The fifth Chicago Lesbian and Gay Film Festival opens Friday with the Chicago premiere of ”Before Stonewall,” a documentary by Greta Schiller on the early homosexual rights movement.
It`s one of some 20 offerings, including eight Chicago premieres, to be featured between now and Thursday at the nostalgic 750-seat Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport Ave. Festival organizer Brenda Webb of Chicago Filmmakers has served up an international menu, with entries from Great Britain, Spain, West Germany, the Netherlands, France, Australia and Japan as well as the United States.
Probably the most eagerly awaited premiere will be Arthur Bressan Jr.`s
”Buddies,” which fleshes out the statistics of the AIDS crisis by focusing on an AIDS patient in a New York hospital and the young man who has volunteered to be his ”buddy.” Their tempestuous relationship mirrors nearly 7,000 similar struggles going on right now–and gives them a depth and dignity the headlines never can. (The director will be on hand Sunday for the screening of ”Buddies,” which will be a benefit for the Howard Brown Memorial Clinic`s AIDS Action Project; following the Festival, ”Buddies” is scheduled for a two-week run at Chicago Filmmakers, 6 W. Hubbard St.)
The theme of voices of experience runs through at least three of the documentaries. Besides ”Before Stonewall,” there`s ”Cadmus: Enfant Terrible at 80,” a wide-ranging portrait of American painter and brilliant eccentric Paul Cadmus; and ”Silent Pioneers,” which profiles eight men and women who laid the groundwork for the contemporary gay rights struggle.
Lesbian mothers are the subject of the British film ”Breaking the Silence,” as well as an American documentary ”Choosing Children” (which examines six families headed by lesbians) and ”Domestic Bliss,” the ironically titled comedy about two women lovers trying to get away from it all.
Finally, the festival will feature three intriguing experimental films. In the 1968 Japanese film ”Black Lizard,” the late writer and samurai Yukio Mishima and Japan`s most famous female impersonator, Akihiro Maruyama, star in what`s billed as a campy, melodramatic and quasi-Kabuki story about a desperate jewel thief. Rosa von Praunheim`s ”Horror Vacui,” filmed with the original sets from ”Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” tells the story of a young man who finds himself trapped in a weird cult known as ”Optimal Optimism.”
”Pink Narcissus” is a 1971 underground classic billed as for ”adults only.”
Here is a schedule of the festival with capsule reviews by Rick Kogan and Sid Smith of five films screened for critics:
Friday
7-8 p.m.: Opening reception.
8 p.m.: ”Before Stonewall”–This remarkable documentary attempts, with great self-assurance and undeniable success, to paint a history of the homosexual in American society. Using film clips, photographs, music and a number of interviews (and what interviews), the film traces the place of the homosexual in American society from roughly the 1920s through the 1969 riots at a New York bar called Stonewall, an event often cited as the birth of the homosexual rights movement. We hear of the freewheeling Harlem night clubs of the 1920s, listen to Allen Ginsberg discuss the furor caused by the homoerotic passages of ”Howl,” and are rapt as former WAC Johnnie Phelps relates a few things she taught Gen. Eisenhower. The more than 30 interviews that punctuate this film prove enlightening; an alternately lively, funny, sad and intelligent–but always personal–exploration of the lows and highs of being gay in America. Highly recommended.–Rick Kogan
10 p.m.: ”Erotic in Nature”–A lesbian erotic video, plus other shorts. Saturday
1 p.m.: ”The Trials of Oscar Wilde”–1960 film in which Peter Finch plays the troubled title role, with James Mason and Nigel Patrick.
3 p.m.: ”The Music Lovers”–Ken Russell`s controversial film depicting Tchaikowsky`s sexual frustrations.
5:30 p.m.: ”Erotic in Nature”
7 p.m.: Panel discussion on ”Lesbians and Erotica.”
8 p.m.: ”Black Lizard”
10 p.m. ”Pink Narcissus”
Sunday
1 p.m.: ”Paul Cadmus: Enfant Terrible at 80”–David Sutherland`s 1984 look at artist Paul Cadmus, who was something of a scandal during the Depression, is a sweet and easy documentary. In place of narration, Sutherland lets Cadmus himself ramble on in a freeflowing way, telling whatever pops into his mind, which turns out to be both enlightening and gossipy. He reads from letters written to him by E.M. Forster, who admired his painting, and demonstrates how to mix egg yolk and dyes to make tempura pigments. The movie is a little rough, but the artist is finely sketched and infinitely likable. Fans of his work will learn something about him, and newcomers are likely to be taken in by the charms of both the man and his gritty, cartoon-like drawings. Recommended.–Sid Smith. Also at 1 p.m.: ”Silent Pioneers”
3 p.m.: ”Choosing Children”–Lesbians want children, too, and this fascinating film shows us how they go about getting them. It is a film filled with love. Once one realizes the emotional, physical and legal difficulties involved with a lesbian having a child, one gains a better understanding of the magical bonds between mothers and children, the genuine responsibilities of bringing a person into this world. It focuses on six mothers, and each of their stories is different. Among them is a woman who was artificially inseminated, another who found a gay man who also wanted a child, another who seduced the neighborhood stud. . .Some are still with their lovers, others are not. Some relatives understand, others are confused. This is a very intimate, uplifting film. A look at a very special and real joy. Recommended.–R.K. Also at 3 p.m.: ”Breaking the Silence.”
5 p.m.: To be announced.
7 p.m.: ”Buddies”–Director Arthur Bressan Jr. makes films that are unsubtle, crudely crafted and amateurishly scripted and acted. They also are unflinchingly fearless. In his earlier feature, ”Abuse,” he mingled child abuse and pederasty. In ”Buddies,” the first feature length film to deal with the AIDS crisis, Bressan takes another unusual approach. Unlike ”As Is” and ”The Normal Heart” (recent New York plays dealing with the subject),
”Buddies” focuses not on a pair of lovers but on one dying patient and his ”buddy,” a gay volunteer assigned to assist the victim. The result is at the same time better and worse than those two very fine dramas; less skill, perhaps, but more honest and direct. Robert (Geoff Edholm), the dying man, is 32 and alone, a veteran of the gay liberation movement; David (David Schachter), his helpmate, is 25, the son of sympathetic parents and happily living with a caring lover. In chronicling their friendship in a hard-hitting and unapologetically sentimental way, Bressan provides both an informative and moving look at a frightening health crisis. Highly recommended.–S.S.
9 p.m.: ”Abuse”–Bressan`s semi-autobiographical 1983 film about a 32-year-old filmmaker`s concern for a battered gay teenager.
Monday
6 p.m.: ”A Woman Like Eve”–A 1979 Dutch film about an Amsterdam housewife who leaves her husband to live with a young French commune-dweller
(played by Maria Schneider of ”Last Tango in Paris”)
8 p.m.: ”Domestic Bliss”–With all the style and substance of a bad TV sitcom, this short film concerns one crazy day in the life of a lesbian couple. There are a number of aspects to this relationship–a successful doctor and a former housewife, sharing the former`s apartment with the latter`s daughter–that certainly are worth exploring. But the film is so unfocused, so fraught with mugging, terrible acting and dimestore feminism, that it becomes little more than a bunch of half-baked themes fighting each other for survival. We care not at all for the various problems of the characters, for none are sufficiently interesting. It is a vapid bunch that gets together one day. And for us, that`s one day too many. Not recommended.– R.K.
10 p.m.: ”Horror Vacui–the Fear of Emptiness”
Tuesday
6 p.m.: ”Scrubbers”–Swedish actress-feminist Mai Zetterling`s sympathetic study of lesbianism in a juvenile reformatory.
8 p.m.: ”La Muerte de Mikel” (The Death of Mikel)–A 1984 Spanish offering portraying a young man caught up in the struggle for Basque independence who refuses to hide his affair with a transvestite.
10 p.m.: ”Behind Glass”–A 1981 domestic Dutch drama about two male lovers looking for happiness.
Wednesday
6 p.m.: ”Depart to Arrive”–A 1982 film about a German woman reliving memories of a lost love.
8 p.m.: To be announced.
10 p.m.: ”A Woman Like Eve”
Thursday
6 p.m.: ”Cass”–A ”coming out” film about an Australian woman forced to choose between self-destruction and open rebellion.
8 p.m.: ”The Wounded Man”–The French film that allegedly shocked the 1983 Cannes Film Festival with its story of a young man`s sexual awakening in a seedy train station.
10 p.m.: ”Behind Glass”
What: Chicago Lesbian and Gay Film Festival
When: Through Thursday.
Where: Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport Ave.; 871-6604.
How much: $4.50 evenings, $3.50 matinees; $6 for ”Before Stonewall” (with champagne reception) and ”Buddies” benefit.
