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Started in 1991, Reel Affirmations, Washington’s international gay film festival, has become an annual cultural institution among gay Washingtonians, drawing close to 20,000 people over the festival’s 10 days — a definite change from those early, yet groundbreaking, years.
In 1991, tickets only cost between $4 and $6 and movies were screened at the now-closed Biograph Theatre in Georgetown, a movie house that occupied an old auto dealership. Nearly 60 feature-length and short films screened that inaugural year, with the majority being collections of shorts.
The slate was heavy with black gay films, Latino gay films and remarkable firsts: “Voices From the Front,” the first film documenting AIDS activism in the U.S. and “Time Out,” the first Israeli film to deal with gays in Israel’s military.
Seventeen years later, the number of feature films has increased exponentially (as has the festival’s staff, pictured on front cover), and Reel Affirmations hosts movies at three different locations across the city. The premier site is the Lincoln Theatre, with Landmark’s E Street Theatre and the Goethe Institut serving as backup. Parties are part of the lure for the festival, a women’s filmmakers’ brunch is a popular event, and the movies themselves cross class, gender, orientation and ethnic lines.
The face of gay film festivals continues to evolve, especially given the proliferation of queer cinema on all-gay cable channels and the Internet.
“A lot of festivals started at the same time … between 15 and 17 years ago,” says Margaret Murray, executive director of Reel Affirmations’ producing organization One In Ten. “The culture is changing. You have Logo, you have Here!TV. It’s a really exciting time but it’s also really scary, because film festivals, if we’re not paying attention, could really cease to exist in the way that they have.”
In the meantime, Reel Affirmations offers a wide array of films reflecting the diversity of the gay and transgender experience. The Blade’s staff reviewed all the films showing through Thursday, Oct. 18, with reviews of the final films to come in next week’s edition.
Contributing writers: Katherine Volin, Zack Rosen, Amy Cavanaugh, Rob Boeger, Elizabeth Perry and Greg Marzullo.
7 p.m.
Lincoln Theatre
Once the apple of her chef-father’s eye, Nina ultimately betrays him and the rest of her family by not marrying the man they wanted her to, instead walking out the day of the wedding. After her father’s death, Nina returns home to Glasgow and discovers that he gambled away a portion of his beloved New Taj restaurant, which means there’s a new partner on the scene. A new lady partner, mind you, which gets the Sapphic Nina all sorts of revved up.
Nina also discovers that her father had made it to the finals of the Best of the West Curry Competition, so she decides to try to win it. In addition to Indian spices, the movie sprinkles in plenty of clichéd ideas, like cooking with one’s heart and marrying for love. Perhaps it’s the Indian cooking or the touch of Bollywood in the film, but, though fairly familiar, the story stays engaging, entertaining and ultimately likeable. (KV)
9:30 p.m.
Lincoln Theatre
A gay film festival wouldn’t be a gay film festival without several coming-of-age stories, and “Shelter” fills that role nicely. With a comatose father and a lazy, irresponsible sister who spends more time partying than caring for her child, the protagonist Zach has turned into quite the family slave. While watching his nephew, working a job and engaging in the drama of maintaining his off-and-on beard girlfriend, Zach scarcely has time to pursue his dreams of going to art school, let alone examine his nascent homosexuality.
The appearance of his rich best friend’s older brother Shaun, however, won’t let those daddy dreams die. Zach quickly finds himself caught between all sorts of tugs of war: family, responsibility, homosexuality and living out his own desires. “Shelter” isn’t brilliant — mostly because of some weak acting and a slow narrative development — but the film makes some decent, unexpected philosophical points, with its class commentary surfacing as a welcome, fairly subtle achievement. (KV)
11:15 p.m.
Lincoln Theatre
“ZsaZsa Zaturnna Ze Mooveh” comically follows the life of transgender Filipino Adrian, aka Ada, who is miserable living in Manila and decides to leave with her cousin Aruba to find a better life, far away from their conservative family. Once established in a new town, ...
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