Portland Queer Film Festival 2014

PORTLAND QUEER FILM FESTIVAL OCTOBER 3 - 9, 2014 • CINEMA 21 • WWW.PDXQUEERFILM.COM

10:30 PM AFTER PARTY: CINEMA 21

9:00 PM LILTING

7:00 PM THE FOXY MERKINS

OCTOBER 7

Voucher packets - $50 Packet of 6 vouchers good for any film program at

Full Pass - $100 Admission into all screenings at Cinema 21.

Does not include admission to parties.

Platinum Festival Pass - $155 Admission to all screenings and events at all venues. No waiting in line. A seat is reserved for you until 10 minutes before each showtime.

Parking at Cinema 21 Parking is available to Cinema 21 patrons in the Legacy Good Samaritan parking structure at NW 22nd & Kearny after 6:00 pm on weekdays and on weekends. Park in the "Parking 1" section. Do not park in reserved spots.

Cinema 21 • 616 NW 21st Avenue The box office will open one hour before each day’s first program. Cinema 21 sells only day-of tickets.

Advance Sales at www.pdxqueerfilm.com.

Cinema 21 except Opening and Closing Night. Not valid for parties or special events.

9:00 PM SUCH GOOD PEOPLE

FILMMAKERS IN ATTENDANCE

7:00 PM THE WIFE MASTER

OCTOBER 6

9:00 PM BOYS

7:00 PM TRU LOVE

OCTOBER 8

TICKETS AND PASSES

FILMMAKERS IN ATTENDANCE

7:00 PM THE WAY HE LOOKS

7:00 PM APPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR

8:50 PM ONE ZERO ONE

5:00 PM OUT IN THE NIGHT

9:00 PM FIRST PERIOD

OCTOBER 5

OCTOBER 4

5:00 PM BORN TO FLY

Opening Night Film - $15 Opening Night Film/Party combo - $30 General Admission - $10

10:00 PM OPENING NIGHT PARTY: CAFE NELL

FILMMAKERS IN ATTENDANCE

7:30 PM BACK ON BOARD: GREG LOUGANIS

OCTOBER 3

9:15 PM NOMANSLAND THE LAST FAREWELL

7:00 PM PRIDE

OCTOBER 9

Premiere Sponsors

SPONSORS

Festival Sponsors

Hotel Sponsor Hospitality Sponsor

With special thanks to Equity Foundation and Pride Foundation.

THE

“SEAT YOURSELF”

KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN! Cinema 21 needs your help replacing the decades-old seats in the main auditorium! We’ve turned to Kickstarter to raise funds for this renovation. Please donate and spread the word! #C21SeatYourself www.cinema21.com/kickstarter www.cinema21.com

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FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3 • 7:30 P.M • OPENING NIGHT

BACK ON BOARD: GREG LOUGANIS Directed by CHERYL FURJANIC • USA • 86 minutes

We're thrilled to be kicking off the festival this year with an extraordinary documentary with Greg Louganis and director Cheryl Furjanic in attendance!

Back on Board: Greg Louganis is an intimate portrait of the public triumphs and private struggles of trailblazing openly gay athlete Greg Louganis.

A refreshingly candid documentary about this four-time Olympic champion, Back on Board follows Greg over the past three years as he struggles with financial security and reunites with the sport he once dominated but was not welcomed in. The threat of losing his house forces Louganis to re-evaluate the choices, relationships, and missed opportunities of his career.

With unprecedented access, the film reveals the complicated life of an athlete whose grace, beauty, and courage sparked a worldwide fascination with diving. It chronicles Louganis’ rise from a difficult upbringing to nearly universal acclaim as the greatest diver ever, and from pioneering openly gay athlete with HIV to an overlooked sports icon.

GREG LOUGANIS AND DIRECTOR CHERYL FURJANIC IN ATTENDANCE. OPENING NIGHT GALA: Cafe Nell SPONSORED BY: Cafe Nell, New Deal Vodka and Bill Dickey and Morel Ink. GREG LOUGANIS is a four-time Olympic champion and widely considered the greatest diver in history. The only male to sweep both the 3m and 10m diving events in consecutive Olympic Games (’84 and ’88), Greg earned a total of 5 Olympic medals, 5 World Championship titles and 47 national titles (more than anyone in U.S. history). A pioneer as one of the first openly gay athletes, Greg demonstrated incredible courage and strength by competing while HIV positive in the 1988 Olympics. His 1995 autobiography, “Breaking the Surface” spent five weeks as the New York Times #1 best seller.

CHERYL FURJANIC (Director/Producer/CoWriter) is an award-winning filmmaker whose films have screened at 100+ festivals worldwide and on television. Her first feature documentary, “Sync or Swim” (2008), received numerous awards. Cheryl holds a BFA in Film & Television production from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Her Masters degree, from NYU/Tisch’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), focused on audience-building for fiction television. She has been teaching documentary production at New York University for over a decade. She has yet to attempt diving or synchronized swimming.

Born to Fly

Appropriate Behavior

Not just a choreographer, Elizabeth Streb is a wildly extreme action architect. Born to Fly traces the evolution of Streb’s movement philosophy as she pushes herself and her dancers from the ground, to the wall, to the sky. Guided by Streb’s theory of movement—to walk on walls, dive through glass, move so fast you disappear and…fly. The film asks: Can adrenaline be a form of medicine?

When does movement become art?

Why be a part of it? How do race, gender, sexuality, and class appear on the dancers’ performances, on their bodies? Wrestling these questions, Born to Fly offers an exhilarating tale of the necessity of art, inspiring a broad audience, hungry for a more tactile and fierce existence in the world.

A hit at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, Appropriate Behavior, is a fresh, hilarious comedy about trying to find your place in the world.

Shirin (Desiree Akhavan) is struggling to become an ideal Persian daughter, politically correct bisexual and hip young Brooklynite. But she’s not quite Persian enough, not quite gay enough, not quite anything enough. Even the six-year-old boys in her moviemaking class are too ADD to focus on her for more than a second. After being dumped by her girlfriend Maxine, Shirin faces an unimaginable task: trading the idyllic lesbian haven of Park Slope for a shared artist’s loft in Bushwick.

Following a family announcement of her brother’s betrothal to a parentally approved Iranian prize catch, Shirin embarks on a private rebellion involving a series of pansexual escapades, while trying to decipher what went wrong with Maxine. Unable to let go of the memories of their excruciating highs and lows, the endearingly superficial narcissist finds herself plotting to win back her ex.

October 4 • 5:00 p.m Directed by CATHERINE GUND USA • 82 minutes

October 4 • 7:00 p.m Directed by DESIREE AKHAVAN USA • 86 minutes

First Period

October 4 at 9:00 p.m.

Directed by CHARLIE VAUGHN • USA • 98 minutes First Period is an homage to 80s high school comedies. If John Waters had directed a John Hughes movie using the cast of "Strangers With Candy," you'd have First Period. New girl Cassie (Brandon Alexander III) and outcast Maggie (Dudley Beene) are easily the most awkward girls in high school. Together, they decide the way to win the hearts of the cute boys and popular girls is to come in first in the school talent show.

But rivals Heather, Other Heather, and their popular boyfriend's Brett and Dirk will stop at nothing to keep our heros the laughing stock of the school. It's going to take makeovers, courage, and maybe even a little rapping to beat them in true 80s style.

Director Charlie Vaughn and star Brandon Alexander III in attendance. post screening party: Cinema 21 CHARLIE VAUGHN Charlie has directed and produced features, shorts, documentaries, music videos, and TV movies. This Christmas will see the Network Premiere of 12 Dog Days Till Christmas.

Last year, Heterosexual Jill, which he produced, screened at the Portland Queer Film Festival. He currently lives in Portland with his rescue dog, Bennie.

BRANDON ALEXANDER III Like most gay teen runaways, Brandon Alexander III left home at a young age but thankfully found a home in improv comedy right away. He evolved his writing career working for channels like Comedy Central, Cartoon Network, and Nickelodeon and was a contributing editor for several magazines.

First Period is his first feature film.

Out in the Night

The Way He Looks

Out in the Night is a documentary that tells the story of a group of young, Black, lesbian friends who are out having fun on a hot August night in 2006. As they stroll through the gay-friendly West Village, an older man sexually and violently confronts them. When his advances are rebuked he becomes violent and threatens to rape them. A brutal fight ensues and in the melee the man is stabbed. Police are called and the four friends Patreese, Renata, Terrain and Venice are charged with gang assault and attempted murder. The next day, the press report the friends as a wild "wolfpack" and a "gang of killer" lesbians seeking out violence.

Despite eye witnesses and security camera footage that back their story as having been the victims of a hate crime, the four friends are quickly convicted and imprisoned. Out in the Night explores the issues that led to this injustice and the lives of the women involved.

The Way He Looks is a sweet and tender coming-of-age tale about the complications of young love and selfdetermination that has won several international film awards and nearly every audience award at American film festivals. Leonardo is a blind teenager who is fed up with his overprotective parents and friends and the bullies at school. Looking to assert his independence, he decides to study abroad to the dismay of his best friend, Giovana. When Gabriel, a new kid in school, teams up with Leo on a school project, new feelings blossom in him that make him reconsider his plans. As their friendship deepens, Giovana, grows jealous of this new found companionship as tensions mount between her and Leo. The Way He Looks explores, beautifully, the issues of jealously, bullying, familial conflicts and the confusion of young love and sexual desire.

October 5 • 5:00 p.m Directed by BLAIR DOROSH-WALTHER USA • 75 minutes

October 5 • 7:00 p.m Directed by DANIEL RIBEIRO Brazil • 96 minutes • In Portuguese w/ subtitles

One Zero One: The Story of Cybersissy and BayBjane October 5 at 9:00 p.m. In German w/ subtitles

Directed by TIM LIENHARD • Germany • 80 minutes This gorgeous, visually dazzling hybrid of documentary, fantasy and performance footage, is the true-life fairly tale of Antoine Timmermans and Mourad Zerhouni and their triumphant drag alter egos, Cybersissy and BayBjane.

Zerhouni known as "the smallest drag queen in the world" was born with several physical disabilities and has spent a good deal of his life in hospitals. Timmermans, who suffers from schizophrenia, has received much medical treatment as well. Despite these setbacks, the pair manage to inspire each other and share a mutual fascination with gender bending performance art making them international superstars on the club scene Intertwined with footage of the men, are fantastical tableaus shot specifically for the this film that amount to experimental short films in the spirit of Kenneth Anger and Matthew Barney and scored with the music of Gustav Mahler and contemporary club music.

Both of the men have blurred the boundaries between art and life making themselves conquerors, overwhelming their demons and hardships.

The Wife Master

North American Premiere!

October 6 at 7:00 p.m. • English, Cambodian w/Subtitles

Directed by MICH MEDVEDOFF • USA • 79 minutes

We're pleased to be presenting the North American Premiere of The Wife Master, a wholly unique and creative new mockumentary merging fact and fiction.

The American Dream has a new asshole. Bora is a selfish, misogynistic, 40 year-old, gay, Cambodian-American who still lives at home. He is living the "backwards American dream," his ambition to do as little as possible to get by. Bora spends his days running after attractive shirtless men at the beach, photographing them without their consent, using disposal cameras to grow his collection of photographs of men with "nice forms."

When his family finally kicks him out, he must find a means to support himself. He accepts his sleazy Uncle’s offer of marrying a Cambodian woman so she can come to the United States in exchange for $10,000.

When the money runs out, he marries another wife, followed by another, and another…Bora Soth stars (playing himself) in this comedy based on real-life personalities and situations.

Filmmakers in attendance

Such Good People

The Foxy Merkins

A contemporary screwball comedy, about a young gay couple Richard and Alex–Michael Urie ("Ugly Betty") and Randy Harrison ("Queer As Folk")–who while driving around looking for their dream home, crash a party to get a look inside the home.

The couple befriend the owners of the home and end up house sitting while they are away doing missionary work with orphaned children in Bhutan... where they die in a freak accident.

Richard and Alex discover a secret room filled with one million dollars in cash. Now the couple are stuck in the middle of a mystery, a police investigation and some vicious sibling rivalry. They trying to do the right thing with the money but first they've got to work through many issues: greed, jealousy, real estate, sibling rivalry, greyhounds, labradoodles, porpoises, and the aforementioned orphans of Bhutan. Such Good People also stars Scott Wolf, Ana Ortiz, James Urbaniak, Lance Bass and Alec Mapa.

Writer-director Madeleine Olnek 's (Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same, screened in our fest in 2011) latest, The Foxy Merkins, is an hilariously deadpan homage and riff on the iconic male hustler films. Margaret is a down-on-her-luck lesbian hooker in training. She meets Jo, a beautiful, self-assured grifter from a wealthy family and an expert on picking up women, even as she considers herself a card-carrying heterosexual. The duo hit the streets where they encounter bargain-hunting housewives, doubledealing conservative women, huskyvoiced seductresses, mumbling erotic accessory salesmen and shopaholic swingers. Navigating the bizarre fetishes and sexual needs of their “dates” brings into focus the hilarious and pathetic disparity between the two hookers, as fellow travelers who will share the road together but only for a while.

October 6 • 9:00 p.m Directed by STEWART WADE USA • 86 minutes

October 7 • 7:00 p.m Directed by MADELEINE OLNEK USA • 82 minutes

Lilting

Tru Love plays with The Night is Ours

Set in contemporary London, Lilting is an intimate and touching drama of lost love, memory and bridging cultural divides. A Cambodian Chinese mother, Junn (Pei-Pei Cheng, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), mourns the untimely death of her son, Kai (Andrew Leung) in the retirement home where she lives. Her grieving is suddenly interrupted by a visit from Kai's British lover, Richard (Ben Wishaw, Skyfall and Cloud Atlas). Junn speaks almost no English and Richard, feeling a strong sense of responsibility for Kai's only living family member, struggles to communicate with and find some connection to her. Through a translator they piece together memories of a man they both loved dearly, and realize that while they may not share a language, they are connected in their loss. Both Cheng and Wishaw give subtle but deeply emotional performances making Lilting a delicate and moving exploration of grief.

Alice has recently lost her husband and is still coming to terms with it. She decides to visit her daughter Suzanne on the spur of the moment. When Suzanne–whose relationship with her mother is already conflicted– is too busy to spend time with her, she enlists friend Tru to greet Alice while she is away at work. A commitment-phobic Tru forms an unlikely but deeply touching bond with Alice and the possibility of a relationship between the two sparks into life. When Suzanne witnesses a tender moment between mother and friend her subsequent actions stress the relationship of all three women, leading to a heartbreaking climax. Movies about loss, about love, are all too common and it takes something particularly special to truly standout within the genre.

In capturing the emotions of loss, love and acceptance so provocatively and accurately–both in the script and the performances–Tru Love is one of those rare standouts.

October 7 • 9:00 p.m • Cinema 21 Directed by HONG KHAOU Great Britain • 91 minutes

October 8 • 7:00 p.m Directors: KATE JOHNSTON, SHAUNA MACDONALD • Canada • 94 minutes

The Night is Ours by Aubree Bernier-Clarke

Morgan is tortured by the sudden death of her best friend Olivia. At her wake, Olivia mysteriously comes back to life, and the two escape into the night on a reckless road trip that takes them past the boundaries of friendship and into a dark and uncertain future. 15 minutes

Boys

October 8 at 9:00 p.m. • In Dutch w/Subtitles

Directed by MISCHA KAMP • Netherlands • 78 minutes In this lovely and delicate, elegantly filmed drama, two teenage boys meet and are drawn to each other while training for a national track relay championship over summer break.

Fifteen-year-old Sieger is quiet and shy but amiable and athletic and keeps busy swimming, running, bicycling from morning to night.

When he meets the spirited and outgoing Marc, he discovers feelings that are beyond ordinary friendship.

Their boyish summer courtship sees them training together and sharing ice cream and kisses as they gradually find the courage to be vulnerable with one another. The romance between them unfolds with a palpable sense of longing but Sieger tries to resist his attraction to Marc.

Director Mischa Kamp beautifully captures the nuances and wonder that inform young love and its attendant uncertainty, fear and excitement.

Pride

October 9 at 7:00 p.m.

Directed by MATTHEW WARCHUS • UK • 117 minutes Pride is an impassioned and enduring movie based on the real-life story of a group of pioneering lesbian and gay activists who banded together to support a miners' strike in the United Kingdom in 1980's.

It's the summer of 1984, Margaret Thatcher is in power and the National Union of Mineworkers is on strike, prompting a London-based group of queer activists to raise money to support the strikers' families. Initially rebuffed by the Union, the group identifies a tiny mining village in Wales and sets off to make their donation in person. As the strike drags on, the two groups discover that standing together makes for the strongest union of all.

Warm and witty, Pride, stars some the UK's biggest stars including Bill Nighy (Harry Potter, Underworld trilogy), Imelda Staunton (Harry Potter, Vera Drake), Dominic West (TV's "The Wire") and Paddy Considine (Hot Fuzz, The World's End).

Nomansland and A Last Farewell October 9 at 9:15 p.m. • 48 minutes Nomansland is a story of Christian, who must reexamine his life, after his ex-boyfriend commits suicide

A Last Farewell is a portrait of an aging author's sorrow over the death of his longterm partner.

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November 7-11, 2014 @ Cinema 21

Moments - the Photographer Robert Lebek

Me - Udo...

Starring Udo Kier

Not My Day

Run Boy Run

The Whole Shebang Inge Is Dancing

The Sky Has Four Corners

Rise up! And dance

Lola

The Crocodiles Strike Back

Roraima - Climbers of the Lost World

www.portlandgermanfilmfestival.com