L.A’s OUTFEST annual summer Film Festival also hosts Outfest Fusion LGBTQ People of Color Film Festival that kicked off today. The 5 Day Event which spotlights the diversity of the LGBTQ community and highlights films and offers classes and seminars on filmmaking to ensure all voices are represented in our community.
We don’t have access to any of their very exciting Shorts Programs, but from the Features being screened over the next few days, we have chosen 5 Films that are our Top Picks.
ABU: In 2012 when his father passed newbie filmmaker ARSHAD KHAN was working on putting together his first fiction feature, but having gone through a wealth of archival home videos in preparing for the memorial service, Khan slowly came to realize that he wanted, and needed instead to tell his own story of growing up gay with his devout Moslem father. It’s a complex tale that was painful at times for both son and father, but by the time the final credits roll on the documentary you appreciate what a cathartic exercise it must have been for Khan finally being able to share his intriguing story..
I DREAM IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE : 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. It’s an intriguing movie with the backstory 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.
SMALL TALK: is one of those compelling documentaries that demand patience from the viewer in the same manner that HUI-CHEN HUANG the filmmaker had to exercise in getting her lesbian mother ……the subject of the film ….to open up about her life. Their share a home together in Taiwan, and although the presence of Huang’s very young child acts as an ice-breaker between these two women, there is still a great deal of resentment, and possibly even hostility between them.
This excellent very intimate fly-on-the-documentary that won a prestigious TEDDY AWARD shows a culture where ‘sharing’ may not be an acceptable practice, but it clearly demonstrates that is so much needed for people to be able to heal and grow.
TAMARA: For her fourth time in the director’s chair Venezuelan/American filmmaker Elia K. Schneider chose to tell a dramatized version of the controversial true-life story of the Law Professor who transitioned into TAMARA ADRIÁN and who would go on to become the first transgender person ever elected to Venezuela’s National Assembly. It is a powerful story that is told with compassion and more than it’s share of disbelief and makes a very welcome contribution to the whole dialogue on gender dysmorphia. The fact that Teo/Tamara went through both marriage and parenthood he/she found the necessary inner strength to finally take her chosen path speaks volumes, but then again catholic Venezuela is still a very conservative country.
MR GAY SYRIA; The whole concept of anybody being brave/foolhardy enough to publicly come out as a gay Syrian is tough enough to get one’s head around, but the very idea that there is such a thing as a Mr. Gay Syria competition is beyond belief, is something that one feels almost compelled to look into further.
It is the subject of the Turkish filmmaker AYŞE TOPRAK’S first feature documentary, and most of the action takes place in Istanbul as this is where a small group of gay Syrians refugees has escaped too. Life is still not easy for as illegal immigrants they have no rights and cannot legally work, but this is a better risk than returning home and facing the ISIS death squads.
For full details of these screenings and the whole OUTFEST FUSION program http://www.outfest.org/fusion2018