The 1993 film Blue depicts director Derek Jarman’s eyesight deteriorating as he undergoes AIDS treatment in a hospital. The movie is a stark shade of blue for 79 minutes with Tilda Swinton narrating.
And to Hallie Frost, it’s pure inspiration.
“For me it exemplifies the use of film as an expression for the [LGBTQA] community,” said Frost, a University of Oregon cinema studies major and the student-coordinator for this year’s Queer Film Festival, curated by the UO Cultural Forum. She said Blue was the driving force behind organizing the festival’s Friday night film lineup, which revolves around experimental film.
This evening, staff at the Wayward Lamb on West Broadway will roll a red carpet down the alley behind their bar, welcoming guests to the festival kickoff. The festival starts at 5 p.m. and continues through Sunday. Showings are free and open to all ages; tickets are available for pick up at the UO Ticket Office at McArthur Court.
Gonna Sip That Sip, Hip That Dip: The Emerging Queer Hip Hop Movement (13 minutes) Director: Chasson Gracie – USA – Music documentary The queer hip-hop scene is on the verge of blowing up. Director Chasson Gracie wanted to challenge the assumption that the movement is progressing solely because the U.S. is more open to homosexuality compared to a decade ago. This documentary uncovers other variables that can be attributed to the increased success of gay hip-hop artists and the broader movement as a whole.
The Owls (11 mins) Director: Natalia Bougadellis – Greece – Drama During the financial crisis in Greece, the oldest son of a low-income family is now responsible for bringing food to the table and assisting his two unemployed parents.
The Gospel According to Charlie (57 minutes) Director: David Bussan – USA – Documentary Gay outsider artist Charlie Van Ness is prone to carving mythical stories into stone tablets and making penis-shaped sculptures with fiberglass and resin. This documentary is a look into Van Ness’s evolution as an artist, and the demons that drive him to destroy decades’ worth of his works.
Wedlocked (11 minutes) Director: Puppett – USA – Animation/Comedy/Drama/Romance Sydney and Cameron are a happily engaged couple looking forward to their wedding day, but there’s one problem: Sydney is still married to Lisa; their home state won’t recognize their wedding, so a divorce is impossible. Set before the Supreme Court ruling in June 2015, this farce takes on the ridiculous laws that govern gay divorce.
Friday, Feb. 5
Blue (1993) (79 minutes) Director: Derek Jarman – USA – Biography/Drama As his eyesight slowly depreciates from AIDS treatment, Jarman paints a complex allegory of his condition during his time in the hospital. Tilda Swinton helps narrate, and composer Brian Eno scores Jarman’s introspective, avant-garde work.
Saturday, Feb. 6
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) (104 minutes) Director: Stephan Elliot – Australia – Drama/Comedy Two drag queens and a transgender woman (played by Hugo Weaving, Guy Pearce and Terence Stamp) drive across Australia in a tour bus named “Priscilla.” The trio encounters various groups and eccentric people along the way.
The Dallas Buyer’s Club (2013) (117 minutes) Director: Jean-Marc Vallée – USA – Biography/Drama Rodeo bull-rider and hustler Ron Woodruff (played by Matthew McConaughey) discovers that he’s HIV-positive. Furious that he can’t afford AZT, the drug commonly used as AIDS medication, he begins a complex scheme to smuggle drugs across the Mexican border to Texas to help other patients.
Tangerine (2015) (88 minutes) Director: Sean Baker – USA – Drama/Comedy After a transgender sex worker is released from a prison sentence and discovers her boyfriend/pimp has been cheating on her, she sets out to find him and his new lover.
The festival is part of a more comprehensive, yearlong Queer Productions series.
The goal is to emulate the same festival experience you might get at Tribeca or Sundance film festivals, said John O’Malley, the Lamb’s event coordinator.
“I have friends in Portland that are jealous that Eugene is getting all this really great content all spring,” he said.
The Lamb’s backroom, called The Den, may seem like an atypical venue for a film fest with its bar and dancefloor, but the area can seat 100-plus patrons, said O’Malley.
This year’s Queer Film Festival will differ from previous years, said Frost, not only because the venue has changed – it used to take place at the Bijou Metro – but because the festival combines avant-garde films like Blue and the Aussie drag caper The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert with more mainstream, Oscar-touted features like The Dallas Buyers Club. Short films, international submissions and more mainstream works supplement the festival’s experimental offerings.
The festival will feature films from the United States, Italy, Greece and Israel; some will be eight minutes, others two hours. Each night is thematically varied – Thursday night showcases documentaries; Friday is art film night; and Saturday focuses on feature-length movies. Many works screened at the festival are being shown publicly for the first time.
It’s easy to see why queer artists would embrace experimental film, Frost said. Like so much about queer culture, films like Blue are exercises in disrupting and questioning conventions in a culture dominated by norms.
Richard Herskowitz, a media curator at Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, said these movies deliberately distort cinematic standards, like continuity editing or a three-act structure, and establish new ones. An experimental film’s non-linear or even non-narrative style can be an alienating experience, he said.
“But when you open yourself up to it,” Herskowitz said, “they’re more respectful of your ability to collaborate in making meaning, instead of imposing a meaning on the viewer.”
One of his favorites is Carolee Schneemann’s Fuses (1967). In the film, Schneemann depicts herself having sex with her boyfriend from their cat’s perspective. She physically distorted the footage by staining, burning and painting on the film itself to evoke the sensual experience of lovemaking.
Herskowitz had been used to watching narrative films; Fuses shocked him, but he fell in love.
“It was absolute horror, and gradually, I became an addict,” he said.
Herskowitz hopes to get other people addicted to experimental queer cinema with the Queer Productions series.
The Queer Productions series culminates in April with the opening of a new Jordan Schnitzer exhibition curated by Zackary Drucker and Rhys Ernst, two famous L.A.-based transgender filmmakers. The pair, both co-producers on Amazon’s TV program Transparent, documented their relationship during their respective gender transitions from 2008 to 2013, when Ernst transitioned from female to male, and Drucker transitioned from male to female.
The exhibition depicts everyday moments from Ernst and Drucker’s’ lives through a series of photographs, plus a video titled “She Gone Rogue.” The exhibition’s focus on the gender-queer world is significant as it evaluates the distinction between their public status as artistic icons and their private lives.
“Drucker’s visit and her works with Ernst cap off events to help us celebrate queer memory and assess the status quo around trans culture on campus,” said Miller.
The vast array of LGBTQA artistic expression being showcased throughout Eugene is part of the blossoming queer scene that these cinephiles hope to celebrate.
“Queer is not just the requirement for content; it’s also an aesthetic. The queer community has an intense relationship with expressing their culture and narrative through film,” Frost said.