COMMUNITY SPOTLIGHT

A TALE OF TWO LGBTQ FILM FESTIVALS

Maybe Someday

San Diego and Long Beach aren’t exactly sister cities, since they are separated geographically by 112 miles, but their LGBTQ communities may grow closer this month via the communal experience that movies provide. Both cities will celebrate their long-running LGBTQ film festivals at the same time, Thursday, September 8 through Sunday, September 11. They will also serendipitously screen several of the same noteworthy productions.

FilmOut San Diego’s 22nd annual LGBTQ FilmFestival will feature award-winning films from the Sundance, SXSW and Berlin film festivals, along with independent features and short films. Events will be held at the San Diego Natural History Museum (The NAT) and the Museum of Photographic Arts (MOPA), both in San Diego’s historic Balboa Park. For ticket information and screening updates, visit filmoutsandiego.com.

The 29th annual QFilms Long Beach will be set at the city’s historic Art Theatre and neighboring LGBTQ Center Long Beach on Fourth Street. Feature films, documentaries and short films will show the lives of every member of the LGBTQ alphabet. Tickets to screenings, filmmaker Q&As, VIP experiences and parties are on sale at qfilmslongbeach.com.

Among the movies both fests have in common is All Kinds of Love. It will be the QFilms Opening Night event with writer-director David Lewis (who shared a Pulitzer Prize as an editor at the San Jose Mercury News) and cast members in attendance. Amid the backdrop of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 decision to legalize marriage equality, a longtime gay couple gets divorced just as everyone else is getting married. After his commitment-phobic husband divorces him, stuck-in-his-ways Max tries to start over. (Actors and real-life couple Matthew Montgomery and Steve Callahan play the pair.) When Max becomes accidental roommates with a younger hip nerd who is as romantically challenged as he is, sparks fly. All Kinds of Love is a fun romantic comedy that celebrates the endless possibilities of queer love, whether it involves an intergenerational romance, a middle-aged interracial throuple, or an artistic trans man looking for love in all the wrong places. It will be FilmOut’s Men’s Centerpiece on Saturday, September 10.

FilmOut’s Opening Night will showcase the athletically-inclined drama In From the Side on Thursday, September 8. As the members of a gay rugby team in London try to push past rivalries to score an elusive win, a secret affair simmers among them. Following a drunken encounter, two players begin an adulterous relationship and must conceal their growing feelings or risk destroying the team they love. Mark (sexy Alexander Lincoln) finds himself unable to avoid the appeal of teammate Warren (the equally sexy Alexander King), who sets off every red (or in rugby, yellow) flag: the cocky attitude, the emotional unavailability, the long-term boyfriend. But the real drama occurs off the field as infidelities, heartbreak and unimpeded passions dominate the playbook. Visual effects artist Matt Carter makes a very impressive feature directorial debut. Not only did he direct and co-write it, he edited it, composed the music, served as cinematographer and co-produced.

The acclaimed, nostalgic documentary All Man: The International Male Story will be shown at FilmOut and QFilms. In San Diego, it will be the grand finale Closing Night event (sponsored by The RAGE Monthly) on Sunday, September 11. It will screen in Long Beach on Saturday, September 10.

While this writer was attending a Roman Catholic seminary in the early 1990s, more than a few of us gay students had subscriptions to the homoerotic International Male. (And the straight women who worked in the seminary mailroom definitely weren’t complaining!) The

All Kinds of Love

now-defunct clothing catalog, which debuted in the bicentennial year 1976, was decried by anti-gay cultural critics as “hedonistic,” “tasteless” and “selling sex.” As the documentary reveals in fascinating detail, it ultimately weathered those naysayers as well as the tragic devastation that HIV/AIDS wrought on the catalog’s staff and model pool during the 1980s and 1990s. I never expected to feel proud of International Male some 30 years later but, dagnabit, I do thank the filmmakers Bryan Darling and Jesse Finley Reed. Gay faves Matt Bomer, Drew Droege, Carson Kressley, Jake Shears and LGBTQ critic Frank DeCaro make welcome contributions to the doc.

Two other prominent features are also shared by FilmOut and QFilms. Michelle Ehlen’s Maybe Someday will be the Women’s Opening Night Film in Long Beach and the Women’s Centerpiece in San Diego. It tells the story of Jay, a non-binary 40-something photographer, who moves across the country to start their life over again in the midst of separating from their wife. Along the way, Jay takes a detour to stay with their high school best friend who they used to be secretly in love with. Jay also befriends a charismatic gay man who has long given up on love. Memories of the past resurface as Jay, struggling to move forward with the next chapter of their life, grapples with the inevitable cycles of love, loss and letting go.

The award-winning documentary Mama Bears is an exploration of the journeys taken by Sara Cunningham and Kimberly Shappley, two conservative Christian mothers whose profound love for their LGBTQ children has turned them into fierce advocates for the entire queer community. It also focuses on Tammi Terrell Morris, a young Black lesbian whose struggle for self-acceptance perfectly exemplifies why the mama bears are so vitally important. The movie uses social media posts, home movies, photographs, interviews and cinema verité footage to explore the complex intersections of politics, religion, faith and unconditional love.

For its Closing Night screening on Sunday, September 11, QFilms has scored a coup: an advance screening of Universal Studios’ Bros, the first romantic comedy from a major studio about two gay men maybe, possibly, probably, stumbling towards love. Emphasis on the maybe. They’re both very busy, lol.

Starring Billy Eichner, the first openly gay man to co-write and star in his own major studio film, Bros features an entirely LGBTQ principal cast including Luke Macfarlane, Ts Madison, Guillermo Díaz, Guy Branum and Amanda Bearse. Bros was directed by Nicholas Stoller (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) from his screenplay with Eichner, and produced by comedy titan Judd Apatow (Bridesmaids). Bros isn’t scheduled to open in theatres until September 30, so QFilms will be one of the first places to show it on the big screen.

Not to be outdone, FilmOut will screen The Sixth Reel, a new comedy co-directed by and starring the iconic Charles Busch. A down-on-his-luck movie collector (Busch) discovers a legendary lost film and becomes entangled in an outrageous adventure to deliver it to the right hands before it is lost forever. Busch is an American actor, screenwriter, playwright and drag performer known for his appearances in plays and films (including Psycho Beach Party and Die, Mommie, Die!). His best-known play is The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife (2000), which was a Tony-nominated success on Broadway.

Numerous other recommended feature and short films will play at both festivals during their shared weekend, so be sure to visit their respective websites. According to Carlos Torres, executive director of The LGBTQ Center Long Beach: “While special interest groups try to legislate our existence away, it is more important now than ever to see representations of our LGBTQ+ lives on screen.”

And to partially quote the opening of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times.” This will most certainly be true of FilmOut San Diego and QFilms Long Beach 2022.

In From the Side