Apartment613

Love! Drama! Sex! Politics! drives the theme of Ottawa’s third edition of the Inside Out LGBT film and video festival, as the national capital region plays host to a variety of gala screenings, comedies and documentaries from November 20^th to the 22^nd.

This year’s festival will highlight films that have advanced social and political change in countries all over the world and movies that, literally, gush with heart warming, uplifting narratives. Organizers are anticipating a strong turnout as they strive to make this event a staple in Ottawa’s festival circuit and to put Ottawa on the map as a positive space for the LGBT community to live in and thrive.

The films will either be screened at the National Gallery of Canada (NGC) or Club SAW . Tickets vary in price, depending on the evening and number of shows you wish to attend – students, seniors and members of Inside Out and NGC get a nice discount for all screenings and passes. The opening gala event is $15 ($12 for the aforementioned lucky ones), a single screening is $10 ($7) and the 4 play pass is $30 ($21). You can buy your tickets at Venus Envy or online, through the festival’s website.

So, without further adieu, let us present an outline and brief synopsis of the films to enjoy this weekend. Detailed information can be found at the festival’s website.

OPENING NIGHT GALA

Friday, November 20 • 7PM

National Gallery of Canada

DROOL

By Nancy Kissam / USA / 2009 / 88 minutes

The trailer park love child of Thelma and Louise and The Opposite of Sex, Drool is an outrageous dark comedy that will leave audiences salivating for more.

Anora Fleece (Laura Harring from Mullholland Drive) is trapped in an abusive marriage to a racist bastard and her two kids treat her like a subservient maid. Alone during the day, she loses herself in dreams of a perfect romance.

Things take a turn when a new neighbour, Imogene Cochran, moves in. Imogene sells Kathy K. Kosmetics, ‘make-up for the cocoa-skinned woman.’ The problem is, people in these parts don’t like cocoa-skinned anything, but that doesn’t stop Imogene and Anora from bonding over coffee. Soon, they are doing more than just bonding. But when Anora’s husband, Cheb, finds them all hell breaks loose and Anora and Imogene load the kids into the Kathy K. car and head out on the road to bury the past.

OPENING NIGHT GALA (Apt613 Editors Pick!)

Friday, November 20 • 9PM

National Gallery of Canada

PATRIK, AGE 1.5

By Ella Lemhagen / Sweden / 2008 / 35mm / 100 minutes

In Patrik, Age 1.5, Göran and Sven are a happily married couple who have traded in their chic lifestyle in the city for a more family-friendly house in the picturesque suburbs of Stockholm. There is just one thing missing that will make their domestic bliss complete-a baby.

The pair finally cuts through the bureaucratic redtape but a misplaced decimal point produces tremendous consequences - instead of a one-and-a half-year-old infant, Göran and Sven end up with fifteen-year-old Patrik, a homophobe with a criminal past.

Patrik drives a wedge between the happy couple. Sven doesn’t want the little delinquent in their house while Göran refuses to give up on the young offender.

Full of witty perceptions on suburban life, Director Lemhagen handles the material with a stylish eye for detail. The result is a thought-provoking film that finds humour in unexpected situations and humanity everywhere, even in the most unlikely people.

Screening Sponsor: Jer’s Vision

FERRON: GIRL ON A ROAD

Saturday, November 21 • 3PM Director in Attendance!

National Gallery of Canada

Before the Indigo Girls and before Ani DiFranco, there was Ferron, whose plaintive and poetic songs provided the soundtrack for an entire generation of lesbians. Nearing 60 and feeling the urge to reconnect with her audience, Ferron reunites with her band to perform a concert after nearly a decade away. Director Gerry Rogers (My Left Breast) is there to capture the moment.

Ferron: Girl on a Road opens on British Columbia´s Saturna Island, where Ferron welcomes her band mates into her home to rehearse. The action shifts to a stage in Victoria, where Ferron and the band perform some of her most adored songs-Shadows on a Dime, Girl on a Road and Snowin´ in Brooklyn. Interspersed between tunes are interviews with the band members and with Ferron herself, who talks openly about her painful childhood, her rise and fall in the music industry, her past feelings of shame regarding her Native ancestry and, finally, about coming to terms with herself after a lifetime of struggles.

Screening Sponsor: Lesbian Information Xchange (LIX)

BODY DOUBLE

Saturday, November 21 • 5PM

National Gallery of Canada

Director in Attendance | Screening will be followed by Q & A

For more than a decade, Paris-based filmmaker and contemporary artist Brice Dellsperger has produced remakes of archetypal sequences from cult films (Return of the Jedi, Saturday Night Fever, My Own Private Idaho, Twin Peaks, Eyes Wide Shut…) forming a series of over 20 works entitled Body Double. Meticulously adhering to the soundtrack, Dellsperger substitutes the original characters for one or two actors who play all the roles. In a Brice Dellsperger film, gender is a grey zone: male actors play women playing men, and heterosexual characters become queer.

The program will feature six works that reference cinema from the past four decades, including the premiere of Body Double 22 (based on Eyes Wide Shut), in which French actor and visual artist Jean-Luc Verna plays all the roles – resulting in a gender-bending parallel to the original.

Program:

Body Double 16 (based on A Clockwork Orange and Women in Love)

Body Double 17 (based on Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me)

Body Double 19/20 (based on Flash Gordon)

Body Double 22 (based on Eyes Wide Shut)

Body Double 23 (based on The Black Dahlia)

Presented by SAW Video and the Embassy of France

I CAN’T THINK STRAIGHT

Saturday, November 21 • 7PM

National Gallery of Canada

Tala, a Jordanian of Palestinian origin living in London, is preparing for her elaborate wedding when she meets Leyla, a young British-Indian woman who is dating her best friend Ali. Spirited Christian Tala and shy Muslim Leyla could not be more different but the attraction is immediate and soon both women reveal their feelings for each other.

But Tala is not ready to accept what her heart is telling her and she escapes back to Jordan where her chain-smoking high-brow mother finishes preparations for her ostentatious wedding.

As the wedding day approaches, simmering family tensions come to a boil and the pressure mounts for Tala to be true to herself. Meanwhile heartbroken Leyla relishes her new-found identity and moves on with her life – much to the shock of her traditional parents. Single again, Tala flies back to London but will she be able to win Leyla back?

Screening Sponsor: Pink Triangle Services

AN ENGLISHMAN IN NEW YORK

Saturday, November 21 • 9PM

National Gallery of Canada

Almost 35 years after starring in The Naked Civil Servant, John Hurt reprises his role as writer and raconteur Quentin Crisp in An Englishman in New York, which traces what happened when Crisp landed in Manhattan to conquer America.

In 1981, at the age of 72, Crisp arrives in New York City´s East Village and launches a one-man off-Broadway show. His natural flair for a bon mot earns him a place at the trendiest social engagements and he becomes a fixture on what he calls ´the champagne and peanuts´ circuit.

The adulation and attention he has garnered, however, is threatened when Crisp publicly dismisses the AIDS crisis as a fad. Depressed and alone, Crisp is rescued by performance artist Penny Arcade (Sex and the City´s Cynthia Nixon), who puts him back on stage and back in the spotlight.

Screening Sponsor: Great Canadian Theatre Company

FIG TREES

Sunday, November 22 • 2:30PM

National Gallery of Canada

From our perennial favourite, John Greyson and composer David Wall, comes a video opera/documentary that blends scathing critique with humour and spellbinding visuals.

The film is based on the opera Four Saints In Three Acts by Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson, with Toronto´s Tim McCaskell (founding member of AIDS Action Now) and Zackie Achmat (founder of Treatment Action Campaign) of South Africa as the film’s central subjects. Through their fearless activism, they ensure that the fate of treatment programs are not left in the hands of ineffective governments and greedy corporations. From Bush to Bono, no one escapes Greyson´s critical eye. The brunt of the critique is aimed at the major pharmaceutical companies whose profit motives outweigh the value of human lives.

Art cinema, documentary and opera meld in a complex and compelling essay on the continuing fight for treatment and justice for people living with HIV/AIDS everywhere.

Screening Sponsor: Available Light Screening Collective

CLAPHAM JUNCTION

Sunday, November 22 • 5PM

National Gallery of Canada

Commissioned by the BBC to mark the 40th anniversary of the decriminalization of homosexuality in England, Clapham Junction is a raw and often disturbing glimpse into the lives of eight Londoners and the devastating consequences that unfold when their lives collide during a 36-hour period in the posh neighbourhood of Clapham Junction.

Gavin and Will celebrate their love at their civil partnership ceremony but, for one of them, the commitment doesn´t last long when caterwaiter Alfie offers up more than canapés. Hot and horny Terry dotes on his frail grandmother during the day and at night prowls the bars. Author Robin has just had his latest novel rejected and seeks solace in a public toilet. Teenage Theo confronts his ongoing obsession with Tim, his sexy older neighbor.

The Altman-esque vignettes come together in a climax of violence, discrimination and denial that reveals the dark side of human nature.

Screening Sponsor: Ottawa Art Gallery

CHEF’S SPECIAL (FUERA DE CARTA)

Sunday, November 22 • 7PM

National Gallery of Canada

Javier Cámara played the empathetic nurse in Pedro Almodóvar´s Talk to Her, and early on in Chef´s Special he is again at a hospital bedside - that of his ex-wife, who is dying. But in this high-strung comedy, Cámara´s Maxi is a bitchy queen who won´t cut anybody any slack.

Although he is a perfectionist at his job as manager of a fine dining restaurant in Madrid´s gay neighbourhood, Maxi is not similarly motivated to be a good gay dad to his two kids, especially to his fifteen-year-old son, whose abandonment issues are manifesting as homophobia. Maxi´s best friend and maître d´ is cleavage-baring drama queen Alex (played by Lola Dueñas, another Almodóvar regular). She is fed-up with men but then she spies Maxi´s new neighbour, a hunky ex-soccer player whose ambiguous sexuality manages to turn the two friends into rivals.

Driven by a series of misunderstandings and pratfalls, this romp is the perfect showcase for Cámara, who walks a fine line between hysterically funny and merely hysterical.

Screening Sponsors: Cruiseline and Centretown Pub

CLOSING NIGHT SCRENING & GET-TOGETHER

GENDER BENDER International shorts screening followed by DJ CPI

Sunday, November 22 • 9PM

SAW Gallery / Club SAW

On closing night, we put the letters LGBT into a blender, pouring out a cocktail that celebrates the spectrum of gender. Trans activists, butch lesbians, child drag queens and more come together in this glorious ode to difference. The event coincides with the closing of the exhibition by dyke art star Allyson Mitchell at SAW Gallery.

Becoming Susan • Inga Dievulyte | Canada | 6 mins

An intimate portrait of Toronto trans activist Susan Gapka that reveals a life far greater than the sum of its parts.

S/He • Gina Pei Chi Chen | Taiwan | 12 mins

A 12 year-old girl explores her emerging masculinity while struggling with the roles she has to play.

Loving Loretta • Andrea Gutsche | Canada | 22 mins

All the men in town have a secret crush on Loretta - to them she’s the perfect woman. To all the women in town, she’s the perfect guy. But who is Loretta really perfect for?

Get Happy • Mark Payne | USA | 25 mins

As a flamboyant twelve-year-old, Mark Payne would dress up as Judy Garland and entertain the neighbourhood kids. By the time he was 18, Payne had worked with such Hollywood icons as Bob Hope and Milton Berle. Get Happy is a musical extravaganza that will sweep audiences up in the joy and spectacle of a truly unique talent.

Fagette • Ali Cotterill | USA | 4 minutes

Fagette is a trans-fabulous Sunday in the park. It’s croquet gone gay, dragtastic cheerleaders and synchronized dance, all in an Astroturf wonderland.

Screening Sponsor: Divergence Movie Night and Galerie SAW Gallery