It's Over! Hot Docs '12 Finale Edition

The Hot Docs Festival wrapped late last week and a jury handed out awards on Friday.

Call Me Kuchu

I saw Call Me Kuchu after it won Best International Feature (each year they play three award winners during the festival's last evening). I had tried to avoid the movie because depression and anger aren't emotions I like feeling, especially with something that affects me on such a personal level. The anger is rooted in denial.  I'd like to think that the struggle is over for LGBT people but it isn't in so many communities and countries. 

"Kuchu" is a pejorative umbrella term referring to homosexuals, male or female, for Uganda's homophobic government and majority opinion. Directors Malika Zouhali-Worrall and Katherine Fairfax Wright follow a small group of gay activists in this hostile environment and focus on David Kato in particular. His violent death took place during this documentary's production. His murder sparked outrage in the Western world but Uganda's government and majority resent the Western interference in their policies.

One of the other movies given an additional screening was Nisha Pahuja's The World Before Her, which also  made a splash at Tribeca. It won the top prize of Best Canadian Feature and $10,000. This documentary compares contestants of the Miss India pageant with young women of the same age toting guns in Hindu fundamentalist camps, exposing the lack of options for social and economic mobility of young woman in India. According to the CBC, Pahuja's previous credits include TV doc Diamond Road and it took her two years to gain access to the fundamentalist camps. More award winners after the jump.

Click to read more ...

Best Shot: "Pariah"

On this season of Hit Me With Your Best Shot we've looked at 80s fantasy (Ladyhawke), 60s zeitgeist drama (Bonnie & Clyde), 40s musical (Easter Parade), 30s gamechanger (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs), 00s science fiction western (Serenity), and a 90s Asian masterpiece (Raise the Red Lantern). For this week's film, I chose something up to the minute, Dee Rees' Pariah (2011) just out on DVD. 

I found this film so moving late last year that I cursed Focus Features for letting it be crushed in the December glut where it had no business being in the first place. The coming out story of a shy Brooklyn lesbian was far too small and ethnic and gay and feminine an indie to hook Oscar voters so why make it compete for that attention? This selection was my excuse to promote the film as it enters its second and hopefully warmly embraced life for home viewing; it gets better!

I say that with a wink but without a trace of sarcasm. You see though I didn't have time to rewatch -- I've been struggling lately offblog. Apologies -- my most vivid memory of the film visually, and what I thought I might choose, is either of the bookending shots on the bus. I still remember the curiousity and sympathy I felt near the beginning when watching "Lee" travel home on the bus late at night after visiting a gay bar and the cathartic mix of peace and tears I experienced at the finale when light floods on to our humble heroine. The two shots are like beautifully symmetrical start and end points on her gorgeously executed character arc, a curved frame if you will for Adepero Oduye's breakout performance. Not that this character arc is ending. Lee's journey has only just begun.

I'm thrilled to discover that both of these shots were chosen by one of our 'Hit Me' participants. Since Pariah is as much about Alike trying to find her community as it is about her self-discovery, I think this is an ideal opportunity to say a genuine and loud THANK YOU to the participating blogs that make "Hit Me" such a rewarding communal series I hope you're always clicking and reading them for multiple views on all these fine films! 

• FILM ACTUALLY looks at clothing as a public declaration of sexuality
• ENCORE'S WORLD finds light from within
• AWWW, THE MOVIES cocoons you in the moving poetry
• SKETCHY DETAILS finds Rees use of color masterful and compares it to the work of Dario Argento (!)
• CINESNATCH loves the performances but can't quite connect with the film
• THE FILM'S THE THING is disappointed in the acclaimed indie but found Alike's double life reflections interesting. 
• ANTAGONY & ECSTASY discusses the promise of Dee Rees and the bold recurring choices of artificial and "real" light...

...if all indie filmmakers thought about how to communicate visually as much as Rees has, American cinema would be in far better shape."

Next Wednesday on "Hit Me": The Exorcist (1973). Why don't you join in? I'll start early this week and make sure it happens. Nobody can ever believe that I've never seen it!

The Fabulous Linker Boy

Forbes an awesomely nerdy calculation of Smaug's wealth from The Hobbit. It's from the "fictional fifteen" of the wealthiest characters from movies, books, and tv. 
Grantland looks at the end of the full frontal wang era, which peaked with Shame last year and will supposedly die with Magic Mike this summer.
Los Angeles Times Two of the stars of the Tribeca winning Una Noche have defected from Cuba and are seeking asylum in the US. They're a couple in real life and siblings on the screen.
Movie|Line asks everyone to calm down with their "best picture!" proclamations in April. Oopsie. We just completed all of our predictions. But at least The Film Experience has never been driven to "lock!" proclamations before movies are even finished.

The Wrap Any Day Now, a gay adoption drama starring two fine actors (Garrett Dillahunt & Alan Cumming) won the audience award at Tribeca
My New Plaid Pants James Franco and Michael Shannon in compromising positions for The Broken Tower 
24 Frames Henry Selick still hush hush about his Coraline follow up, another spooky sweet stop motion film. It will probably be released in 2013. Scribble it down on your Oscar predictions for next next year. Then he's doing Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book.
The Mary Sue eye makeup looks inspired by The Avengers. As colorful as any superhero comic.
Collider yes, they're still planning to reboot The Fantastic Four
Guardian Olivia Williams isn't one for "flamboyant self display". Perhaps she'll rethink that if she wants Oscar traction this year for Hyde Park on Hudson.

Finally...

if you follow the Oscar race religiously and have for at least a few years you've probably discovered that the craft categories are inherently like the acting categories in that some giants of the trade can't seem to win the gold man despite rich filmographies and stunning year-best work. The Oscars require some luck as well. So I'm very happy to congratulate Michael Ballhaus, pictured above, an amazing cinematographer for his lifetime achievement award at Germany's Lolas this past week. 

His Oscar nominations came for The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989), Gangs of New York (2002), and Broadcast News (1987) but he also lit Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), The Age of Innocence (1993), and The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant (1972)... and that's only a handful of the visual wonders he's produced. The Film Experience ♥s him and has ever since La Pfeiffer spun around on that piano and Made Whoopie. We congratulate him sincerely on this career honor.

Fringe! Interview: Travis Mathews "I Want Your Love"

Craig here, with a preview of Travis Mathews’ debut feature I Want Your Love and an interview about the film with the director.

Jesse Metzger stars in the explicit drama about a performance artist leaving San Francisco

This week sees the return of the Fringe! Gay Film Festival to East London. From the 12th to the 15th of April a wide range of films (new features, experimental shorts, premieres) are showing alongside a host of parties, shows and events. This year’s opening film was I Want Your Love, Travis Mathews’ (In Their Bedroom – Berlin) poignantly affecting and intimately explicit debut feature. It stars Jesse Metzger as Jesse, a love-lost San Francisco performance artist about to leave his life and career frets behind for a fresh start in Ohio. We see him hang out with friends, and follow how their lives reflect, and differ from, Jesse’s as they prepare to throw him a leaving party.

Jesse Metzger and Ben Jasper in a flashback to their relationship

There’s an easy charm to the story of this group of amiable guys. Mathews films in a close, intimate way that allows revealing insights into their easy-going personalities. The characters feel real, unaffected by some of the over-familiar clichés that more mainstream gay cinema offers up. The performances – especially Metzger, as Jesse, and Brontez Purnell, as one of his witty friends – are pitched perfectly and entirely natural. The real sex peppered throughout the film acts more as culminations of built-up feeling than a way to shoehorn overt sexuality into the story.

Mathews emphasizes atmosphere throughout. Some segueing shots are delicately composed to establish an evocative sense of place and time of day: the harbour at dawn, hazy afternoons chatting in shops, empty streets at dusk. You get a feeling for a rich, charming San Francisco that chimes with the film’s plot arc: why does Jesse need to leave when what he has here is so close-knit? What is it that he needs to change in his life? I Want Your Love offers up these questions, and plenty more, for its audience to mull over while depicting 21st century gay relationships in an honest, open way. In a small way, I Want Your Love is an affectionate retelling of Maupin’s Tales of the City in microcosm for the now.

 I spoke to Travis last week about I Want Your Love, the Fringe! and his feelings about his work...

Writer/Director Travis Mathews

Craig for The Film Experience:  I Want Your Love is great. A splendid addition to not just gay cinema, but invigorating filmmaking in general; and early word is hugely positive. You must be very proud.

TRAVIS MATHEWS: Aw, that's really nice of you to say. I'm proud to have just survived it, let alone come out with a movie that I'm excited to share with people. Making features - I'm learning - is like running a small business...

[porn alternatives and terrifying Q&As after the jump...]

Click to read more ...

Leigh, Farhadi, Jake & Jury Name Berlinale Winners

Remember a couple of days ago when we shared the video of Jake Gyllenhaal handing Meryl Streep her Honoary Golden Bear in Berlin for a stellar career? Apparently he's making a habit of handing over Best Actress prizes. Here he is at the closing night ceremony with Best Actress winner Rachel Mwanza.

This 14 year old Congolese actress played a child soldier in a brutal sounding movie called War Witch.

MAIN PRIZES
The jury this year was headed by the brilliant Mike Leigh. The jury included Jake Gyllenhaal, Anton Corbijn, Charlotte Gainsbourg, François Ozon, Boualem Sansal, Barbara Sukowa and last year's Golden Bear recipient Asghar Farhadi (A Separation) who will now presumably have to jump on a Berlin to Los Angeles flight to prepare for the Oscars.

Prizes, Gay Films and a Possible Danish Oscar Submissions after the jump

Click to read more ...