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The history of gay cinema germinated with the origins of filmmaking, likely begun way back in 1896 when two cowboys danced the two-step and a train rushed by in the background as Thomas Edison’s Vitascope camera rolled on an historic experiment. A century of movies later, gay cowboys are still smoldering their brand on audiences and filmmakers alike. The art of camp, and the contributions of two groundbreaking directors will flash across movie screens in the Plaza Theatre during Out on Film, Atlanta’s gay film festival and second largest annual gay cultural event.
“In general, as far as the retrospectives go, we like to do some retrospectives just to sort of remind people that in the cinema, there is a history built up and you’re always sort of following who’s gone before you,” says Dan Krovich, who stepped in Oct. 3 as Festival Director for Image Film and Video, the organization that produces Out on Film.
Opening night kicks off with a screening of “Puccini for Beginners,” the latest film from Maria Maggenti, the lesbian writer director who helmed “The Incredibly True Story of Two Girls in Love,” in 1995.
Before he rescued “Brokeback Mountain” from years of false-starts in development, Ang Lee wrote, directed, and produced the 1993 Chinese romantic comedy “The Wedding Banquet,” a comedy of errors spun on the deceptions of a single woman and a gay man who bow to family pressures and their own hearts desires. Lee and Maggenti were able to tell the stories of gay characters during the early 1990s, a time when independent cinema emerged to capture audience attention with previously seldom heard voices.
“To make a film has become cheaper. So from that aspect, the budget means a film doesn’t have to appeal to everybody. You can fulfill more sort of niche or underserved audiences, because you don’t need everyone to see it. On the other hand, as they do keep getting made, they obviously do become more broadly accepted,” says Krovich, noting the megawatt success of “Brokeback Mountain.”
Out on Film moves to the Plaza Theatre, a first for the festival, which has spent much of the past decade housed at Midtown Arts Cinema.
It’s definitely a completely independent theatre. And so, we try to support the independence of it, and it fits what we’re doing,” explains Krovich of the move.
Gay cinema’s campier elements will be thrust in the spotlight during the festival, with Saturday night screenings of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” a recent addition to the National Film Registry, and “Mommie Dearest,” the breathtakingly spectacular send-up of Joan Crawford’s career as a mother, which celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2006.
“Rocky Horror sort of came out of the fact that the Plaza does that regularly. And we just thought “Mommie Dearest’ would be fun and we noticed that it had an anniversary,” Krovich shares.
“This Filthy World,” which makes its U.S. premiere at Out on Film, chronicles the stand-up and lecture circuit musings of gay cinema auteur John Waters. Krovich said he expected “Loving Annabelle,” a romantic drama about a lesbian affair between a boarding school teacher and her student, to draw in crowds.
Krovich predicts some changes for future festivals now that he’s at the helm, but expects plenty of new cinematic fare to be available for future festivals.
“I still think there’s a lot of stories to be told for the group and the community that still will not be touched in the mainstream.”
8 p.m.
The Opening Night Feature is a tad disappointing for a festival lineup that is refreshingly diverse and experimental.
Director Maria Maggenti, whose charming “The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls In Love” also screens during the festival as part of a retrospective on her work, makes a slight miss here. The story of Allegra (Elizabeth Reaser), who falls in love with a man and a woman, never quite takes off. Often, the film’s supposedly funny situations degenerate into predictable sitcom triteness. Maggenti could have skipped the 80 minutes between the film’s beginning and end and given the audience the conclusion they probably saw coming from the start.
1 p.m.
If you’ve seen one documentary about female-to-male transitions, you’ve seen them all. “Boy I Am” holds little distinction from its predecessors.
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