INDEX—Latino, Latin American, & Spanish/Portuguese Cinemas

Argentine Cinema

Aerial, The (La Antena, 2007; Esteban Sapir)—Critical Overview/Review

Dignity of the Nobodies, The (La dignidad de los nadies, 2005; Fernando Solanas)—Festival Capsule

Dignity of the Nobodies, The (La dignidad de los nadies, 2005; Fernando Solanas)—Interview With Fernando Solanas

Dignity of the Nobodies, The (La dignidad de los nadies, 2005; Fernando Solanas)—Review

Latent Argentina (Argentina latente, 2007; Fernando Solanas)—Critical Overview/Review

Liverpool (2008; Lisandro Alonso)—Critical Overview/Review

Northeast (Nordeste, 2005; Juan Diego Solanas)—Festival Capsule

Northeast (Nordeste, 2005; Juan Diego Solanas)—Introductory Remarks by Aymará Rovera and Q&A With Juan Solanas

Paranoids, The (Los Paranoicos, 2008; Gabriel Medina)—Critical Overview/Hold Review

Possible Lives (Las vidas posibles, 2006; Sandra Gugliotta)—Critical Overview

Week Alone, A (Una semana solos, 2007; Celina Murga)—Hold Review (for The Auteurs Notebook)

Window, The (La Ventana, 2008; Carlos Sorín)—Interview with Carlos Sorín

Without Title (Sin Título, 2007; Matt Losada)—Interview with Matt Losada

Stray Girlfriend, A (Una Novia Errante, 2007; Ana Katz)—Critical Overview/Review

Latino/Argentine American Cinema

Cartoneros (2006; Ernesto Livon-Grosman)—Interview With Ernesto Livon-Grosman

Brazilian Cinema

Best of Me, The (Lo mejor de mí, 2007; Roser Aguilar)—Critical Overview

Cinema, Aspirin & Vultures (Cinema, Aspirinas E Urubus, 2005; Marcelo Gomes)—Critical Overview/Review

Cinema, Aspirin & Vultures (Cinema, Aspirinas E Urubus, 2005; Marcelo Gomes)—Interview With Peter Ketnath

City of Men (Cidade dos Homens, 2007; Paulo Morelli)—Critical Overview

Delicate Crime (Crime Delicado, 2005; Beto Brant)—Festival Capsule

Favela Rising (2005; Matt Mochary & Jeff Zimbalist)—Festival Capsule

Germano (2007; Vicente Ferraz)—Capsule

House of Sand, The (Casa de Areia, 2005; Andrucha Waddington)—Festival Capsule

House of Sand, The (Casa de Areia, 2005; Andrucha Waddington)—Interview with Andrucha Waddington

House of Sand, The (Casa de Areia, 2005; Andrucha Waddington)—Q&A with Andrucha Waddington

Lower City (Cidade Baixa, 2005; Sérgio Machado)—Festival Capsule

Lower City (Cidade Baixa, 2005; Sérgio Machado)—Introductory Remarks by Alice Braga

Lower City (Cidade Baixa, 2005; Sérgio Machado)—Interview with Alice Braga

Margarette's Feast (A Festa de Margarette, 2003; Renato Falcão)—Critical Overview/Review

Mutum (2007; Sandra Kogut)—Critical Overview/Review

Not By Chance (Não Por Acaso, 2007; Philippe Barcinksi)—Critical Overview/Review

Underground Game (Jogo Subterrâneo, 2005; Roberto Gervitz)—Festival Capsule

Latino/Brazilian American Cinema

Send A Bullet (Manda Bala)—Sundance Dispatch

Send A Bullet (Manda Bala, 2007; Jason Kohn)—Q&A with Jason Kohn

Latino/Chicano Cinema

Don't Let Me Drown (2008; Cruz Angeles & Maria Topete)—Q&A With Cruz Angeles & Maria Topete

Gómez-Peña, Guillermo—"El Corazón de la Missión"

Lopez, Yolanda—Conversation Between Yolanda Lopez & Amalia Mesa-Bains

Mexican Museum / M.H. deYoung Museum Chicano Films Program: Yo Soy Chicano (1972; Jesús Treviño); Remember Los Siete (work-in-progress; Veronica Majano); Chronicle of a Being (Cronica de un ser, 1990; S.M. Peña); Asco (1994; Juan Garza); Pretty Vacant (1996, Jim Mendiola); Columbus on Trial (1992; Lourdes Portillo); Corn In The Front Yard (2001; Al Lujan); Why Cybraceros? (1998; Alex Rivera); Ozzy Goes to the Alamo (2001; Jim Mendiola and Ruben Ortiz Torres); Lupe & JuanDi from the Block (2003; Fulana Collective); Larry Landia (2005; Karim Scarlata). Curated by Tere Romo.

Missión, La (The Mission, 2008; Peter Bratt)—Q&A with Peter & Benjamin Bratt

Missión, La (The Mission, 2008; Peter Bratt)—Hold Review (for The Auteurs Notebook)

Noriega, Chon—TCM: Latino Images in Film Interview

Oddball Films Chicano Films Program: The Mexican American Speaks: Heritage in Bronze; Latino: A Cultural Conflict; Calle Chula; Two Four; Decision at Delano. Co-curated by Stephen Parr and Jesse Lerner.

Our Father (Padre Nuestro, 2007; Christopher Zalla)—Sundance Dispatch

Al Más Allá (2008; Lourdes Portillo)—On-Stage Conversation With Lourdes Portillo & John Anderson

Quinceañera (2006; Richard Glatzer & Wash Westmoreland)—Interview With Emily Rios & Jesse Garcia

Quinceañera (2006; Richard Glatzer & Wash Westmoreland)—Interview With Richard Glatzer & Wash Westmoreland

Sleep Dealer (2008; Alex Rivera)—Critical Overview/Review

Sleep Dealer (2008; Alex Rivera)—Interview with Alex Rivera (for SF360)

Chilean Cinema

Chilean Cinema SF360 Report by Miljenko Skoknik

In Bed (En La Cama, 2005; Matias Bize)—Festival Capsule

In Bed (En La Cama, 2005; Matias Bize)—Critical Overview/Review

Judge and the General, The (2008; Elizabeth Farnsworth & Patricio Lanfranco)—Critical Overview/Review

La Fuga Spotlight

Lost Domain, The (Le domaine perdu, 2005; Raoul Ruiz)—Festival Capsule

Mirageman (2007; Ernesto Diaz)—Critical Overview/Review

Play (2005; Alicia Scherson)—Festival Capsule

Play (2005; Alicia Scherson)—Critical Overview/Review

Play (2005; Alicia Scherson)—Interview With Alicia Scherson

Santa Fe Street (Calle Santa Fe, 2007; Carmen Castillo)—Critical Overview

Tony Manero (2008; Pablo Larraín)—Interview with Pablo Larraín

Cuban Cinema

Viva Cuba (2005; Juan Carlos Cremata Malberti & Iraida Malberti Cabrera)—Festival Capsule

Latino/Cuban American Cinema

How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer (2005; Georgina Garcia Riedel)—Interview with Elizabeth Peña

Mexican Cinema

Babel (2006; Alejandro González Iñárritu)—Q&A with Alejandro González Iñárritu

Battle in Heaven (Batalla en el cielo, 2005; Carlos Reygadas)—Q&A with Carlos Reygadas

Broken Sky (El Cielo Dividido, 2006; Julián Hernández)—Review

Charm School (Niñas Mal, 2007; Fernando Sariñana)—Critical Overview

Cochochi (2007; Israel Cárdenas & Laura Amelia Guzmán)—Critical Overview/Review

Covarrubias, Miguel & John Huston: A Friendship

Cumbia Connection (Cumbia Callera, 2007; René U. Villareal)—Critical Overview/Review

Desert Within, The (Disierto Adentro, 2008; Rodrigo Plá)—Sergio de la Mora's Review

Duck Season (Temporada de Patos, 2004; Fernando Eimbcke)—Critical Overview/Review

Figueroa, Gabriel—Overview & Interview with Steve Seid on "Hecho Por Mexico: The Films of Gabriel Figueroa"

2008 Guadalajara International Film Festival Preview by Sergio de la Mora

Hernández, Julián—Profile by Sergio de la Mora

In the Pit (En El Hoyo, 2005; Juan Carlos Rulfo)—Critical Overview/Review

Japón (Japan, 2002; Carlos Reygadas)—Q&A with Carlos Reygadas

Lake Tahoe (2008; Fernando Eimbcke)—Sergio de la Mora's Review

Lake Tahoe (2008; Fernando Eimbcke)—Hold Review Capsule (for The Auteurs Notebook)

Never On A Sunday (Morir$e En Domingo, 2006; Daniel Gruener)—Interview With Daniel Gruener

News From Afar (Noticias lejanas, 2004; Ricardo Benet)—Festival Capsule

Night Buffalo, The (El búfalo de la noche, 2007; Guillermo Arriga)—Interview with Guillermo Arriaga

Only God Knows (Sólo Dios Sabe, 2006; Carlos Bolado)—Festival Capsule

Only God Knows (Sólo Dios Sabe, 2006; Carlos Bolado)—Interview with Carlos Bolado

Only God Knows (Sólo Dios Sabe, 2006; Carlos Bolado)—Interview with Alice Braga

Pan's Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno, 2006; Guillermo del Toro)—Review

Pan's Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno, 2006; Guillermo del Toro)—Interview with Guillermo del Toro

Pan's Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno, 2006; Guillermo del Toro)—Q&A with Guillermo del Toro

Rivera, Diego—Cargador de Flores

Rudo y Cursi (2009; Carlos Cuarón)—Hold Review (for The Auteurs Notebook)

Sergio de la Mora's Top Ten Favorite Mexican Films of 2007

Silent Light (Luz Silenciosa, 2007; Carlos Reygadas)—Critical Overview/Review

Silent Light (Luz Silenciosa, 2007; Carlos Reygadas)—Dim Sum with Carlos Reygadas

Silent Light (Luz Silenciosa, 2007; Carlos Reygadas)—Q&A with Carlos Reygadas

Tribute to Toña la Negra—Capsule

Violin, The (El Violin, 2005; Francisco Vargas)—Interview with Francisco Vargas

Mexican/U.S. Cinema

Cinemachismo—Q&A With Sergio de la Mora

Cinemachismo—Lambda Nomination

Cowboy del Amor (2005; Michèle Ohayon)—Review

Letters From the Other Side (2006; Heather Courtney)—Critical Overview/Review

Romántico (2005; Mark Becker)—Interview with Mark Becker, Pt. One

Romántico (2005; Mark Becker)—Interview with Mark Becker, Pt. Two

Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, The (2005; Tommy Lee Jones)—Critical Overview/Review

Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, The (2005; Tommy Lee Jones)—Q&A With Guillermo Arriaga

Miscellaneous

Oscars 2007 Hispanic Nominees

Peruvian Cinema

Madeinusa (2006; Claudia Llosa)—Critical Overview/Review

Máncora (2008;Ricardo de Montreuil)—Critical Overview/Review

Susana Baca: Memoria Viva (2003; Mark Dixon)—Capsule

Portuguese Cinema

Blood, The (O Sangue, 1989; Pedro Costa)—Critical Overview/Review

Casa de Lava (1994; Pedro Costa)—Critical Overview/Review

Costa, Pedro—Interview (for The Greencine Daily)

Costa, Pedro—Overview

Tarrafal (2007; Pedro Costa)—Capsule

Tarrafal (2007; Pedro Costa)—Critical Overview/Review

Two Drifters (Odete, 2005; João Pedro Rodrigues)—Review

Spanish Cinema

20 Centimeters (20 Centímetros, 2005; Ramón Salazar)—Critical Overview/Review

Almadovar, Pedro—An Overview of the "Viva Pedro" Retrospective (for The Greencine Daily)

Birdsong (El Cant dels Ocells, 2008; Albert Serra)—Interview With Albert Serra & Mark Peranson

Boystown (Chuecatown, 2007; Juan Flahn)—Critical Overview

Buñuel, Luis—My Last Sigh Review

Chaotic Ana (Caótica Ana, 2007; Julio Medem)—Critical Overview

Grönholm Method, The (El método, 2005; Marcelo Piñeyro)—Festival Capsule

Iberia (2005; Carlos Saura)—Festival Capsule

In the City of Sylvia (En la Ciudad de Sylvia, 2007; José Luis Guerín)—Critical Overview

Mataharis (2007;Icíar Bollaín)—Critical Overview

Me (Yo, 2007; Rafa Cortés)—Critical Overview

Nocturna (2007;Victor Maldonado & Adrià García)—Critical Overview/Review

Obaba (2005; Montxo Armendáriz)—Festival Capsule

Obaba (2005; Montxo Armendáriz)—Critical Overview/Review

Orphanage, The (El Orfanato, 2007; Juan Antonio Bayona)—Critical Overview/Review

Orphanage, The (El Orfanato, 2007; Juan Antonio Bayona)—Interview with Juan Antonio Bayona & Sergio Sánchez (for The Greencine Daily)

Shiver (Eskalofrío, 2008; Isidro Ortiz)—Critical Overview/Review

Solitary Fragments (La soledad, 2007; Jaime Rosales)—Critical Overview

FRAMELINE33—Michael Hawley Anticipates the Lineup

As Queers prepare to celebrate Stonewall's 40th anniversary next month, it's fitting that films spotlighting LGBT elders be at the center of this year's Frameline festival. That was the summational spin placed on this year's event by new Executive Director K.C. Price and longtime Festival Director Jennifer Morris, as they walked us through the 2009 line-up at last week's press conference. The festival turns 33 this year, and here's an acknowledged fact that always bears repeating—Frameline is the oldest and largest LGBT film exhibition event in the world. Appropriately, 2009's rousing theme—"The Power of Film"—is emblazoned upon a purple, fist-pumping Socialist-Realism inspired logo, and the festival's trailer features THE original Super-8 projector used at the very first festival in 1977.

At a time when many arts organizations are struggling to retain funding, Frameline has emerged relatively unscathed. Price explained that while many of the festival's corporate sponsors have slashed all arts bankrolling, when it came to Frameline, "they just couldn't do it." Happily, this enabled a hold on ticket prices which are already among the lowest of all Bay Area film festivals. There's more good news for the wallet. For those with weekday afternoons free (whether because of a job layoff or otherwise), the festival is introducing a $35.00 Weekday Matinee Pass good for all 15 Castro Theater screenings, Monday through Friday before 5:00PM. This breaks down to roughly $2.35 per show. Also new in 2009, audience members can eschew paper ballots in favor of voting for films by text-messaging. I'm mighty ambivalent about this one and hereby issue a warning: anyone seen texting their vote (and emitting that horribly distracting light) before a film is finished, will be smacked upside the head with a rolled-up Frameline catalogue by one very annoyed LGBT elder.

K.C. Price replaces 27-year vet Michael Lumpkin as Frameline's Executive Director, although he's hardly new to the organization. Price was Development Director from 1999 to 2003, at which point he became Managing Director of the Ninth Street Media Consortium (the SOMA edifice which houses Frameline and other film arts organizations). At the press conference he jokingly revealed his greatest fear—that his first year as director might also turn out to be an off-year in terms of quality programming. By the time Morris and Price finished running through the line-up, however, it was evident his fears were unfounded.

Ah yes, the line-up. The 2009 breakdown is as follows: 220 films (80 features and 140 shorts) from 32 countries presented in 96 separate programs spread over 11 days (June 18 to 28). As always, it's an almost mind-numbingly broad selection, representing every imaginable depiction of LGBT existence on Planet Earth. (To Price and Morris' great surprise, there were no films concerning Prop. 8 and the issue of marriage equality). What follows is a very subjective look at this year's roster, as filtered through the interests of a 55-year-old gay guy with a penchant for biographical documentaries and foreign narrative features.

US Features

This is where I tend to spend the least amount of time at Frameline. I've seen some great US features over the years here, but have found it can also be a minefield sprinkled with clunky issue-driven dramas, sappy romances and idiotic comedies. There is one American film I'm dying to see this year and it's Maggots and Men, Cary Cronenwett's homage to early Soviet cinema. This is a re-imagining of the historic 1921 Kronstadt Uprising of Russian sailors, and features a largely transgender cast. Maggots and Men [site] is a local production and is one of six films in the fest which received a grant from the Frameline Completion Fund.

The only film I've already seen (and one I heartily recommend) is Fruitfly, H.P. Mendoza's follow-up to Colma: The Musical, which got an uproarious reception when it world-premiered at this year's SF International Asian American Film Fest. After three decades I'm also anxious to have another look at Curt McDowell's 1975 screamingly outrageous, horror/porno hybrid Thundercrack! I took a boyfriend to see this in the late '70s and he fled the screening, vowing never to see me again. I think it was Marion Eaton yanking her vomit-covered wig out of the toilet and placing it back on her head that did him in. The Karen Black fetishist in me is curious about Watercolors, in which she plays art teacher to the high school nerd who's in love with the swim team champ (who's coached by Greg Louganis!). I might also have a look at Hollywood, je t'aime, where a young Frenchman comes to LA-LA-land to escape a failed romance back home.

US features also open and close this year's festival. In Opening Night-er An Englishman in New York, John Hurt reprises his role as queer icon Quentin Crisp, a part he first played in 1975's acclaimed The Naked Civil Servant (a film that's just been assigned one of the festival's TBA slots on Friday, June 19). As tradition dictates, the festival closes on Gay Pride Day—this year with Hannah Free, the tale of a decades-long love affair between a butch lesbian (Sharon Gless, who is expected to attend) and a married straight-laced housewife. This may be a perfectly fine film, but given that June 28 is also the exact 40th anniversary of Stonewall, I might have expected something more—I don't know—revolutionary to close the festival.

World Cinema

There are seven personal must-sees in this section, beginning with Argentine director Pablo Trapero's women's prison drama Lion's Den. I'm a big fan of the director (Crane World, Rolling Family, Born and Bred) and this one appeared in Cannes' main competition last year. (If you miss this, it'll pop up again in late July on the SF Film Society's Kabuki screen). I've heard great things about The Country Teacher, about a gay science teacher who moves to the country and befriends a single woman and her troubled 17-year-old son. The film is directed by Bohdan Sláma (Wild Bees, Something Like Happiness), considered by many to be the best Czech director working today. (The film opens at a Landmark Theater in early July). Admirers of Filipino director Aureus Solito's adorable The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros surely won't want to miss his latest, Boy. This one follows a romance between a teenager and the rent boy he brings home on New Year's Eve (whose affections he's purchased by selling his collection of comic books and action figures). Longtime Frameline attendees will be very familiar with the challenging works of acclaimed Canadian director John Greyson (Lilies, Urinal, Zero Patience, Proteus). His latest film Fig Trees is an "experimental documentary" described in Steve Jenkins's catalog capsule as a "complex and moving rumination on AIDS activism, St. Teresa of Avila and Gertrude Stein, all plaited into an avant-garde opera featuring a singing albino squirrel." A single, middle-aged farmer in Spain's Basque country finds his life changed after hiring a Peruvian immigrant in Roberto Castón's Ander.

Rounding out my seven international must-sees are two French films, Born in '68 and Give Me Your Hand. The former comes from partners-in-life and partners-in-filmmaking Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau, who are no strangers to Frameline (they were here three times previous with The Adventures of Felix, My Life on Ice and Côte d'Azur). Born in '68 is a social drama following two decades and two generations of gay men, from the student riots of '68 to AIDS activism of the '80s. In Pascal-Alex Vincent's road movie Give Me Your Hand, real-life twins Alexandre and Victor Carril play twin brothers en route to their mother's funeral in Spain. The film screened in this year's prestigious New Directors/New Films series in NYC, where Slant Magazine's Ed Gonzalez wrote this typically snarky review. Let's say I'm discouraged, but fully expect to enjoy the "scenery" anyway.

Should time and stamina permit, there are several other foreign features I might check out. Patrik, Age 1.5 is a Swedish comedy about a gay couple who mistakenly adopt a homophobic 15-year-old. The films of German frequent-Frameliner Monika Treut (The Virgin Machine, Gendernauts) are usually worth a look and her latest is Ghosted, an exploration of gender and cultural identity set in Taiwan. A young woman with a horribly disfigured face and a lesbian nurse who passionately tends to her is the stuff of Maria Beatty's Bandaged, a twisted-sounding German film executive-produced by Abel Ferrara. Fabiomassimo Lozzi's Anotherworld is an experimental narrative exploring Italian gay male identity, and is composed entirely of actors performing monologues scripted from real-life interviews. 21-year-old first-time director Simon Pearce spins a gritty tale of young British gang culture in Shank, a film which promises explicit sex and graphic violence.

Finally, I'd like to at least make mention of two films which, strangely enough, didn't make it into this year's festival. Frameline can always be depended upon to import all the important LGBT films from each year's Berlin Film Festival. So where, I'm wondering, is Raging Sun, Raging Sky, the latest from Mexican director Julián Hernández (A Thousand Clouds of Peace, Broken Sky) and The Fish Child, Argentine director Lucia Puenzo's follow-up to XXY (last year's Audience Award Winner for Best Feature Film)? Whatever the reason, I doubt it's from a lack of awareness or effort on Frameline's part.

Documentaries

Speaking of the Berlin Film Festival, the film I most hoped to find in this year's Frameline was Nicole Haeusser's Little Joe, which had its world premiere there in January. This is a bio-doc about Joe Dallesandro, the teenaged Athletic Guild model turned Warhol Superstar turned international sex icon, who is forever immortalized in the lyrics of Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side." As a high-school senior in 1971, I snuck into Andy Warhol's X-rated Trash. To say it made a staggering impression would be the understatement of the millennium. I actually got to meet Joe at a San Francisco book signing in 1998, where he graciously autographed the one-sheet poster for Heat I'd been dragging around for over 25 years. And now, thanks to Frameline, I look forward to seeing him again when he appears in-person at the Castro Theater for the screening of Little Joe.

The NYC underground filmmaking scene of which Dallesandro was an integral part is at least tangentially connected to three other programs at Frameline33. Jennifer M. Kroot's It Came From Kuchar is a long overdue tribute to legendary filmmaking twins George and Mike Kuchar, who began making weird little 8mm films on the rooftop of their parent's Bronx apartment in the 1950s. In the documentary, filmmakers as diverse as John Waters, Atom Egoyan, Guy Maddin and Wayne Wang testify on camera as to the Kuchars' influence on their work. The brothers have (mostly) been residents of San Francisco for close to four decades now, and it will be an honor to see them receive this year's Frameline Award at the Castro Theater screening of It Came From Kuchar. George Kuchar's 1977 I, An Actress is one of eight short films included in Canyon Cinema's Queer Underground, a curated program of queer experimental shorts from the foremost guardian of America's avant-garde film heritage. Other filmmakers include Curt McDowell, Kenneth Anger and James Broughton. Finally, Crayton Robey's Making the Boys documents the whole zeitgeist surrounding William Friedkin's loved and loathed 1969 movie version of Mart Crowley's The Boys in the Band. Among the film's revelations is that Friedkin was filming blocks from where Stonewall drag queens were rioting. And according to Mark Freeman's program capsule, "Worth the price of admission alone is footage of a Malibu beach party showing Mart Crowley cavorting on the sand at Roddy McDowell's house with Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, Judy Garland, Rock Hudson and a dozen more of Hollywood's gay glitterati and female admirers."

Each year at Frameline I like to check out those documentaries which examine the socio-political status of LGBT folks around the world. Yun Suh's City of Borders, which just screened at the SF International Film Festival, surveys the Arab and Jewish denizens of Shushan, the only gay bar in Jerusalem. I'm always shocked when I read news reports of Moscow gay rights marchers being beaten to a pulp and hauled off to jail. Jochen Hick's East/West—Sex & Politics examines why homosexuality, or at least its most visible variety, remains reviled in Russian society (hint: the Orthodox Church has a lot to do with it). For issues closer to home we have Pam Walton's Raging Grannies, which looks at the political street-theater antics of The Raging Grannies Action League of the San Francisco Bay Peninsula. These women aged 50 to 90 employ songs, skits and costumes to protest issues like gay rights and the environment—rejecting certain stereotypes of older women while playfully embodying them. A number of these Raging Grannies are expected at the screening, so watch out.

The remaining five documentaries I hope to see can be loosely filed under "people are not always what they seem." Yulene Olaizola reflects back on a former lodger at her grandmother's Mexico City boarding house—one who was an artistic genius and possibly a serial killer—in Shakespeare and Victor Hugo's Intimacies. In the festival Centerpiece Film Prodigal Sons, transgender filmmaker Kimberly Reed returns home to reconcile with an unstable adopted brother, only to discover that he's the only grandson of Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth. Two films are portraits of legendary drag artists. Michelle Lawler's Forever's Gonna Start Tonight profiles 74-year-old Vicki Marlene, who continues to perform regularly in San Francisco nightclubs. And Brazilian rock singer/activist/actress Claudia Wonder is the subject of Dacio Pinheiro's My Buddy Claudia. Last but not least, Andrew Haigh's Greek Pete follows a London rent-boy through one year on the job.

Cross-published on film-415 and Twitch.

TCM: LATINO IMAGES IN FILM—On Stereotypes

As part of their annual Race & Hollywood series and this year's ongoing month-long exploration of Latino images in film, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) commissioned an interstitial on Latino stereotypes in film, featuring Rita Moreno, Héctor Elizondo, Edward James Olmos and John Saxon.

Elizondo initiated the commentary by stating that the stereotype most offensive to him was the Latin as outlaw, whether the Latin hood or the Latin drug dealer. He felt this stereotype to be a particularly dangerous one. Moreno confirmed there was always the bandido, though later on focus fell on gang members. Olmos likewise spotlighted the stereotype of the gangbangers, whose origins he traced to the late '30s.

Olmos added that female stereotypes included the feisty Latina sex bomb—still with us—as well as the fast-speaking maid who talks in a thick accent. Elizondo agreed that Latina actresses were asked to play either the maid or the prostitute. Further, when Latinos were presented as juvenile delinquents—such as Rafael Campos in The Blackboard Jungle—the subtext was that they were individuals disinterested in learning, only in acquiring.

"The most belittled culture in films has been Mexicans," Moreno attested. The Mexican sleeping against a cactus underscored their presumed laziness and—in terms of ubiquitous kitsch—is comparable to the Mammy for African Americans. In Giant, Mercedes McCambridge flat-out complained, "I know how to handle Mexicans. Been doin' it all my life. They'd sit on their honkers all day if I didn't keep after them." Olmos stated that in the '70s and '80s the Mexican American was bombarded with brutal stereotypes. Elizondo admitted it began to make him uneasy whenever he saw a Mexican character smiling and laughing a lot. "Why does that make my skin crawl?" he asked himself.

The other group most belittled, Moreno ventured, were the Caribbeans, the Puerto Ricans. She claimed Hollywood had not done too well by the Caribbean community. "If we go back to the '50s," Olmos concurred, "I think that the Puerto Rican culture had probably the most difficult time." Discounting that West Side Story was a true look at the Puerto Rican in New York—the nuyorican—he cautioned care evaluating that film because "it did get into some difficult moments of stereotyping."

John Saxon—an Italian actor whose ethnic masquerades frequently included Latinos—mentioned that back in the '20s-'30s, Hispanics "were fashionable creatures, suave."

Though Olmos asserted that the Latino stereotypes are still with us, alive and well, Moreno countered that she felt most of the stereotypes were gone; the problem being that with the loss of roles—"dare I say those roles"—opportunities have dried up for Latino actors.

Illustration of the bandido courtesy of David Ryan Paul. Cross-published on Twitch.

DEADGIRL / SOMEONE'S KNOCKING AT THE DOOR—The Evening Class Interview With Noah Segan

Having already spoken with Gadi Harel when he accompanied Deadgirl to San Francisco's IndieFest earlier this Spring, I welcomed the opportunity to follow through with Noah Segan who was in town filming Peaches Christ's All About Evil. During down time on the set at San Francisco's Victoria Theatre, Noah and I sat down to talk.

* * *

Michael Guillén: It's a great pleasure to meet you, Noah. I've become a fan of your work by way of Deadgirl. Recently I interviewed Gadi for that film. Then I went back and caught Brick.

Noah Segan: Have you had a chance to see Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever?

Guillén: Not yet.

Segan: I'll tell ya, I've seen the current cut and it's fantastic! I was invited to a Fangoria panel at their last convention for the Cabin Fever film. Of course, there were a few people who had seen Deadgirl at the time; it hadn't really gotten out there yet. It started with a festival run. A lot of people had seen Brick. So there was some overlapping of people who thought they might be fans of the Cabin Fever film. I feel really good about it. I feel it will slot in nicely.

Guillén: You've done about nine films in the last year or two.

Segan: In the last couple of years I've done about 10 movies, yeah; I'm lucky. And I produced my first film last year. Are you familiar with Chad Ferrin and his work? He did the Troma film Unspeakable, The Ghouls, Easter Bunny, Kill! Kill!, and I produced his last film and starred in it as well: Someone's Knocking At the Door.

Guillén: Paul Sado—who wrote your mini-biography for IMdb—said that you were self-educated and too intelligent to graduate from high school. Is that true?

Segan: No. Sado was intelligent enough to write that. He's an old buddy of mine from New York and a very smart writer who imparted a love of Terry Southern, Sam Peckinpah, Monte Hellman, Warren Oates, and '60s counterculture upon me. He put that up on IMdb years ago before I had even done Brick. Over the last few years as I've worked more and become a little more well-known, and done press, and had proper biographies printed, I keep expecting that IMdb biography to be pulled down. It's hilarious; but, it's not professional. I keep expecting some business person to yank it down. I keep telling people I work with not to take it down. I want to see how long I can go with this absurd bio on IMdb. My favorite quote is: "Noah's favorite actor is Warren Oates, who died, as Noah expects to do one day as well."

Guillén: I truly admired your performance as JT in Deadgirl. I recognize it as a difficult performance. Do you tend to accept roles where the characters are barely likeable?

Segan: [Chuckles.] I think I'm the most likeable character in the world in Brick. I'm the sweetest guy in the universe. Dode is one of the most heartfelt people in the world.

Guillén: JT, however, is another story. Are unlikeable characters challenging for you? Is that why you choose them?

Segan: I don't know. I tend to not look at the roles in terms of likeability or even in terms of good and evil. I've been lucky in that the roles I've performed that I find the most fulfilling are ones that are conflicted; ones where the character or the circumstances are ambivalent. Deadgirl is a perfect example of that. The whole film is about ambivalence, and the conflict of youth, masculinity, friendship and power. There's a lot of that in Brick as well. It's easy for me to do those roles because I'm personally conflicted. I'd like to think most actors are. I'd like to think that most actors who immerse themselves in their work do so because they're trying to answer questions about themselves. There's some catharsis in that as well. I'm a pretty nice guy. [Laughs.] I'm not really a jerk; but, I think playing jerks helps me be a nice guy. It's definitely therapy, man.

I look at my character JT in Deadgirl and I see a guy who really does want to be liked and who wants to be strong, powerful and helpful to his friend. He wants to achieve a level of success in a way. His relationship with the dead girl, with Jenny Spain's character, is one where he's trying as hard as he can to get somewhere in life. He thinks he's found the girl of his dreams. He thinks he's going to have a future. He thinks he's hustling on his way somewhere. It's tragic. It's more apt to say I have a tendency to play tragic characters than evil ones.

Guillén: Can you speak to your attraction to genre films?

Segan: I'm a fan of Peter Jackson and these guys that push the envelope into different genres within the horror genre. That's the beauty of working within a genre. When you have these established rules and your audiences are aware of them, then they're also aware when you break the rules. It's obvious when you break the rules and make that joke or go too far or don't go far enough. That's a great challenge. There's a great delight in that. That's why I like genre fans and why I'm a genre fan and why I like working in those environments. If you really want to read a manifesto, you should read this piece I did for Bloody Disgusting after Deadgirl played Toronto. They just fucking let me go off and I gave them this manifesto on genre films and westerns. They printed every fucking word, which is the beauty of writing online. It's the ultimate soapbox. If you want to look that up, it's my best piece on where it's all coming from for me.

Guillén: Were there challenges preparing for the role of JT?

Segan: Right before I was to start Deadgirl, I was off in a far faraway land shooting another movie. I was concerned about how to negotiate the role of JT and how to remain in the zone. Simply enough, remain in character or to be able to get back in touch with the character on a regular basis, right? I was also about to move. I had secured a new apartment on the other side of town. I lived on the beach and was moving towards the city. I was bitching and moaning, to be honest with you, at these other actors on this other set, concerned about how I was going to stay in character and have a handle on the character. It's fairly easy for me to figure out the arc of a character, especially in something as well-written as Deadgirl. You read the script and take your character out. You see where he goes and you try to figure out where he's been, maybe where he's going afterwards, what he's doing when you don't see him; it's a little crossword puzzle. But how do you keep that up? How do you maintain that?

I was talking about it to some other actors who I respected and one of them said, "Well, when I was working on a film that put me in a similar situation, I moved out of my house. I stayed in a hotel somewhere even though I was shooting in a location near where I lived. I lived in this hotel. I didn't own anything. I didn't have any belongings. I was quiet and alone." Knowing what I was going through at the time with moving, I decided that was my opportunity to do something similar. When I boxed everything up at the old apartment, I paid an extra month's rent, left everything there, went to the new place, put up blackout curtains and lived there alone without anything on the walls, no pictures of my mom or my sister, no clothing of my own. I had a blanket but it wasn't my blanket. It didn't smell like me, you know what I mean? That was the important transition: to make sure that I could be alone. The important part wasn't remaining in character, it was insuring that nothing came into the character that wasn't supposed to be there. When I was not working—which on a set like Deadgirl or All About Evil—you're only not working a few hours of the day; but, it was important to me that during those few hours I was shut down. It was almost like those hours didn't exist.

Guillén: And because of the controversial relationship with women in Deadgirl, it was important for you not to have contact with the women in your life?

Segan: Yes! It was very important for me not to have contact with the women in my life. There weren't many women on set other than Jenny Spain, who played the dead girl, who also understood what I was going through. She was sensitive and one of the most professional people on that set. At the very beginning of the process I also took Gadi and Marcel aside and I said, "Look. I'm not the kind of actor in general who feels like he needs to be patted on the head every time he does something well, as much as I appreciate it when someone pats me on the head or the back." I said, "In this particular case especially, whatever attention you would normally think to give to me, give it to Jenny instead and leave me alone. Just let me be in my weird, dark place and I promise you it will be worth it.

Guillén: Which it was.

Segan: You can keep yourself occupied on a set, especially if you had as much stuff to say as I did in that movie. I had a lot of homework; but—while we were shooting—it was important that when I was off that set, I was not in my own head. I wasn't Noah. I was no one. It wasn't that I needed to be JT 24 hours a day; it was just that I needed to get this gross, vitriolic, chauvinist, violent person to go away, and Noah needed to go away, so I could be in an empty place.

Guillén: I understand that Someone's Knocking At the Door will be playing Another Hole in the Head?

Segan: Yeah. I want to try to coordinate something with All About Evil and Hole in the Head to, perhaps, have Darren and/or Joshua come by on the day of, do a little introduction to my film and then, afterwards, maybe show a minute-long teaser of All About Evil. Or have Kris Boxell, our graphic designer, come by with some artwork. More than anything, it occurred to me that many of the people who helped out on All About Evil are not Hollywood movie people. It'd be nice to give audiences a taste of All About Evil because it may be six months to a year before the film is finished and able to be seen by a wide audience in theatres. It'd be nice to keep the San Francisco vibe going.

Guillén: How did you become involved in being the producer for Someone's Knocking At the Door?

Segan: I'd been introduced to Chad Ferrin through Trent Haaga who wrote Deadgirl and who is a very close friend of mine. Trent and Chad have worked together a bunch. Chad and I had similar taste in film. We hit it off and became buddies. He sent me the script for Someone's Knocking At the Door. It had been presented to him. It was the first time anyone had ever asked him to direct something he hadn't written. He called me up and said, "Someone just sent me this script. I'm going to do some work on it. You've got really good taste in movies, do you have time to take a look at the script and let me know what you think? Maybe give me some notes on it? I don't know where to start." The next thing we knew it was a couple of months later and we had taken the script apart and put it back together again. It was very much a different kind of film. Our executive producer and investors liked the direction in which we were going. There was a role in it that, ostensibly, I could play that we had created that would be fun to come in and do. We started putting the movie together and the next thing I knew I stepped in as a producer, not only helping with the development of the script but the locations, hiring the crew, auditioning actors.

Guillén: Would you like to do more of that in the future?

Segan: I had a fun time doing it—I really did—and I'm still involved in the post-production process, the artwork. The festival premieres have been exciting.

Guillén: Can you provide a short synopsis of the film?

Segan: Someone's Knocking At the Door is a contemporary take on the classic '60s-'70s grindhouse grossout sex drugs rock and roll movie. It's a psychedelic story of murder, mayhem, rape and deviancy.

Guillén: Oooooooh! It sounds perfect for Hole in the Head.

Segan: It is. And the soundtrack is hip. It's by this band The Mae Shi who I met playing The Screamers in the movie I did about The Germs. They're out of L.A. They're a really interesting band, lots of unique sounds, kind of punk rock meets synthesizer, very Devo kind of sound. I became buddies with them on the set of What We Do Is Secret and I thought they would be a cool addition and take Someone's Knocking At the Door into a different direction. Not only did the band provide some cool mixes of their songs for the movie that became part of the movie, but Brad Breeck—one of the leaders of the band—did our score. So it's a ground-up collaboration for the music and sound. We use a lot of his score as sound effects. Those were the cherries on the icing on the top of my producing cake.

A reminder that Someone's Knocking At the Door will be screening twice at San Francisco's Another Hole in the Head Film Festival; on June 8 at 7:15PM and June 13 at 11:45PM. Chad Ferrin is expected to attend.

Cross-published on Twitch.