/ 27 October 1995

From lesbian rituals to cyberqueers

Next month’s Second OutStanding South African Gay and Lesbian Film Festival will kick off with Bar Girls, directed by Lauran Hoffman, and Stonewall, directed by Nigel Finch, shown along with John Young’s Parallel Lives, winner of the 1995 award for best gay men’s film at both the San Francisco and Los Angeles Lesbian and Gay Film Festivals.
Feature film highlights of the festival include World and Time Enough, directed by Eric Mueller, voted best Gay feature at the 1994 San Francisco Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. Red Ribbon Blues, directed by Charles Winkler, is an action comedy featuring the greatest drag of all — RuPaul. More great drag comes from Vaginal Cream Davis in Days of Pentecost, and check out Sex of the Stars for a great cross-dressing dad.
For boys, the sexiest offering is definitely Super 8 1/2, starring Bruce LaBruce as a washed-up porno star with a portfolio that knows no bounds. For girls, the hottest ticket is equally shared between the full features Bar Girls, a hilarious romp through lesbian dating rituals, and Rozema’s When Night is Falling, in which a Christian academic is seduced by a flamboyant circus performer.
For the serious minded, Remembrance of Things Fast brings queer culture on a collision course in cyberspace. It stars Tilda Swinton and Rupert

Short film highlights include Trevor — in which a gay teen is saved from suicide. It won the 1995 Oscar for Best Short Film.
World premiers of Gay Cuba, directed by Sonja de Vries, and Shinjuku Boys, directed by Kim Longinotto, show aspects of gay and transgender lifestyles that are distinctly different from mainstream Western gay lifestyles.
The major documentary The Question of Equality, a series of four 60-minute videos about the pre- and post-Stonewall generations, will form the background to the panel discussion of the same

Another short documentary, Glenda and Camille Do Downtown, shows academic “motormouth” Camille Paglia and drag queen Glennda Orgasm in a hilarious confrontation with anti-porn feminists.
An “Out in South Africa Programme” highlights a video by the same name, made by Barbara Hammer when she visited last year’s festival, and a short impressionistic drama by John Greyson, made in 1986, titled A Moffie Called Simon. Two short dramas, by Luiz Barros and Stephen Jennings, complete this programme.
Other guest programmes celebrate the works of visiting directors. The John Greyson programme features five of his shorter pieces, as well as his full length experimental docudrama, Urinal.
The Catherine Saalfield programme features her seven activist-based works, ranging from the humorous BUCKLE, set in New York’s popular Clit Club, to Saalfield’s two major works, Divas in Training and Positive: Life with HIV.
Finally, the Pratibha Parmar programme features five works by this filmmaker. Her full-length documentary Warrior Marks deals with female genital mutilation, made in collaboration with Alice Walker. Her shorter films are no less hard-hitting, and deal with racism in Britain, as well as gay people living with disabilities.
Saalfield and Greyson will conduct five-day video workshops in Johannesburg and Cape Town on the theme of “Equality for All”. Participants will be provided with facilities needed to produce short issue- based documentaries. And these highlights are merely the tip of the iceberg.