And so it was with last week's NewFest film festival...
This year's fest seemed well run from my perspective... Even the occasional broken air conditioner, ticket order mix ups, impromptu Director Q&A's, and delayed film start times, were all handled smoothly and professionally by cheery NewFest staffers...
NewFest is dedicated to bringing together filmmakers and audiences in the building of a community that passionately supports giving greater visibility and voice to a wide range of expressions and representations of the LGBT experience. We are committed to nurturing emerging LGBT and allied filmmakers. We support those artists who are willing to take risks in telling the stories that fully reflect the diversity and complexity of our lives. And we’re committed to bringing our audience stories that transform our vision of who we are and who we can be.
Through the New York LGBT film festival, presented annually since 1988, and year-round programming, NewFest celebrates fine domestic and international film as part of our mission to break through closet doors and glass ceilings everywhere.
The German documentary Rent Boys Die Jungs vom Bahnhof Zoo tackled the compelling world of male prostitution in Berlin without falling into cliche' by focussing on the psychology and sociology without the prurient appeal... The story lines focused on the biographies of five rent boys including Ionel and visiting his home village in Romania. There was also Nazif, a former civil war refugee from Bosnia who came to Germany as a child and began working the Bahnhof Zoo train station as a hustler. The film’s main protagonist is Daniel (Pictured), who began working as a male prostitute at sixteen. He longs for a simple post-prostitution career with a simple job, raising his son, and a simple life with his female partner.
I saw a nonsense movie called Varla Jean and the Mushroomheads which was totally not my cup of tea. Interesting premise of twisted drag queen tries to alter her narcissistic career into a TV kid's show... But I draw the line at references to pedophilia (later recounted to depict that the suspect was only guilty feeding kids illegal prescription drugs... Meh). Film lacked so much of the John Water's aesthetic that it tried desperately to achieve. That's one I HIGHLY UNrecommend!
I also caught that terrific bio documentary on Carol Channing. Follow that link to my review of Carol Channing: Larger Than Life that I had published last week...
Kudos to all involved with NewFest. Here's a list of 2011 NewFest Awards.
Of course all who were able to widen their audience base with their film work were winners... The good, the bad and the ugly...