As always, Frameline's nonfiction department offers a kind of extension center in queer studies unmatched at even our best universities. This year, 28 programs over 10 days explore from America's down-low culture to Havana's still-beleaguered queer underground. Transgender lives receive special attention, from the tragic fate of martyred Bay Area trans teen Gwen Araujo to a startling mid-life decision by famed queer actor Alexis Arquette. Plus queer people with kids, battling immigration laws, serving in the US Marines and the New York City Ballet.
Trained in the Ways of Men Shelly Prevost delivers an exhaustive account of the circumstances surrounding the murder of transgendered teen Gwen Araujo, whose death caused a nationwide chain reaction of grief and outrage, at the same time producing a teachable moment which this film makes the most of. Gwen's memory is invoked in home movies, the proudly sorrowful memories of her mom and siblings. Half of the film tracks the two emotionally charged trials where separate juries wrestled with whether Gwen's death at the hands of a quartet of drunken males was murder or manslaughter. An interesting sidebar includes a segment where Bay Area residents are quizzed about their own gender identity. A young woman gives a mixed message reply that offers some hope that America is getting ready to grapple seriously with gender issues. "I probably wouldn't want to be sexual with that person. But if it was somebody that I really loved and I thought I could spend the rest of my life with and share everything with, I mean sure, why not? It would be silly to [forget] the love you have for somebody just because they're transgendered." (Castro, 6/16)
Motherfucker: A Movie It's hard for any film to live up to such a title, but David Casey's sassy look at the 90s downtown Manhattan club scene pays huge dividends for audiences braving its experimental style. Casey shows that club Motherfucker was a family affair involving several generations of Gotham's hippest scene-makers, scoring interviews with New York Dolls frontman David Johansen, pop star Moby, and actor/director Alan Cumming. But the film scores its highest marks for a split-screen treatment of the club's founders, commenting on how their wildly competing egos and styles shaped the experience that some queer partygoers would share each month at a different location. The quartet running Motherfucker were manufacturers of cool, demanding that their would-be patrons "work a look" just to get by their especially picky "door bitch." Interspersed with lively performance segments, which show what film can and cannot preserve of a scene meant only to flourish for that one special moment. (Victoria, 6/19)
The Fall of 55 I remember once owning a paperback copy of The Boys of Boise, borrowed from the Fort Worth, Texas gay group I joined in the 70s. I never actually read that account of homosexuality's Salem witch-trials. Seth Randal sifts through the ashes of the scandal that destroyed reputations, altered lives, and completely shattered a burgeoning underground of adult men and the adolescents they went to for sexual favors. With its somewhat stilted voice-of-god narration, the film is kind of a museum-piece tribute to a bygone school of TV documentary. Randal performs a service by consulting the memories of the scandal's survivors: the son of a probation officer who made the first accusations; a female singer who had moved to Boise to front a local jazz group and enjoy living in a city without vice; and others, some still bearing visible worry-lines. One woman notes sadly that in those days, even the concept of mental health was considered part of the Communist plot to take over America. It's probably the connection that Boise shares with the efforts by the junior senator from Wisconsin to smear gay civil servants that gives this ancient scandal its lasting resonance. One survivor whose family had to leave town recalls how he and his siblings never again felt that small-town sense of belonging that vanished along with the headlines. (Roxie, 6/17)
Alexis Arquette: She's My Brother "Puberty broke me down." With matchless candor and a razor-sharp wit, Alexis Arquette gives his greatest performance to date. A first-person tour through what he proclaims as his year transitioning from male to female, this film will entertain regardless of your view of its destination, which I won't spoil. Illustrated with a lavish personal video-clip album of the renowned queer actor from childhood through Christmas with his talented siblings, this film is a great guide to the feelings behind the issues raised by transgender people. Alexis describes the ambush puberty provided, with its uncomfortable physical evidence of his maleness. "I worked within the limits and parameters of my parents' belief system to get what I wanted, which was my female identity." (Victoria, 6/15)
Red Without Blue This emotionally charged tale of identical twin brothers who make a very awkward pit-stop through puberty will fascinate and perplex. Described as sweet and happy little boys by their mother Jenny, Mark and Alex as teens turned to drugs, in one case an attempt at suicide, and finally, in what mom calls the ultimate "fuck you," Alex turned into Clair and moved to New York, while Mark started his own life as a gay-identified student at SF's Art Institute.
Filmmakers Brooke Sebold, Benita Sills and Todd Sills expose us to uncomfortable questions about sex and identity, stripping them down to the most fundamental aspects of one's personhood. How much can a non-trans person adapt to a twin's abrupt transformation? Is it, as Mark feels, a rejection of their childhood, joined-at-the-hip sameness? As a bearded boy sits next to a new woman in the presence of their Christian Scientist granny (whose faith rejects far less radical intrusions on the body God provided), we are left wondering how we would cope as either twin. (Victoria, 6/17; Castro, 6/20)