Ulster aka Northern Ireland may be the very last part of the UK not to recognize same-sex marriage thanks to the intransigence of governing local political party, but its very vibrant LGBT community does have one of the best queer arts festivals in that part of the world. The 10th edition of OUTBURST is about to happen, and from very humble beginnings a decade ago it has grown into a international event that the organizers like to describe as an annual celebration of all that is bold and lovely in the world of lesbian, gay, bi, trans, queer + friends creative goodness.
The events this year are headlined by celebrated queer iconic filmmaker John Waters who is bringing his live one-man-show This Filthy World (and trust us, the show is indeed very filthy). That show sold out instantly, but never fear you can still get tickets for a special screening of a re-released version of John Waters ‘Multiple Madness‘ or one of the events that we have selected for queerguru’s Top Picks at Outburst.
Bourgeois and Maurice are a couple of sequin-clad weirdos who may in fact just be one of best pair of performance artists we have seen in a very long time. For the past ten years this delightfully bizarre duo have been wowing crowds everywhere and their caustic humor, and their gloriously satirical songs have also made them social media darlings. How To Save The World Without Really Trying is their new hit show fresh from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Strike A Pose documentary : For many Madonna fans the peak of the musical career for the diva and superstar was in the 1990’s about the time when she was traveling the globe with her Blond Ambition World Tour which thrilled the audiences crammed packed into stadiums with the same vehement passion that it was also condemned by The Catholic Church. On this tour she was accompanied by her fabulous troupe of male dancers whom she had literally picked from Harlem ballrooms where they were masters of the hot new trend of voguing. They formed a tight-knit clique with Madonna recognizing that for them this was the biggest career break of their young lives, but they in turn were adding this whole layer of incredible sexiness and street credibility that helped take Madonna’s performance up to a whole new level.
Now 25 years later the remaining boys …. now in their mid 40’s ….. look back with great affection and nostalgia at this one exciting year in their lives even though, despite being regarded as Madonna’s ‘family’ at the time, it still ended badly.
Kiki : we love the fact that this has been programmed alongside Strike A Pose ….. to us non-residents of Harlem the fact that 25 years after Jenni Livingston’s seminal documentary Paris Is Burning, ‘voguing’ is very much alive in the dance clubs and community spaces in this corner of New York is quite a shock. In fact it’s been re-shaped and re-invented to bring it more in line with the needs and dreams of it’s present day exponents who, we learn from this new movie, are mainly at-risk LGBTQ youth. There may be much more of a political edge to the stories of the young people who feature in Kiki than in Livingston’s earlier film, but the seemingly unlimited vitality and energy and sheer fabulous creativity is still very alive in the community who take the thriving voguing culture very seriously.
A.W.O.L. : The only chance that Joey (Lola Kirke) has of improving her life choices is by enlisting in the Army. They at least will not only let her see the world but also fund her entry into college too. She is a recent high school graduate in a economically depressed small Pennsylvania town, and with jobs extremely scarce, she gets low-paying work with a dairy farmer looking after his herd of cattle and helping out at his ice cream stand. It is whilst she is working there one night that she gets picked up by Rayna (Breeda Wool) an attractive and flirtatious woman who is probably twice her age.
The story of an inexperienced young lesbian making bad choices after falling for a much older woman is not new, but her angle with economic hardships making both women so vulnerable, gave it an interesting fresh angle. Joey’s risk-taking decisions were always made from the heart and at the encouragement of her older lover who’s own chosen path was guided by her internalized homophobia and her finely honed survival skills that would always result in her callously using people for her own ends.
Uncle Howard like most of our other picks is a movie for no other reason than the fact that queer cinema is something that rocks queerguru’s boat. Filmmaker Aaron Brookner set out to find the lost negatives of ‘Burroughs : The Movie’ a critically acclaimed film made by his uncle Howard Brookner who had died of AIDS in 1989 aged just 34 years old. Instead he made this excellent and very touching profile that also serves as a fitting reminder that Howard Brookner was a remarkable and gifted filmmaker, but also of the wealth of talent and all the other extraordinary people we lost in the AIDS pandemic.
In his farewell note to his parents, Howard wrote: It really isn’t a problem having a short life as long as you have led it doing exactly doing things that really mattered to you …. and that is exactly what I have done.
OUTBURST 10 : Queer Arts Festival in Belfast runs 11th November – 19th November. Information and tickets from http://outburstarts.com/
