Alexandra Billings, are copious movie clips illustrating how women’s bodies have been used throughout movie history. – California Premiere
Expected in person: director Kristy Guevara-Flanagan, Producer Helen Scheer, Intimacy Coordinator Sarah Scott

CHARCOAL (Argentina/Brazil, narrative feature, dir. Carolina Markowicz) Writer-director Carolina Markowicz’s satire centers on an upheaval in the quiet life of a rural Brazilian family as they accept an ominous proposal. With utterly fearless performances, this drily funny, evocative debut confirms Markowicz as a talent to watch. In Brazilian Portuguese and Spanish with English subtitles – US Premiere
Expected in person: director Carolina Markowic, actor Maeve Jinkings

CLOSE (Belgium/Netherlands/France, narrative feature, dir. Lukas Dhont) This assured character drama and queer coming-of-age film, the Grand Prix winner at Cannes, examines the bond between two 13-year-olds (Eden Dambrine and Gustav De Waele) who seem inseparable—until tragedy strikes. Belgian director Lukas Dhont (Girl) collaborates with his sensitive young actors to create a snapshot of boyhood so intimate and entrancing that it resembles a dream. In Dutch, Flemish, and French with English subtitles – Bay Area Premiere
Expected in person: director Lukas Dhont

ERIN’S GUIDE TO KISSING GIRLS (Canada, narrative feature, dir. Julianna Notten) Following the trials and tribulations of gay middle-schooler Erin (Elliot Stocking) on a quest to experience her first kiss, this tender and witty ode to today’s youth advocates for being your authentic self, while highlighting the messiness inherent in growing up. Ages 11+ – West Coast Premiere    
Expected in Person: director Julianna Notten, actor Elliot Stocking

• Screener available 

MY POLICEMAN (UK/US, narrative feature dir. Michael Grandage) A story of forbidden love and changing social conventions, My Policeman follows three young people – policeman Tom (Harry Styles), teacher Marion (Emma Corrin), and museum curator Patrick (David Dawson)– as they embark on an emotional journey in 1950s Britain. Flashing forward to the 1990s, Tom (Linus Roache), Marion (Gina McKee), and Patrick (Rupert Everett) are still reeling with longing and regret, but now they have one last chance to repair the damage of the past. Based on the book by Bethan Roberts, director Michael Grandage carves a visually transporting, heart-stopping portrait of three people caught up in the shifting tides of history, liberty, and forgiveness.

TAR (US, narrative feature, dir. Todd Field) A transcendent Cate Blanchett brilliantly portrays Lydia Tár, one of the greatest composer-conductors who never lived: a genius, an EGOT, and the first ever female chief conductor of a major German orchestra. Todd Field’s inventive and fascinating character study explores the dynamics of international classical music with a wily sensibility. – West Coast Premiere

THE WHALE (US, narrative feature, dir. Darren Aronofsky) From Darren Aronofsky (Variety Contenders, MVFF37) comes The Whale, the story of a reclusive English teacher living with severe obesity who attempts to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter for one last chance at redemption. Starring Brendan Fraser and based on the acclaimed play by Samuel D. Hunter. – West Coast Premiere
Expected in person: actor Brendan Fraser will accept the MVFF Award for Acting

SHORTS

CARDIFF (Carlos Ormeño Palm, UK 2022, 25 min) Hailing from one of the most vibrant LGBTQ communities in the UK, this joyously campy tale tells of a single gay man who falls in love with his married friend’s lover. – World Premiere 

• Screener available

JUST JOHNNY (Terry Loane, Ireland 2021, 19 min) Maria, Dermot, and their son Johnny live in West Belfast. Their conventional, straightforward family life is jolted when Johnny tells his Mum that he wants to wear a dress for his upcoming First Holy Communion. – California Premiere

• Screener available

LAST CALL (Drew de Pinto, US 2021, 4 min) Under looming threat of closure, and with phantoms of the past and future bleeding into the present, the caretakers of San Francisco’s historic queer bars carry on among phantoms of the past and future. –  World Premiere

• Screener available

MAMA HAS A MUSTACHE (Sally Rubin, US 2021, 10 min) Based on interviews of elementary school-aged children, the film uses sound clips from the kid and animation to explore how children are able to experience a world outside of the traditional gender binary.

• Screener available

MERRY GO ROUND (Ella Fields, US 2022, 14 min) With the knowledge that the clock is ticking away, Pepper and June explore how love can exist within distance, memory, and a non-linear perception of time. 

ONE LIKE HIM (Caitlin McLeod, Jordan/UK 2022, 16 min) A man seeks to confront a childhood friend,who was his first love, while being forced to relive painful memories of his past. 

• Screener available

THE QUEEN’S CLOSET (Cameron Grace Ford, Ava Wolf & Joe Tourk, US 2021, 8 min) A non-fiction look at three drag icons in San Francisco. Uti, the owner and founder of the Piedmont Boutique for 50+ years, Andy who just arrived from Jackson Hole Wyoming and Miss Mary Lou Pearl, a queen using drag to raise money for AIDS research. 

• Screener available

RIP TIDE (Luisa Dantas, US 2022, 13 min) A trip to the beach carries some emotional weight for a queer couple.

• Screener available

SMALL GAY TRAGEDY #1 (Rose Schlossberg, US 2022, 4 min) When Rose finds new queers in her small town, she can’t believe her eyes.

• Screener available

Complete press materials available here: MVFF45 Press Kit

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About Mill Valley Film Festival
Presented by the California Film Institute, the 45th Mill Valley Film Festival runs October 6-16, 2022. MVFF is an acclaimed eleven-day cinema event celebrating the best in American independent and world cinema. Located just north of San Francisco, the Festival is known as a filmmakers’ festival and the West Coast launch pad for many Academy Award®-winning films. MVFF has earned a reputation for launching new films and creating awards season buzz. The festival welcomes more than 200 filmmakers representing more than 50 countries annually. 

About California Film Institute 
The California Film Institute (CAFILM) is a non-profit organization dedicated to celebrating and promoting film and media arts through the presentation of the internationally acclaimed Mill Valley Film Festival, now in its 45th year, DocLands Documentary Film Festival, and the ongoing cultivation of the next generation of filmmakers and film lovers through CAFILM Education. CAFILM Education features a broad range of activities, including screenings, Q&A sessions, seminars with top international & local filmmakers and industry professionals, and a rich program of classes and hands-on workshops. Additionally, CAFILM acts as a year-round film-centric town hall with a diverse calendar of programming at the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center, one of the leading non-profit independent theatres in the country. The art of storytelling through film enables CAFILM to touch 275,000 guests throughout the year with films and events that entertain and address a breadth of social, environmental, and cultural issues. CAFILM is also the majority owner of the Sequoia Theater in Mill Valley, California. CAFILM relies on the generosity of its community to sustain these core programs; the invaluable support of our sponsors, foundations, individual donors, and members ensures our continued success. For more information, visit cafilm.org. 

The California Film Institute and the Mill Valley Film Festival are located in Marin County, California, on the traditional, ancestral, and contemporary homelands of the Coast Miwok, Pomo, and Wappo peoples. This includes the Southern Pomo and Graton Rancheria Tribes. These tribes were removed or displaced from their lands. We recognize this history and the harm to present-day Coast Miwok, Pomo, and Wappo peoples and to their ancestors. The California Film Institute commits to moving forward from a place of authenticity and working with present-day tribes to elevate their stories, history, and present-day legacy through film.  

Supporters 
CAFILM is once again proud to acknowledge the leadership support of Christopher B. and Jeannie Meg Smith, Project No. 9, Jennifer Coslett MacCready, Nancy P. and Richard K. Robbins Family Foundation, and Vickie Soulier, and the continued major support of Marin Community Foundation, The Bernard Osher Foundation, The Gruber Family Foundation, and Resonance Philanthropies. We are also fortunate to have the contributions of the following Signature and Major Sponsors of the Mill Valley Film Festival: Jackson Square Partners, Lucasfilm, Ltd., Wareham Development, and Bellam Self Storage and Boxes. 

FOR CALENDAR EDITORS
45th Mill Valley Film Festival 
Celebrating the best of independent and world cinema alongside high-profile and prestigious award contenders. 
Thursday, October 6 to Sunday, October 16, 2022 

Ticket On-Sale Dates 
Advance Ticket Packages and Passes on sale August 1, 2022 
General Public Single Tickets on sale Monday, September 13, 2022 
CFI members can purchase single tickets in advance of the public beginning Friday, September 9, 2022 

MVFF45 Bay Area Screening Venues: 
San Rafael: Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center – October 6 – 16, 2022 
Mill Valley: CinéArts Sequoia – October 6 – 16, 2022 
Larkspur: Lark Theater – October 8 & 9 + October 15 & 16, 2022 
Berkeley: Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive – October 8 – 16, 2022
San Francisco: The Roxie Theater – October 15 & 16, 2022 

Social Media
#MVFF45, #MVFF
Twitter: @MVFilmFest
Instagram: @millvalleyfilmfest
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MillValleyFilmFestival

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Sonoma Film Institute at SSU Screens “Victim” Sunday, September 25

VICTIM Friday, Sept. 23, 2022 –7 p.m. & Sunday, Sept. 25, 2022 – 4 p.m.
“‘I wanted him!’ With these words Dirk Bogarde consigned his matinee idol alter-ego to history, and a gripping landmark in gay cinema was born. Bogarde’s closeted, married lawyer Melville Farr is drawn into exposing a terrifying blackmail ring when an admirer (Peter McEnery) commits suicide rather than implicate him. Supporting the recommendations of the Wolfenden Committee, director Basil Dearden, producer Michael Relph and screenwriter Janet Green denounced the poisonous, institutionalized homophobia gay men of all classes faced, and cleverly packaged the politics within an accessible crime-thriller. VICTIM, and Bogarde’s courageous appearance in it, helped propel public discourse towards the 1967 Act and beyond – changing lives in the process.” – British Film InstituteOn Friday night, Dr. Bryan Burton, Assistant Professor in Criminology & Criminal Justice Studies will introduce the film and lead a discussion after the screening.Released: 1961Run time: 100

For your safety and that of other guests, masks are strongly recommended, but no longer required indoors. All screenings take place in Warren Auditorium in Ives Hall on the Sonoma State University campus.

Admission is free, but we suggest a $5 donation.

In these challenging times, we are grateful to all Sonoma Film Institute attendees and supporters. To continue as a unique cultural resource in the North Bay Area, SFI needs contributions from the community we serve. With your support, we will continue to program the incredible variety of movies you can’t find anywhere else. Thank you!

Donate to Sonoma Film Institute

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OUTwatch Film Series Premieres Kicks of With Stunning David Bowie Doc “Moonage Daydream” September 23

The new David Bowie documentary, Moonage Daydream, succeeds not only for what it is, but what it isn’t. That has a lot to do with the clichés — and, occasionally, limitations — of the well-trodden format of the music documentary.

We know bad ones — or just boilerplate ones — when we see them. They typically open in medias res; the subject mumbles something backstage through celluloid grain and a plume of smoke. Here come the talking heads: Jakob Dylan, Dave Grohl, Bono. The director takes us from the cradle to the grave — and you’re left a few bucks poorer, wondering if this is all music is, in the end.

But never fear: Brett Morgen is at the wheel of Moonage Daydream, the new documentary plumbing the depths of Bowie. You may remember Morgen because he directed Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, that impressionistic 2015 masterstroke that overwhelmed viewers with the Nirvana leader’s essence — not just the Wikipedia-style bullet points, with LP covers hovering in an iMovie-looking void.

Despite Buzz Osborne of the Melvins’ kvetching about its factuality — and the film losing a little bit of cachet because of it — Montage of Heck remains the gold standard of music docs. By the end of its maelstrom, you felt immersed in Cobain’s very soul. And thankfully, Moonage Daydream is an accomplishment of a similar scale.

More of a long music video than a tedious drive through history, the film spends two captivating hours rolling around in surreal audiovisual representations of what made Bowie tick. But if you think that involves sordid tales, like when he flirted with Nazi iconography and black magic while blasted on outrageous amounts of blow, think again: Moonage Daydream is a jaw-dropping exploration of a 69-year-long life lived magnificently.

 Chronology is elastic in the film. While Bowie’s various incarnations, like Ziggy Stardust and the Thin White Duke, get ample screen time (it’d be unimaginable otherwise), they’re less reported on in chronological order than left to float in a fishbowl, making natural and spontaneous connections. Throughout, Morgen leans psychological; time and memory loom heavily.

Most grippingly, Moonage Daydream directly addresses one of Bowie’s deepest fears; perhaps exacerbated by the cornucopia of substances he ingested across the decades, he felt in danger of succumbing to the schizophrenia that gripped his brother, Terry Burns.

Ten years older than his famous brother, Burns was instrumental in making Bowie the man and artist he was. He introduced him to outré culture in a multitude of forms, like modern jazz and the works of William S. Burroughs. This is an already public and well-trod aspect of Bowie’s story, but until you behold this film, you won’t grasp how he externalized those visions from the outer rim — trying to keep his demons at bay by blowing them up into world-beating cultural moves.

Much like in Montage of Heck, Morgen digs into his toybox of period cultural signifiers, including campy UFO flicks of yore and monochromatic Mickey Mouse cartoons, to ground Bowie in time and space.

But it’s far more illuminating when Morgen considers Bowie’s place in the lineage of flesh-and-blood, reality-bending weirdos of yore, like Friedrich Nietzche and Aleister Crowley. Because Bowie truly belongs in the pantheon of these eccentrics, painting the drudgery of human existence with strange and lovely hues, album after album after album.

Through this lens, you’ll probably walk away smiling and grateful — that somebody would come perilously close to sacrificing their mind and body to add beauty to the world, synthesizing experimental theater and arena rock and avant-garde classical music and cutting-edge fashion and so many other disparate elements to do so.

Bowie was unquestionably larger than life in every conceivable way, but perhaps Morgen could have afforded a little breathing room between the countless moments of seat-shaking impact. Thankfully, those moments are few and far between — and like Bowie himself, Moonage Daydream bows out with humor, heart and rapturous intelligence.

 With Bowie’s death several years in the rearview, sometimes his musical achievements can become enveloped by endless chatter about his various personae. Of course, they’re crucial to his story. But it wouldn’t mean much without majestic tunes, and Morgen shows that they still destroy — from the early “Space Oddity” days to the infamous-yet-revolutionary Berlin period to Bowie’s underrated final run of albums, culminating with 2016’s Blackstar.

And in the end, the lasting impression isn’t simply of a cultural juggernaut, or a psychedelic songsmith, or even the guy with the bleached tips making vaguely Nine Inch Nails-style jams. Again, Morgen’s in the business of impressionism and abstraction, revealing the cosmic debris that birthed this subjects — how they burst through the mold of mere entertainment to irrevocably alter the spirit of the wider world.

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