Queer Cinema’s Fall Cornucopia
NewFest back with compelling co ompelling comedies, dramas, docs
BY GARY M. KRAMER
NewFest, New York’s leading
LGBTQ fi lm festival,
returns October 23-29
for its 31st edition. The
festival, which includes more than
150 shorts, features, and documentaries,
opens with a whimper
with “Sell By” (Oct. 23 at 7 p.m.,
SVA Theatre), a broad, undemanding
comedy-drama written and
directed by Mike Doyle. The fi lm
concerns an insecure group of gay
and straight friends dealing with
issues of intimacy, jealousy, and
communication. Unfortunately,
the fi lm is largely one-note and the
characters and their situations all
feel underdeveloped.
But NewFest closes with a bang,
with the New York premiere of out
gay Bolivian fi lmmaker Rodrigo
Bellot’s stunning and impactful
“Tu Me Manques” (Oct. 29 at 7:30
p.m., SVA Theatre). This multilayered
drama, adapted from Bellot’s
play, has a conservative father,
Jorge (Oscar Martinez), grappling
with the death — a possible suicide
— of his gay son Gabriel (played by
three actors: Jose Duran, Ben Lukovski,
and Quim del Rio). Jorge
contacts Gabriel’s lover, Sebastian
(Fernando Barbosa), to learn about
his late son. Sebastian, meanwhile,
is channeling his grief by staging a
play about Gabriel.
Bellot deftly weaves these and
other narratives together to immerse
the characters and viewers
in Gabriel’s world and experiences.
(Tommy Heleringer gives a scene
stealing turn as Gabriel’s chatty
friend TJ). “Tu Me Manques” becomes
transcendent as it addresses
how love and fear dictate our
attitudes and behavior. The play
created awareness in Bolivia about
at-risk queer youth, and the fi lm
will likely amplify its important
messages about love and acceptance.
Here is a rundown of other noteworthy
fi lms screening at this
year’s NewFest:
“All We’ve Got” (Oct. 25 at 6
p.m., SVA Theatre; Oct. 27 at 4:15
p.m., LGBT Community Center) is
Jonathan Agassi in Tomer Heymann’s “Jonathan Agassi Saved My Life.”
Jibz Cameron, aka Dynasty Handbag, in Chet Catherine Pancake’s “Queer Genius,” which screens October 26.
an inspiring and affectionate documentary
about the continuing
need for social spaces for lesbians,
bisexual women, and transgender
folks — and their troubling erosion.
Director Alexis Clements hooks
viewers right from her pre-title sequence,
emphasizing the shared
experience and visibility afforded
by queer women’s spaces. Her fi lm
investigates the WOW Café Theatre
collective in Manhattan, the Lesbian
Herstory Archives in Brooklyn,
the lesbian bar Alibi’s in Oklahoma
City, and the Esperanza Peace
and Justice Center in San Antonio
FILM
COURTESY OF NEWFEST
COURTESY OF NEWFEST
to show how vital places like these
are. These venues not only provide
safe, inclusive places for queer
women to meet, but help build an
intergenerational community and
create ways of nurturing a sense
➤ NEWFEST, continued on p.32
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