The 30th annual Boston LGBT Film Festival is underway at various venues throughout the Metro area.
Tonight, there’s a freebie at the Paramount, and a featured film at the Brattle. Descriptions are from the fest’s official website.
7 PM – Bright Family Screening Room @ Arts/Emerson Paramount Center
DEVIL’S CLEAVAGE
Partial inspiration for Zippy the Pinhead and eulogized by the NY Times as “a national treasure,” George Kuchar, with his twin brother, Mike, practically invented the campy, no-budget, anti-professional, tasteless, gender-bending underground style later embraced by John Waters and others. He made over 500 films in his career. Tonight we feature two of his best: The Devil’s Cleavage is a farcical send-up of Douglas Sirk-style melodramas, made “as if Sam Fuller and Sternberg had collaborated in shooting a script by Tennessee Williams and Russ Meyer” (Chuck Kleinhans, Jump Cut).
SCREENING IS FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC COURTESY OF EMERSON COLLEGE.
8 PM @ Brattle Theatre, Cambridge
CAMPAIGN OF HATE
As most of the world moves forward toward gay equality, Russia is seemingly heading backward. Antigay sentiment and legislation are spreading rapidly throughout the country. In 2013, the Russian parliament passed a ban on so-called “gay propaganda” that effectively makes nearly any public discussion of gay equality a crime. The city of Moscow has outlawed Gay Pride parades for the next 100 years. Adoption of Russian children is forbidden to citizens of any foreign country that permits gay marriage. The Kremlin has chosen the LGBT community as its scapegoat in a populist campaign against supposedly decadent “Western” values, and there are ominous signs of much worse to come. Violent attacks against Russian gays or suspected gays are more and more common. Videos of young LGBT people being taunted and tortured have been widely distributed on the Internet.Those are the stories that get the headlines, but there is much more to the Russian LGBT men and woman I have met. It is my hope that this documentary will educate viewers to their reality.
eCinemaBoston and IndieFilmSpotlight will be posting daily schedules through the Festival, ending this Saturday. For more info on the fest and how to get tickets, visit the official website at http://bostonlgbtfilmfestival.org