Feb 22, 2008  |  By: GREG MARZULLO  | COMMENTS     

Celebrating its 10th year, the D.C. Independent Film Festival offers an interesting and overall well-done lineup of queer features, documentaries and shorts. The festival began with just 30 films shown over a three-day period and has now grown to more than 100 films screened over 11 days, with local and national industry critics citing the event as a highlight of the film festival circuit.

Below is an overview of the queer films being presented this year, all shown at George Washington University’s Jack Morton Auditorium (see info box for details).

Told with a rich visual sense in a disjointed (and sometimes annoying) chronology, “Praxis” is a great 15-minute film shrouded in over 90 minutes of repetitive clips and self-aggrandizing pseudo-spiritual rhetoric.

Brian (a convincing Tom Macy) opens the film saying, “Today is the day I died.” Through a blurred lens, a figure staggers to a chair, eventually flopping down to the ground, seemingly dead. This scene gets reenacted a few times during the film, and with a clearer focus, we see Bryan overdosing on pills and cutting his wrist with a pair of scissors. He bleeds out onto the floor and next appears in a black space, illuminated by occasional glimpses of galaxies and nebulae seen behind him.

For the remainder of the film, writer and director Alex Pacheco sends his protagonist on a journey to piece together his descent into depression, his eventual suicide and the inevitable hereafter.

Two other characters punctuate the film, one simply called the Elusive Woman (Regina Aquino) and Joe (Andrew Roth). Appearing at various points to either cradle (usually the Elusive Woman) or prod and makeout with (usually Joe) Brian, the two figures inspire him to make other choices, ones not ending in suicide, which both of the secondary characters lament.

Most interesting in “Praxis” are the visuals. Brian’s apartment is uncomfortably Spartan, with no hints of comfort or even livability in it, suggesting a disconnection with the world and life in general. Often, shots of people give way to constellation maps, swirling planets and a number of sequences with Brian rising out of a river, naked, his arms out in an expectant pose.

The film’s tragic flaw is its mind-numbing repetition. Shots are recycled constantly, perhaps with the intention of inducing some kind of trance state while telling a story about routine, spiraling depression and the endless monotony of life. However, the amount of times clips are shown indicate that Pacheco fell in love with his own themes and that the editor was either overruled or asleep at the switch.

The acting is uneven. Macy does consistent work throughout, moving from nervous smiles to despair with relative ease. Roth is fantastic when not talking. During one poignant scene in a café, he slowly works his way to tears with subtle expressions that don’t appear self-conscious. Sadly, Roth speaks with a halting delivery, devoid of the emotional poignancy so easily read in his physical presence.

One nice game to play while slogging through the endless reiterations is guessing some of the locations in “Praxis” — it was filmed in the District.

“Praxis” plays Saturday at 9:45 p.m.

THE FOLLOWING FILMS are all playing on Monday starting at 8 p.m., as a mini-gay cinema slate. The festival has often dedicated a portion of their screenings to queer films, and this evening features an overall good selection, with one longer documentary linked to a handful of short films.

Also filmed in Washington is “FL324,” a film about cross-cultural relationships and traditional expectations. Michael, presumably born in China, is gay and his father is on his way from the motherland for a visit. Michael asks his boyfriend to make himself scarce, which he does under some understandable duress.

Dad arrives with a traditional bridal gown in tow, hoping to bestow it soon on a much wished-for daughter-in-law. Michael tries to disabuse the heavy drinking patriarch of this notion, but not through coming-out.

The film never goes anywhere, which is its main problem, despite a gritty, black-and-white tone that suggests a strong viewpoint on the subject matter. It doesn’t end so much as peters out. However, director Yi Chen is a student filmmaker at American University and could work her talent into something stronger with future projects.

“Horsepower” is a delightful short about a nebbishy office worker named Murray whose wife recently threw him out because she discovered his gay porn addiction. His ...