Author: Alanna Stewart

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Outflix Finale Features Drama And Community

Pip Brignall and Jo Weil in Sodom, Outflix 2018’s closing night feature.

After a week full of thought-provoking and engaging cinema, Outflix Film Festival comes to a close tomorrow night with three films about navigating queer identity, within one’s self, through the LGBTQ community, and in relation to society at large. Being recognized, being witnessed, as a queer person can be hugely empowering, or deeply shameful, depending on the context, and these films explore those contexts, as well as the ones in between.

Sodom, (4 PM) directed by Mark Wilshin, kicks things off quietly, with a narrative that plays like a contemporary gay version of Before Sunrise, but with way more skin. Two men, not quite strangers but obviously not friends, are brought together by strange circumstances on a deserted street somewhere in Europe. During their night of unplanned fellowship, Will (Pip Brignall) and Michael (Jo Weil) question what it means to come out as gay, to look gay, and to simply be gay. The narrative circles around the idea that, as gay men, they are forced to make a choice of whether to act on their desires and potentially face expulsion from their communities, or to repress those feelings, play straight, get married, and live a lie. Wilshin gets melodramatic at times, but keeps coming back to the steamy side, luxuriating in beautifully filmed images of the male body.

A scene from Leilah Weinraub’s documentary Shakedown

The next feature of the night, Leilah Weinraub’s Shakedown (6:30 PM) is an experimental documentary about the black lesbian club scene of early 2000s Los Angeles. Whether they arrived at the Shakedown dance parties on purpose or by accident, the subjects of the film describe the feeling of coming home, of rightness, of acceptance, upon finding the scene. The film delves into this tight-knit queer subculture and its role as a co-created chosen family, and the power and pleasure that kind of group can generate. This joyful documentary provides a sensuous, raw look into a world that no longer exists, but lives on thanks to Weinraub’s intimate videos.

Dutch Rall

Corey Michael Smith in 1985.

The final film of the night and of the festival is 1985 (8:30 PM), a narrative feature directed by Yen Tan, which received rave reviews at SXSW and has won several awards on the film festival circuit. Adrian (Cory Michael Smith) returns to his hometown to visit family and old friends during the height of the AIDS epidemic. He struggles to integrate the old life he left behind with the world he found, and is rapidly losing, in New York City. Shot on black and white film, the look and texture of the movie reflects its dark subject matter; the weightiness of the AIDS crisis is palpable. It’s a heavy way to end the festival, but seems to send a strong message—despite all our gains, the LGTBQ community still faces prejudice, violence, and systemic oppression, in our town and all over the world. The work is far from over. After we come to terms with our queer identities, we have to come to terms with the struggle, and to join the fight.

Tickets for the final night of Outflix 2018 can be purchased in advance online, or at Malco Ridgeway Cinema Grill.

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Outflix Celebrates A Wild Weekend Of Queer Cinema

CREDIT: Alanna Stewart

This weekend the queers were out in full force for the first days of the 21st Annual Outflix Film Festival, the local LGBTQ film fest organized by OUT Memphis. As a gigging queer myself, I sadly wasn’t able to attend the whole festival, but I managed to swing by Ridgeway Cinema for a few hours of queer cinematic experience.
Alanna Stewart

Malco Ridgeway Cinema Grill lit up with the LBGTQ rainbow for the Outflix Film Festival.

Opening weekend at Outflix included outsider narratives, including stories about artists, performers, and yes, filmmakers. Many of the films explored the intersection of art and sexuality, where either the queer person or the artist finds themselves set adrift from mainstream society and struggles to make a place for themselves. In the two biopics I saw this weekend, Wild Nights with Emily, directed by Madeleine Olnek, and Mapplethorpe, directed by Ondi Timoner, the narratives center around an eccentric queer artist (poet Emily Dickinson and photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, respectively) who, finding themselves ostracized by their communities, devote their lives entirely to their craft and into living as authentically as they can in a world stacked against them, even though doing that means sometimes having to hide their true identities.

Molly Shannon (left) as Emily Dickinson in Wild Nights With Emily

In these films, some well-meaning little voice always chimes in, “You’re ahead of your time. Nothing like this has ever been done before. The world isn’t ready for your work. You’ll be loved when you’re dead.” But Dickinson (Molly Shannon) and Mapplethorpe (Matt Smith) didn’t have time to listen to that obnoxious little voice, and pressed on with their work. They couldn’t wait for the world to change; rather they took a role in changing it.

Matt Smith in Mapplethorpe

Like these two artists, many queer filmmakers today are making movies specifically because they haven’t seen their stories told before. Director Laura Madalinski spoke at a Q & A after Saturday’s screening of her first feature film, Two In The Bush, saying that she made a romantic comedy about queer polyamory and sex work largely because there had never been one before. Madalinski and her partner/co-writer Kelly Haas wanted a movie that they could see themselves reflected in. Madalinski remembers deciding, “We’re gonna make it ourselves! And we did!”

The film, shot in 10 days with a budget of $45k, follows in the tradition of DIY queer filmmaking, in which the process itself is centered around community and mutual support. Folks help each other out because they are passionate about their stories, and because they recognize that the project is not simply a movie, but a contribution to the greater cause of queer liberation.

In the documentary Dykes, Camera, Action! pioneering lesbian filmmakers cite their activism as the source of their artistic endeavors. They realized that in order to change the world, they had to create a new one, and film was their tool. If their voices didn’t exist in media, mainstream cis-heteronormative culture could continue to pretend that they didn’t exist. Making films explicitly about their queer identities and bodies meant that they refused to be erased; they insisted on not only being seen, but being reckoned with.

These early lesbian films broke away from traditional narrative structure because, as Su Friedrich points out, queer lives do not follow the same trajectory as heterosexual lives, and conventional formats would not do justice to their stories. Queer filmmakers experimented with new techniques as they pursued ways to share their perspective with wider audiences. That idea affected my experience of watching Wild Nights With Emily, in which queer director Madeleine Olnek repositions Emily Dickinson in a queer context, compared to Mapplethorpe, with a well-known gay artist as its subject, but a formulaic biopic structure that feels distanced and stale. Despite its subject matter being over 100 years old, Wild Nights feels incredibly personal, emotional, and surprisingly modern. The film moves non-linearly, with flashbacks and flash-forwards, lyrical vignettes of Dickinson’s poetry, and moments in which Dickinson (Molly Shannon) breaks the fourth wall by addressing the audience, letting us know that the film is aware of its function.

Whether or not the straight normie world recognizes it, queer folks have always been here. We’re everywhere. And this week we’re at Outflix.

Outflix runs through Thursday, September 13. For a full schedule and more information, visit their website.

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Eighth Grade

Elsie Fisher as Kayla in Eighth Grade

FULL DISCLOSURE: Once upon a time, I was in eighth grade. So I may have some bias in my feelings about this film. Eighth Grade follows Kayla (Elsie Fisher) through her last week of middle school, complete with a one-sided crush, pool party, awkward sex ed video, and all the classic elements of a teen movie. It also investigates Kayla’s online persona and relationship with social media, which, in addition to casting actual young people in the parts of the teenagers, makes the movie feel shockingly accurate.

Half the story is told through the screens of digital devices, with Kayla’s entire life outside of school revolving around her laptop and smartphone. She posts video blogs of herself speaking to her computer’s camera, with monologues that are partially the sage wisdom of self-help memes (“You can’t be brave without being scared!”) combined with tongue-tied word vomit that is both familiar and painful to watch. Although Kayla’s video blog personality preaches confidence, it’s clear that she’s uncomfortable in her skin. The success of vloggers hinges on their performance of authenticity — “being real” while simultaneously appearing optimistic, carefree, and cool — which Kayla mimics, but ultimately fails to conceal her anxiety and awkwardness.

Teens today are six times more likely to experience anxiety and depression than they were 80 years ago, thanks to the impossible expectations of neoliberalism and social media. While my generation of Old Millennials used the internet to explore our identities and our feelings through online forums and blogs, we were almost always anonymous. We had been taught that it was dangerous to use our real names, and through our internet names and avatars, we were able to play with aspects of ourselves in a private/public way without the risk of social ridicule or the permanence of making a real-life decision about how we spent our time and who we spent it with. We could choose to sit at a different lunch table in the virtual world with none of the social consequences we knew at school.

The internet I grew up with officially died when Google bought YouTube and forced us to give up our anonymity, to use our legal names in place of our chosen handles. Now that social media encourages users to showcase their real lives, teenagers perform as themselves, all of them trying to mirror what they see as acceptable or cool according to the unending feeds on their screens. In Eighth Grade, Kayla is constantly scrolling, reacting, living on her phone. In her desperation to be cool and to be accepted, she creates an overly curated online persona, applying makeup along with a video tutorial, so that she can get back in bed and post a selfie captioned, “I woke up like this, ugh.” Like many of Kayla’s statements, these words are not her own, and by utilizing memes rather than speaking in her own way, Kayla can bypass the chance that she will be judged or ostracized in case her personal thoughts are deemed “wrong.” The scrutiny, from herself and everyone around her, is constant. The performance never ends.

Kayla is probably becoming an interesting person, but most of what we learn about her is surface level. I wanted to see a little more of Kayla’s off-screen home life, but maybe she doesn’t have one. Even in her room, typically a teenager’s safe haven, Kayla obsessively interacts with an internet audience that rarely responds. She’s never truly alone. So who would Kayla be if she were performing only for herself? If she ever does get close to solitude, Dad barges in with his dorky jokes and exasperating “I love you’s.” Her replies to his attempts to communicate range from stone-cold to downright mean, mirroring the popular girls’ reactions to Kayla. The parallel hints at a larger cycle of violence, in which young people respond to traumatic experiences of growing up by enacting cruelty on each other and themselves. At school, the students participate in active shooter drills (with special thanks to the drama club) but there are no lessons on communication, compassion, or consent.

The movie never pushes too hard in any one direction, but rather orbits smoothly around its protagonist. The new frontiers of dating and sexuality are approached with caution, and thankfully, we’re spared most tired teen movie tropes. The storytelling feels gentle and supportive, with small doses of blood, fire, and tears, because it just wouldn’t be a coming-of-age story without the hard stuff. Director Bo Burnham’s well-rounded approach presented a full picture of a modern middle schooler. I’m glad he didn’t go further to tackle the reality of adolescent girlhood, considering he’s never been one. Other directors could take a page out of Burnham’s book in that regard.

ACTUAL FULL DISCLOSURE: Once upon a time, I was a dorky eighth grade girl with acne, anxiety, and exactly zero friends, just like Kayla. I also played cymbals in the school band, and if I’d had a smartphone, laptop, and wifi, I probably would’ve been just as internet-obsessed as Kayla. I related to her immensely and low-key cried through the whole movie, not only because of the genuine representation of teen girl loneliness, but also because I realized I was still holding so much pain from my life as that person, in that body, and watching this movie was a healing experience I didn’t even know I needed.

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Lean On Pete

Despite what you may have gathered from the movie poster or the trailer, Lean on Pete is definitively not a horse movie. Sure, certain aspects feel plucked directly from Black Stallion, Black Beauty, or even Where the Red Fern Grows, but the real focus of the story is on Charley (Charlie Plummer), the disadvantaged teenage protagonist, and more broadly on the harsh, grimy life of the working class in the Pacific Northwest. Don’t expect any glamour shots of horses galloping along the beach – this film is set in stables, in diners, in crumbling industry towns, as well as in The Great Outdoors.

Charlie Plummer in Lean On Pete

The film is visually beautiful, with the palette of a faded photograph and a keen use of light and shadow. Even in the dingy bars and cheap motels of his world, Charley’s face always seems to find the light. Plummer is incredibly engaging as Charley, his candid face speaking volumes as he descends from a hopeful kid into a hardened, desperate drifter. Charley’s journey brings drop-ins from Steve Buscemi, Chloë Sevigny, Steve Zahn, and Travis Fimmel, whose performances are (mostly) convincing as a few of the drunks, crooks, and thieves who populate this dark underworld.

Charley befriends Lean on Pete, the horse who seems to be the only other soft creature in a hard place. Despite being reminded several times that Pete is “not a pet, just a horse,” he becomes Charley’s only friend and confidant, and eventually his traveling companion, as they abandon the world they know in pursuit of home and happiness. What Charley seeks is simple: he tells Pete “the nicest place he’s ever been” was a friend’s house where the family “just laughed and talked….and they liked each other.” The vision of comfort fuels these two outsiders on their exodus through the rugged terrain of Oregon toward Wyoming. When boy and horse trudge across the dry land, they are dwarfed by the expanse of flat plains and sky, giving the audience feelings of insignificance and isolation experienced by our heroes. It’s a metaphor, just like the horse is a metaphor, employed by director Andrew Haigh to tell a story about poverty and class. (You might be saying, “What’s a meadow for?” and you’d be right, seeing as we never see poor Pete the horse graze or canter joyfully in one for the entire 120 minute duration. In fact, Pete might actually be a camel, considering the amazingly small amount of water he consumes on his trek across the desert.)

Lean on Pete introduces viewers to the third class citizens of an impoverished, modern America, although there are very few details letting us know that this is a contemporary story. Charley and his associates don’t own cell phones or computers; they drive busted old trucks, listen to the radio, and watch tube televisions. It’s jarring when we see a cell phone or hear an autotune-style pop song; by making these ubiquitous cultural symbols feel alien, the filmmakers successfully show us just how disparately different classes live, despite the myths the comfortable tell ourselves. Through Charley, we experience the cruelty, violence, and trauma of poverty, and the rage and PTSD that come with it. Overall, the effect is powerful, but there are some moments that dip a little too far into cliche territory, and at times, the story relies on unnecessary cheap shots to evoke strong emotions. But if you’re looking for a film to tug your heartstrings and make you feel like you’ve walked a hundred miles in some scrappy shoes, Lean on Pete will be right up your (sad, dark) alley.

Lean On Pete