Tag Archives: Queer Film

Polyamorous Love Story Film ‘Twice’ Seeks Funding

If there’s one thing that queer people are collectively fed up with it’s seeing the same old stories time and time again. Representation is nice, yes, but does it always have to be a case of ‘two same sex people meet each other, one realises they aren’t straight and ditches their opposite sex partner’? We’ve seen that time and time again.

And queer media isn’t the only place we’re assaulted with trope-y love triangles either. Take the entirety of the Twilight franchise, for example, or even The Hunger Games. It’s always the same thing – someone taken falls in love with somebody new and then they’re forced to choose.

But it doesn’t have to be like that. Some people aren’t about that choose-y life; why sacrifice one loving relationship just so that you can begin another? Some people are polyamorous and have multiple partners, loving them equally. That’s not talked about very often and there’s a misunderstanding and a stigma surrounding the polyamorous identity but polyamorous love story film ‘Twice’ would like to change that.

Twice focuses on two people, a man and a woman, who experience a polyamorous love story from two very different viewpoints. One of the leads, named Woman, is polyamorous and one of her partners, Man, grows uncomfortable with her identity and her idea of the magic number (the idea that because there are more people involved in a relationship it doesn’t mean that you’ll love each of them any less) and so he breaks up with her.

Polyamorous-Love-Story-01

The film is described by its creators as being “about second chances, actively loving, being honest, coming out, heartbreak, recovery and the power that exists within the everyday story you tell yourself.” That certainly sounds like it’ll hit all of the right notes to be a soppy, popcorn fest and even if it isn’t explicitly queer it certainly appeals to a queer audience who that’s looking for something more than a woman torn between two tedious men.

Furthermore, should Twice prove successful, who knows what sort of stories we’ll get about queer characters in future? Say, an alternative where Brittany on Glee can love Artie and Santana rather than breaking one or both of their hearts.

Half of Twice has been filmed and its creators are looking for $25,000 to finish the rest of the movie. Check it out on Kickstarter here.

Fringe! Queer Film and Arts Festival Taking Over London’s East End

Our favourite queer film festival is back. Fringe! is an altogether different sort of film festival that brims with originality and excitement. A perfect remedy.

And this November, Fringe! celebrates Queercore and Riot Grrrl, the two subcultures that allowed the queer community to cement its relationship with punk. Films, conversation, music and rare footage from the era compose the event ‘There’s a Dyke In the Pit: A Day of Queer Grrrl Power’ on the 8 November at the Hackney Attic (Hackney Picturehouse) and the Rose Lipman Building.

The day kicks off with ‘There’s a Dyke In the Pit: Exhibition’ and Social Space, Rose Lipman Building, 12:00. The exhibition includes handmade posters and artwork by Racheal House and Gwenael Rattke, rare posters from the archives of Val Phoenix, archival Riot Grrrl photography and a complementary There’s a Dyke in the Pit zine/programme.

Frenzy: A Riot Decade, a short film programme originally curated by Dirty Looks NYC, follows at 14:00 at the Hackney Attic. The programme features shorts from Jill Reiter, Shu Lea Cheang, and more, and is followed by a panel discussion at 15:30. Both Jill Reiter and Shu Lea Cheang feature in the panel, alongside Liz Naylor (Catcall Records), Sophie Mayer (Film theorist and feminist academic), and Nazmia Jamal (Ladyfest London, Ladies! Rock Camp and film programmer).

The day finishes with In Search of Margo-Go at Club Totally, 20:00, Rose Lipman Building. Jill Reiter’s never-before-seen DIY film In Search Of Margo-Go features at Fringe! with live performance of some of the missing scenes. The film stars Bikini Kill/Le Tigre/ Julie Ruin front woman Kathleen Hanna and Jill Reiter as bandmates and fledgling queer punks on the NYC scene.

Fringe! will also held the UK premiere of Abby Moser’s Grrrl Love and Revolution, live music from London grrrl band Skinny Girl Diet and a Q&A with Jill Reiter, Lucy Thane and Val Phoenix hosted by Kanchi Wichmann. DJ’s Linster Sangster (The Librarian) and Jill Reiter will play an eclectic mix of new wave, post-punk and grrl punk in the evening.

If you can’t make it, we are also having a bonus screening of Frenzy, Grrrl Love and Revolution and In Search of Margo-Go at Hotel Elephant in association with Wotever Film Festival on Monday 10 November.

Last but not least, there will be special hair & make-up artists in the café area from 16:00 onwards, where participants will embrace the Club Totally new-wave look whilst taking a sneak peek at the teaser for Yony Leyser’s forthcoming documentary on queercore.

The event is curated by Kanchi Wichmann, Val Phoenix & Amelia Abraham. Programme supported by Film Hub London, managed by Film London. Proud to be a partner of the BFI Film Audience Network, funded by the National Lottery. The visual arts programme is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

Pier Kids: The Life – Watch the Trailer and Support the Cause

Elegance Bratton’s documentary about New York City’s LGBTQ homeless youth and the neighbourhood they call home might be the next “must see” film.

Bratton’s goal with this film, is “to help poor and working class families of colour understand the gay and transgender youth who are inside their homes so they stop kicking them out onto the streets.”

Bratton’s own mother kicked him out of their home when he came out of the closet. As a result the then-sixteen-year-old bought a train ticket to New York. “I saw three black gay men get on the train. They were laughing. They were singing. They were dressed well. Just really, they were the life of that train car. And I sat there watching them like, “Whatever they’re doing that makes them that happy and that gay, I need to do it.” So, Bratton followed them and ended up at that Christopher Street pier.

Years later, the writer and filmmaker is translating his experiences into a documentary that’s both in conversation with “Paris Is Burning” but also more direct in its attempt to make sense of the way class and race dynamics act upon the city’s LGBT community, especially its youth.

Film Synopsis 

Pier Kids: The Life examines the legacy of Stonewall and the Gay Rights Movement it ignited by following the lives of DeSean, Krystal, and Casper, three gay and transgender youth of color who, after being pushed out of their home because of their sexuality, have become homeless on the same street the riots took place more than forty years ago. While rooted in a specific place and time, the film is constantly pulling back to interrogate one of the most basic units of American life―the family. We follow Krystal, for example, from Christopher Street to Kansas City where she faces her biological family for the first time since becoming a woman. Would they accept her? Could she take rejection from them once again? Or would she gain strength from it and come back to New York a better woman?

Today, white upper-class families make the West Village their home; but as day turns to night, Christopher Street and its adjacent piers also become home to a transient yet vibrant street community known as the Pier Kids. Forming a significant yet invisible network, the Pier Kids are a queer and transgender community of predominately Black and Latino descent representing nearly four thousand of New York City’s sixteen thousand registered homeless youth. Left to wander and with few economic opportunities, the lives of these social refugees are beset with limited and harrowing options as money and food are everyday struggles. Through it all – or, perhaps, because of it all – hope still exists in the shadows of their neglect and abandonment.

Pier Kids: The Life follows the stories of three young people: DeSean, Krystal, and Casper. Together, these three people weave a surprisingly complex story of love, family, exploitation, beauty, and hope. But it’s more than the story of three. It’s the story of thousands.

Homosexual love – Vito Russo, The Celluloid Closet

“Any story dealing, however seriously, with homosexual love is taken to be a story about homosexuality while stories dealing with heterosexual love are seen as stories about the individual people they portray. This is as much a problem today for American filmmakers who cannot conceive of the presence of gay characters in a film unless the specific subject of the film is homosexuality. Lesbians and gay men are thereby classified as purely sexual creatures, people defined solely by their sexual urges.”

Vito Russo, The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies