"How many LGBTQ Film Festivals are currently screening queer carryings-on on Planet Earth?" you ask. According to Wikipedia's listings, which I deem quite thorough yet incomplete, there are 179.
For example, the East Village Queer Film Festival is nowhere to be found on the list. That event should be nestled between South Africa's Durban Gay and Lesbian Film Festival and Japan's Ehime LGBT Film Festival.
Anyways, this here is an amazing development, especially for those of us who've grown up when the closest to queer representation was watching Paul Lynde center-spaced on Hollywood Squares.
Host Peter Marshall: "Paul, what is a good reason for pounding meat?"
Paul Lynde: "Loneliness."
Those were the days when we gays didn't really have a language to define ourselves. Now, we have too many choices to keep track of. "Heteroflexibility," for example, sounds more like a contortionist act than . . . . Well, you look it up.
All of this leads us to the 36th edition of the Vancouver Queer Film Festival (September 11-22, 2024). With 97 films from 25 countries, you can bet that every LGBTQQIP2SAA conceivability is represented in many a tongue with many a tongue.
One of the more consequential offerings, one that should be scheduled in every college course dealing with gender, is Regan Latimer's endlessly droll, always astute work of media scholarship, Bulletproof: A Lesbian's Guide to Surviving the Plot. Beware, this doc comes with an on-screen warning: "The following contains scenes of graphic violence and coarse language. Viewer discretion is advised. Also, this film does not claim to be the definitive authority on every queer experience known to humanity. It's just a single, sparkly drop in a vast ocean of queer stories." But what a drop!
With seemingly hundreds of clips dating from the 1950s onward, Latimer maps boob-tube and celluloid lesbian invisibility, stereotyping, and murder all the way to the recent decades' life-affirming depictions. Yes, you'll travel back to your memories of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? (1969-1978); Little House on the Prairie (1974-1983); Fried Green Tomatoes (1991); Bound (1996); Glee (2009-2015); and, of course, Orange is the New Black (2013-2019).
Indeed, there was a time, Blanche, when the majority of lesbianic love stories wedging their way into teleplays would all end on a tragic note. Just visualize sweetly saying goodbye to your "gal pal" and then, within seconds, watching her being fatally struck by a car with a smile still on her lips. Hundreds of other lesbian characters have been offed by Hollywood since.
But it took the blotting out of three popular lesbian TV characters in 2016 within just several months for Bulletproof to be born. "Hey, what the hell!" As one interviewee suggested here to the director: "They should get all the dead lesbians together and put them in one movie." Instead of a cemetery, call it a "Sapphotery."
Employing animation, a first-rate narration, plus tête-à-têtes with actors, showrunners, academics, and your everyday lesbian TV viewer, Latimer has created an at-times surprisingly laugh-out-loud exploration of the devastating effects that an insensitive depiction of minorities can have on how society treats the same. Best of all, she details how the current cure (e.g., Gentleman Jack) was achieved and must still be nurtured.
But with the ACLU now tracking 530 anti-LGBTQ bills in the States, this doc's hope is stated thusly: "You know, now we find ourselves in mainstream culture, but in real life, it's just pretty scary. What I hope is that straight people who are watching queer media will say, 'Oh, that is a shared human experience. I can appreciate that,' and then get to the point where 'Hey, this isn't, you know, a person who's so different than I am.'"
On the other hand, writer/director Suçon's 16-minute short "The Proof Is in the Pudding" ("La Cerise sure le Gâteau") might convince the very same folks that queer femmes are quite a bit different at times.
Financed with aid from the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (a group of San Franciscan activist-drag-nun-satirists), plus donations from dozens of others including Betty La Pisseuse and Lulu Moustache, "Pudding" is the perfect repast for those hungry for Sex on Wry.
The storyline is quite simple. Two friends are invited to a party. Their one chore is to bake a vegan birthday cake.
Now let’s meet the leads: Milly (Faye Darling) is a Brit dating someone named Arthur. Her pal Lise (Mia Nitrile) is French, delightfully tattooed, and quite hard to definitively label from the footage we’re supplied with. No matter. She, however, does "lesbian" quite well.
Puzzled by their assignment, the duo wonders just what goes into a vegan birthday cake. Immediately, they google and discover Simon Cusine (the glorious Théo), who has created a video for just such an occasion. You’ll need icing, sugar, coconut, and a bunch of dry ingredients, plus he insists, "JUICE."
Now the gals are ready to bake, especially because they have all they need for a tasty batter except for the "JUICE," which, for some reason, they assume means vaginal juices. Now, how do you get a cup or two of that specific liquid? Simple: you get horny, and the rivers will eventually flow.
But how do you get horny?
First, these determined lasses try individual masturbation, then paired masturbation, and finally, energetic smooching, oral sex, scissoring, and some thumping maneuvers. Clearly, nothing you’ve witnessed on The Great British Baking Show.
But it all works out. Yes, the cake is baked, the gals get clothed, and they go merrily on the way for a night of partying.
Having never personally experienced 14 minutes of continual fooling around and not being a voyeur, I found I had time midway to toast and butter an English muffin in the kitchen without losing the plotline.
Clearly, the talented, witty Suçon, who's an audacious member of the Parisian porn collective La Branlée, has created a sex-positive offering that will serve as a learning tool for lesbians-in-training, fodder for Julia Childs fans and as a refresher course for the already initiated.