Monday, April 17, 2017

Reverend's Preview: Back to the Beach

 

It may not be summer just yet but it isn’t too early to head to the beach. At least that’s true when it comes to the 18th annual Newport Beach Film Festival. The event will run April 20th-27th at multiple venues in and around its coastal host city. 


Celebrated as one of the leading lifestyle film festivals in the United States, the Newport Beach Film Festival (NBFF) seeks to bring to Orange County the best of classic and contemporary filmmaking from around the world. Committed to enlightening the public with a first-class international film program, a forum for cultural understanding and enriching educational opportunities, the NBFF focuses on showcasing a diverse collection of studio and independent films from around the globe.
This typically includes a number of productions with LGBTQ appeal, and 2017 is no exception. Thousands of straight as well as LGBTQ attendees annually make NBFF a smash success. LGBTQ filmmakers participate as well.

Here are some of this year’s notable offerings, both short films and feature-length, of interest to our community:


Alzheimer’s: A Love Story is a potent yet hopeful documentary short that follows longtime gay couple Greg and Michael as they struggle with the title disease, which threatens to destroy the memory of their 40-year relationship.

My Mom and The Girl features a great, diverse cast including Harmony Santana, Valerie Harper and Liz Torres headlines this tale about a dinner with friends that takes a dark turn, leading a retired jazz singer and her caregiver to a proverbial crossroads on the streets of East Los Angeles. There, they encounter The Girl and the three very disparate — and desperate — women pull each other back into the light.

Writer-director Jerell Rosales’ sweet Please Hold details the aftermath when a condom breaks during a random hookup with a stranger. Fearing he may be infected with HIV, young Danny finds an unexpected new friend while awaiting his test results. Shown as part of the fest’s “Around The World In Shorty Gays” program.

Another short films program, ‘Til Short Do Us Part,” will include Thanks for Dancing. In this Norwegian production, a lifelong relationship is coming to an end as we examine two elderly men, both former athletes, during the last winter they are living together.

The North American premiere of The Dam, an Australian film about two lifelong mates (that’s Aussie-speak for “friends”) who revisit the monolithic dam that defined their young lives. An admission from one of the men cracks open a reservoir of silence, loss and regret, and feelings that were impounded long ago cannot be contained any longer.


Although gay marriage was legalized there several years ago, Mexico ranks second in the world in the rate of murders committed against the LGBT population. The documentary Pink Spring in Mexico (Primavera Rosa en México) spotlights the activists who have risked their lives to denounce these hate crimes, but impunity continues to surround the perpetrators.

Pretty M John, in which a 10-year old boy, Danilo, helps his mother run a guesthouse in the Philippines. When Mimi John (a transgender boxer from Manila) arrives, Danilo seizes the opportunity to connect with her as he finds out more about his own gender identity.

The Lavender Scare is an eerily prescient feature documentary. With the United States gripped in the panic of the Cold War during the 1950’s, President Dwight D. Eisenhower deems homosexuals to be security risks and orders the immediate firing of any government employee discovered to be gay or lesbian. This triggered a vicious witch hunt that ruined tens of thousands of lives but thrust an unlikely hero into the forefront of what would become the modern LGBT rights movement.

A couple living in Baja California makes preparations for their grand wedding in No Dress Code Required. There's only one problem: they are both men and their union is considered illegal. Cristina Herrera Borquez’s acclaimed film won the John Schlesinger Award at January’s Palm Springs International Film Festival.

Tickets for this year’s festival offerings may be purchased by visiting the NBFF website or calling 949-253-2880.

Review by Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film and stage critic of Movie Dearest and Rage Monthly Magazine.

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