Always dressed to impress, Irene Williams gets the spotlight
she deserves from her friend and chronicler, gay director Eric Smith,
in ‘Irene Williams: Queen of Lincoln Road.’
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BRIAN MOYLAN
Friday, June 10, 2005
For the third consecutive year, the American Film Institute and the Discovery
Channel are joining forces to sponsor Silverdocs, a five-day festival that highlights
documentary filmmaking.
This year, after programmers reviewed more than1,300 submissions and trolled
the international film festival circuit, they came up with nearly 90 documentaries,
which are scheduled to be screened in Silver Spring, Md., from June 13 to June
19.
There are more gay-themed films than ever before.
“To be honest, it’s mostly a happy accident,” says festival
director Patricia Finneran of the increase in films with gay content. “I
think we’re always going to have films that deal with gay issues and are
from gay filmmakers, because there are so many wonderful films that come from
those entities.”
From opening night on Tuesday, June 14, with a campy feature on “Midnight
Movies,” to the spectacular experimental documentary “The Joy of
Life,” on Sunday, June 19, and “James Dean: Forever Young”
on closing night, there are plenty of reasons to head to Silver Spring next
week.
All documentaries are to be screened at the AFI Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville
Road in Silver Spring. Individual tickets are $9, unless otherwise noted. Here
are some options:
“Midnight Movies: From the Margins to the Mainstream” (Tuesday,
June 14, 7 p.m., $45; Sunday, June 19, at 12:45 p.m.; 88 minutes.): Director
Stuart Samuels seems to understand that the world of midnight movies always
had a gay connection.
Making its North American debut, he looks at movies like the gay classics “Pink
Flamingos” and the “Rocky Horror Picture Show” in an attempt
to explain not only how they were made, but also what made them hits. The answer
is the pot-smoking, free-wheeling, experimental ‘70s and people on the
fringe of society — like hippies and gays — finally getting access
to venues that celebrated and catered to a lifestyle that wasn’t necessarily
embraced by society at large.
That led to the success of movies like “El Topo,” “The Harder
They Come” and “Eraserhead.” Chock full of interviews with
both filmmakers, including the fabulous John Waters of Baltimore, and cinema
managers, even the biggest film buffs will learn a bit more about these cult
classics.
After the screening on opening night, “Good Morning America’s”
Joel Siegel is scheduled to talk to director Samuels about his movie and midnight
movies, followed by a reception with Siegel, Samuels and some of the directors
featured in the documentary.
“Irene Williams: Queen of Lincoln Road” (Wednesday, June 15, at
9 p.m.; 23 minutes): Not only does the “queen” in the title refer
to Williams, a Miami eccentric, but also to her best friend, gay director Eric
Smith. A self-proclaimed “hag fag,” a gay man who loves eccentric
old women, Smith befriends Williams after a chance encounter on the street and
begins to document their friendship.
The result is a 30-minute salute to Williams, who draws looks, comments and
admirers with her garish outfits as she walks each day from her house at one
end of Lincoln Road to her office at the other end. She is a self-employed public
stenographer.
Because no store carries the fashions she craves, Williams makes all her own
outfits, bags and hats (often out of strange material like bath mats). While
these crazy creations take center stage, the real attraction here is the unlikely,
but deep connection between two very different people.
This film follows a screening of “Stan Kann: The Happiest Man in the
World,” a 67-minute feature about the “Tonight Show” regular
during the ’60s who also was an antique vacuum collector and celebrated
theater organist. Though the film doesn’t delve into his personal life,
Kann never married and has a certain offbeat charm that gay audiences should
be drawn to.
“Small Town Secrets” (Shorts Program 1: Wednesday, June 15, 12:30
p.m.; Thursday, June 16, 9:30 p.m.; 7 minutes): This film may be brief, but
it is certainly memorable. Lesbian filmmaker Katherine Leggett talks about growing
up as a child of divorced parents in a small midwestern town.
Between haunting landscapes from the town and old family movies, she interviews
both of her parents using Web cams, which allows her to simultaneously show
herself and the respective parent talking on a computer screen. This new technique
shows them together, but also emphasizes the distance between them.
When we discover both parents’ secrets, the film is as interesting in
substance as it is in style. Hopefully, this great start will be expanded into
an amazing feature.
“Three of Hearts: A Postmodern Family” (Friday, June 17, 9:15 p.m.;
95 minutes): It is truly a postmodern family that both gay audiences and conservative
audiences may have trouble understanding. Here gay couple Sam Cagnina and Steven
Margolin decide that they want to bring a third person into their relationship.
No, not a third man — a woman.
After dating several women, they both fall in love with Samantha Singh. The
three get married, move in together and start a business.
Director Susan Kaplan has eight years of interviews with the trio, and shows
their relationship changing and evolving over time, including Singh’s
pregnancy.
Frank, funny and fearless, this unconventional relationship will challenge
the way everyone thinks about love, commitment and orientation.
“Positively Naked” (Shorts Program 3: Saturday, June 18, at 9:30
p.m.; 38 minutes): A sequel to 2001’s “Naked States” and 2003’s
“Naked World,” directors Arlene Donnelly Nelson and David Nelson
again follow photographer Spencer Tunick, known for his vast assemblages of
nude people.
Unlike the last two films, which aired on HBO and concentrated more on the
artist, this 30-minute short focuses on a few of the 85 HIV-positive subjects
who agreed to be part of a shoot for POZ magazine’s 10th anniversary cover.
Using the photo shoot as the center, it soon spins off into several stories
about the subjects, both gay and straight.
Smartly, the Nelsons use the shoot to examine the collective experience without
minimizing the effects of the virus on individuals. The end result is a 40-minute
tale of survival, an empowering story about being HIV-positive in the United
States.
“The Joy of Life” (Sunday, June 19, at 5:30 p.m.; 65 minutes):
There are some movies that audiences will either love or hate, and “The
Joy of Life,” which screened at Sundance this year, is definitely one
of them.
Half narrative dialogue and half statistical analysis, there are no people
in this entire 65-minute film. Instead, director Jenni Olson depicts beautiful
scenes from San Francisco — empty streets, walls, hills, neighborhoods,
and abandoned buildings. They just languish on the screen for extended periods
of time. And the result is extraordinary.
During the first half of the film, narrator Harriet “Harry” Dodge
tells a sexually graphic, first-person tale of a butch lesbian living in the
city and her unsuccessful quest for love. Halfway through, the visuals switch
to scenes of the Golden Gate Bridge, and Dodge talks about the history and prevalence
of suicides by people who jumped off the famed structure.
Lonely and beautiful, desolate and breathtaking, “The Joy of Life”
is unlike anything you’ve seen (or heard) before.
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