The Pittsburgh International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival
Pittsburgh City Paper › August 21, 2009
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Summary
4:45 p.m. BORN AGAIN. Fundamentalist Christian. Openly lesbian. Two identifiers that don't suggest an easy union, and indeed that proves to be case in filmmaker Markie Hancock's insightful documentary about her own complex journey from her intensely religious youth in Altoona, Pa., through her sexual awakening in college. Using family photos, archival footage and contemporary interviews, Hancock celebrates her hard-won identity while mourning the rifts her choices have created within her family. Her parents and siblings are extensively interviewed, and it's with sadness that we too note they are otherwise good people who can't reconcile Hancock's full life with their own beliefs. Director Hancock and producer Kathryn Gregorio will attend the screening. SouthSide Works (AH) ***
7 p.m. ALEXIS AROUETTE: SHE'S MY BROTHER. Matthew Barbato's cameras follow Alexis Arquette - of the Hollywood acting clan - as she prepares for male-to-female gender-reassignment surgery. It's an intriguing journey handled sensitively by the filmmakers, and often cavalierly by its subject. The admittedly self-interested Arquette makes an unreliable and frustrating narrator; likewise the few Ia vie Arquette bystanders who keen for camera time. What's missing is any clue as to what really motivates Arquette: gender-identity crisis, quest for the spotlight beyond the D-list or a mercurial, shape-shifting personality perpetually in flux? The filmmakers are ultimately stymied by Arquette, but they might have stretched' the net wider for a more complete picture. To be preceded by the short "Trannymals Go to Court." SouthSide Works (AH) **9:15 p.m. SPIDER LILIES. Jade, a childlike 18-year-old who lives with her granny and earns cash shimmying for her Webcam, wants a tattoo - and she wants it from Takeko, the young woman who years earlier was Jade's first crush. Director Zero Chou's lyrical, dreamlike (and occasionally nightmarish) romance, set in Taiwan, explores memory, love and inked flesh, with subplots involving an undercover cyber-cop and Takeko's younger brother, traumatized as a child by an earthquake's aftermath. While there's little here that's terribly fresh, Spider Lilies is a poignant study of how the search for the ideal obscures what's real, and how memory can warp perception. In Mandarin, Taiwanese and Japanese, with subtitles. SouthSide Works (BO) **See the full content of this document
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The Pittsburgh International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival
The Pittsburgh International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival
FILM FESTIVALFilms and videos screen at the SouthSide Works Cinema, in the South Side, and the Harris Theater (809 Liberty Ave., Downtown). Tickets are 58.50 for single admissions; $6 for under 25. Discount passes are available, including: the Cheap Thrills packet ($45 for six admissions); the Scream Queen Pass ($75 for 10 admissions); and the Diva Pass ($125 for admission to all festival events and parties). See www.pilgff.org for more information.CLEAR YOUR S...See the full content of this document
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