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Oct 20, 2010
"The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls"
"Florent: Queen of the Meat Market"
"Riots Act"
"Eyes Wide Open"
"Madchen en Uniform"
The 23rd Milwaukee LGBT Film/Video Festival screens Oct. 21 to Oct. 24, offering regional premieres of features and documentaries from around the world. This year the festival includes monthly screenings of LBGT works the first Thursday of each month, beginning Nov. 4, throughout the coming year. In addition, there will be free, repeat screenings of award-winning docs throughout the festival. Highlights include:
“The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls”
Festival opener “The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls” is that rare documentary that manages to be informative, topical and thoroughly entertaining. New Zealanders Jools and Lynda Topp were singing up a storm long before Canadian lesbian twin sister musical duo Tegan and Sara.
The documentary utilizes a concert setting to introduce us to the Topp Twins, who proceed to tell their story through song and the incorporation of vintage performance footage and more.
Beginning as two country girls on their family farm who proudly wore mullets during the early 1980s, the Topp Twins moved up in the world, busking on the street and evolving their performance style into the full-fledged stage experience it is today. Not comedians but singers who are funny, the sisters dressed up and created characters that are true crowd pleasers, like Ken and Ken, Camp Mother and Camp Leader, Belle and Bell Gingham and more.
From the very beginning, the Topp Twins were able to incorporate political activism (including LGBT rights, the anti-nuke movement, Maori rights and more) into their performances. In addition to having a successful run on New Zealand television from 1996-2000, the Topps are a “big hit overseas,” with a growing international fan-base. The doc takes an emotional turn when the subject of Jools’s breast cancer diagnosis and chemotherapy is broached, but it is handled with grace and respect.
– Gregg Shapiro
“Out in the Silence”
With bullying and teen suicides dominating the news, this documentary by Joe Wilson and Dean Hammer could not be timelier. It chronicles the courage and resolve of a teenage boy and a lesbian couple to bring tolerance and even respect for diversity to Oil City, a small, working-class Pennsylvania town. Teenager CJ and his mother Kathy combat the abuse that forced him to leave high school, while couple Roxanne and Linda work to enrich their town despite being reviled by the religious right.
“They call it our agenda,” says Roxanne, “we all it our lives.”
There is pain and outrage, but “Out in Silence” is a heartwarming and gentle cry for understanding, and a plea for reconciliation and mutual respect.
– Jody Hirsh
“Florent: Queen of the Meat Market”
The now defunct Gansevoort Street bistro in the decidedly unglamorous meet packing district of Manhattan was a magnet for rich and poor, famous and unknown alike. From its opening in 1985 until it closed in 2008, out activist Florent Morellet reigned over his bistro with quirky humor, gourmet food and political engagement. What other restaurant owner would dare put his daily T-cell count on the menu!
– Jody Hirsh
“Riot Acts: Flaunting Gender Deviance in Music Performance”
Academic-sounding subtitle aside, “Riot Acts” is a thought-provoking, insightful and informative doc that marks the impressive debut of a promising young filmmaker. Director Madsen Minax, who is also a gender variant musician and one half of the band Actor Slash Model, knows the material intimately. It is because of that firsthand experience that Minax is able to make the subject matter so accessible to viewers.
Minax assembled a top-notch array of interview subjects, including members of the bands Coyote Grace, The Shondes, Lipstick Conspiracy, The Cliks, The Degenerettes, Trannysaurus Sex and Systyr Act, to name a few. The doc touches on a broad array of topics, including the concept of trans musicians making music for trans people. Minax makes excellent use of performance footage.
– Gregg Shapiro
“Eyes Wide Open”
Like the Tel Aviv of gay Israeli filmmaker Eytan Fox’s “The Bubble,” the Jerusalem in Haim Tabakman’s award-winning “Eyes Wide Open” exists in a world unto itself. Streets and buildings are as ancient as the fundamentalist rituals of the Orthodox Jews who populate the Jerusalem neighborhood.
Shortly after devout Aaron (Zohar Shtrauss) reopens the kosher butcher shop that was run by his late father, he meets itinerant Yeshiva student Ezri (hot Ran Danker). Ezri, who was tossed out of his previous Yeshiva, has come to town to be with a male lover who refuses to return his phone calls. In need of help, Aaron hires the inexperienced Ezri. He also gives Ezri a place to stay, in a room above the butcher shop.
A forbidden sexual tension develops between the two. Aaron considers the shared development of attraction to be a challenge, and makes it his mission to overcome it. Of course, we all know where that will lead – a passionate kiss in the meat locker. Soon the two men are having sex on a regular basis.
Tabakman alternates between the heavy-handed (lots of water imagery) and the artistically inspired (fascinating use of reflections). The film’s conclusion is sure to unsettle many viewers, but the performances by Danker and Shtrauss make this a film worth watching with eyes wide open.
- Gregg Shapiro
“Mädchen In Uniform”/”Girls In Uniform”
Set in 1910, in the Prussian village of Potsdam, Geza Von Radvanyi’s 1958 lesbian classic “Mädchen In Uniform”/”Girls In Uniform” opens with teenaged Manuela (Romy Schneider) being whisked off to a convent school by her severe, distant aunt. The shy, sensitive Manuela soon realizes that she’ll have to sink or swim in the shark tank.
Manuela’s life-preserver comes in the form of Elizabeth von Bernburg (Lilli Palmer), a beautiful and refined teacher about whom most of the students are crazy. Of course, this doesn’t sit well with strict headmistress Sr. Superior (Therese Giehse), who believes that her sole purpose is to train girls to be the future mothers of soldiers.
Manuela is smitten with Ms. von Bernburg, which not only upsets the despised Ms. von Racket (Blandine Ebinger), who is constantly snitching to Sr. Superior, but also Manuela’s jealous and sneaky classmate Alexandra (Danik Patisson).
In spite of the odds against her, Manuela begins to triumph at school. But when the cook slips rum into the punch at a cast party following Manuela’s well-received portrayal of Romeo in “Romeo and Juliet,” she drunkenly confesses her feelings for her teacher before the student body. From there things spiral downward.
A remake of a 1931 film of the same name, this classic is well worth seeing.
– Gregg Shapiro
“The Sorrows of Dolores”
From 1967 until his death of AIDS in 1987, Charles Ludlam was the iconic king of camp. As director of the pioneering Ridiculous Theater Company, he created outrageous plays such as “The Mystery of Irma Vep,” which has been produced several times in the last few years here in Wisconsin. These crossover works have drawn LGBT and straight fans all over the country.
In “The Sorrows of Dolores,” Ludlam takes us on a “Perils of Pauline”-style romp, with his innocent protagonist escaping villains, white slavery, monsters and other hazards. The reconstructed print of Ludlam’s 1987 16-mm film, with an in-drag title character, is irresistibly entertaining.
– Jody Hirsh
