For five days in November [1996], Harlem became not just a place filmmakers like Spike Lee come to when they have a movie to shoot. This time the world-famous community was the site of a film festival called "Victoria Mix" that showcased dozens of "queer African Diasporic film and video" in the elegant Victoria 5 Theatre on 125th Street, down the street from the Apollo Theatre.
The uptown screenings were part of the 10th New York Lesbian and Gay Experimental Film Festival, which had two other Manhattan venues screening different groups of films. (The film festival proudly claims to have "premiered more works by queer filmmakers of color than any other film festival in the world.") And for the first time, Harlem was the site of a gay and lesbian film festival, an historic event that Shari Frilot, the festival director, was "very excited about." Frilot, who is of African-American and Puerto Rican heritage, is a filmmaker herself.
"Victoria Mix" consisted of more than 50 films and videos by both well-known and lesser-known filmmakers and was divided into eight programs" "Fire!" (the first evening of film, which was hosted by Gay Men of African Descent); "Harlem Stories"; "Let's Talk About Sex"; "The House That Identity Built"; "Oh Yes It's Ladies Night"; "Taboo Subjects"; "City Lore"; and "Family Drama."
On the night of the "Fire!" screenings, which like the other three programs I attended drew a small audience, there was the smell of smoke in the theatre;that seemed to emphasize the theme of the program. (There had been a fire next door a few hours earlier.) The program took its name from the 1926 Harlem Renaissance magazine co-edited by Langston Hughes and Wallace Thurman, in commemoration of "the same creative intensity" that has been passed down and continues to thrive within the current generation.
Of the 15 films I saw, the most noteworthy were: British filmmaker Isaac Julien's beautifully photographed, although at times didactic, feature-length study of race, sex,and class bias called The Passion of Remembrance (1985), Black Nations/Queer Nations? (1995), Shari Frilot's documentary of the March 1995 conference, One Moment in Time (1992), Felix Rodriquez's short film about an Hispanic drag queen's decision to have a sex change operation to please a straight? lover, and Remembering Wei Yi-fang, Remembering Myself: An Autobiography (1995), Yvonne Welbon's documentary about her six-year sojourn in Taiwan.
Frilot, who had three of her films in the festival, told me that she had "every intention of not making it our last year" at the Victoria 5 Theatre. In fact, she plans to do non-"Mix" business there as well.
This article was submitted to the New York Amsterdam News on November 18, 1996 and to Whazzup! magazine (Oakland, California) on December 31, 1996. Neither publication ran it.
Showing posts with label Queer Cinema. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Queer Cinema. Show all posts
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Proud Colors
Rainbow Pride (Marie-Josee Ferron: documentary; color; 60 mins.;2006)
San Francisco brings to mind many images, both pleasant and not so pleasant--cable cars, steep hills, the Golden Gate Bridge, Harvey Milk's assassination, the occasional earthquake. Add one more image to the mix--this one for the pleasant column--the rainbow flag, a symbol of gay pride and empowerment. It was created by Gilbert Baker, a self-described "drag queen from way back."
Baker's flag and its impact on gay culture is the subject of an hour-long documentary, Rainbow Pride, that was filmed mostly in San Francisco and Key West, Florida, and first aired on public television three years ago.
In 1977, when Baker was commissioned to design a flag to be hung from lampposts during that year's pride parade, no one could have imagined that one day its colors would become such an international symbol for the GLBT community (thanks to New York's "Stonewall 25" celebration that featured a mile-long version of the flag).
The hand-made flag originally had eight colors (each signifying a different theme). Two of them (hot pink and turquoise) were later dropped because, as one interviewee pointed out, those colors were not on the palette of flag makers.
Baker, who knew the late openly gay politician Harvey Milk, gives him credit for inspiring the flag. "Harvey's whole message, his whole life was all about gay people should be visible and that we should come out of the closet. So the flag really fit with that in terms of it being a visibility tool."
That visibility, however, can be a double-edged sword. For gays and lesbians, it becomes, as one man in the film pointed out, a "universal Red Cross" sign, a marker that says here is a safe haven when trouble arises. Homophobes also know what the colors symbolize; for them it becomes a red flag, a signal that here is a potential target for gay bashing.
Rainbow Pride, beautifully shot and edited, with an excellent musical soundtrack, tells the story of the flag's creation without voice-over narration. It relies solely on images (some of it archival) and the voices of those on-camera. The Stonewall Riots, Anita Bryant, Harvey Milk are seamlessly interwoven in the overall "narrative." These moments add significance to the rainbow flag because they are milestones in the evolution of gay pride and although the colors have been used in tacky ways--such as on key chains and license plates--their popularity arises from a need for an oppressed people to feel good about themselves and each other. Or as Ann Northrop, a longtime activist, says in the film, "It's still a brilliant signifier and connector and identifier of us as a special tribe of people."
San Francisco brings to mind many images, both pleasant and not so pleasant--cable cars, steep hills, the Golden Gate Bridge, Harvey Milk's assassination, the occasional earthquake. Add one more image to the mix--this one for the pleasant column--the rainbow flag, a symbol of gay pride and empowerment. It was created by Gilbert Baker, a self-described "drag queen from way back."
Baker's flag and its impact on gay culture is the subject of an hour-long documentary, Rainbow Pride, that was filmed mostly in San Francisco and Key West, Florida, and first aired on public television three years ago.
In 1977, when Baker was commissioned to design a flag to be hung from lampposts during that year's pride parade, no one could have imagined that one day its colors would become such an international symbol for the GLBT community (thanks to New York's "Stonewall 25" celebration that featured a mile-long version of the flag).
The hand-made flag originally had eight colors (each signifying a different theme). Two of them (hot pink and turquoise) were later dropped because, as one interviewee pointed out, those colors were not on the palette of flag makers.
Baker, who knew the late openly gay politician Harvey Milk, gives him credit for inspiring the flag. "Harvey's whole message, his whole life was all about gay people should be visible and that we should come out of the closet. So the flag really fit with that in terms of it being a visibility tool."
That visibility, however, can be a double-edged sword. For gays and lesbians, it becomes, as one man in the film pointed out, a "universal Red Cross" sign, a marker that says here is a safe haven when trouble arises. Homophobes also know what the colors symbolize; for them it becomes a red flag, a signal that here is a potential target for gay bashing.
Rainbow Pride, beautifully shot and edited, with an excellent musical soundtrack, tells the story of the flag's creation without voice-over narration. It relies solely on images (some of it archival) and the voices of those on-camera. The Stonewall Riots, Anita Bryant, Harvey Milk are seamlessly interwoven in the overall "narrative." These moments add significance to the rainbow flag because they are milestones in the evolution of gay pride and although the colors have been used in tacky ways--such as on key chains and license plates--their popularity arises from a need for an oppressed people to feel good about themselves and each other. Or as Ann Northrop, a longtime activist, says in the film, "It's still a brilliant signifier and connector and identifier of us as a special tribe of people."
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