Happy Easter, everyone! Here’s today’s lineup at the 31st annual Boston LGBT Film Festival! All the writeups are from the offical press release from the festival. You can get complete fest info, including more on the films, showtimes, ticket info and more at http://bostonlgbtfilmfestival.org!
ROYAL ROAD. Directed by Jenni Olson. 65 min. USA. Museum of Fine Arts, Alfond. 1:00 PM
If you’ve ever found yourself on the outside looking in, then you are probably familiar with the coping strategy of acquiring the identity of a movie character in order to gain legibility within the situation. The central character of Jenni Olson’s mesmerizing essay film is a gender dysphoric, Midwestern tomboy who is drawn to borrowing masculine personas from Hollywood characters as a mode of understanding how to deal with being drawn to unavailable women. A fascinating and unlikely reinvention story, The Royal Road simultaneously explores cinematic spiritual channeling, the conquest and colonization of Mexico and the American Southwest, fading historical Californian urban landscapes, and the passions found in butch identity to achieve an achingly beautiful and poetic defense of remembering. Probing roads from El Camino Real, to the Boulevard of Broken Dreams, to the road right outside the front door, Olson crafts a deeply intelligent and transcending observation of the human condition that reaches for redemption in the embrace of history, nostalgia, mindfulness, and sheer beauty. If you give yourself over to it, it will crack you wide open. Language: English
WHO WE ARE: A TRANSGENDER SHORTS PROGRAM. Directed by SHORTS PROGRAM. 94 min. Bright Family Screening Room, Paramount Theatre. 2:00 PM
Seven short films that explore and illuminate the transgender experience.
TAB HUNTER CONFIDENTIAL. Directed by Jeffrey Schwarz. 90 min. USA. Museum of Fine Arts, Alfond. 3:30 PM
In the 1950s, Tab Hunter is number one at the box office and number one on the music charts. He is Hollywood’s most sought-after star and American’s boy next door. Natalie Wood, Debbie Reynolds and Sophia Loren are just a few of the actresses he is romantically linked to. Nothing, it seems, can damage Tab Hunter’s career. Nothing, that is, except for the fact that Tab Hunter is secretly gay. Now, Tab Hunter’s secret is out. In TAB HUNTER CONFIDENTIAL we will meet, for the first time, the real Tab Hunter as he shares with us the whole story of a happy, healthy survivor of Hollywood’s roller coaster. Language: English
You Go Girl! Queer Women of Color Shorts Bright Family Screening Room, Paramount Theatre. 4:00 pm
FRENCH SHORTS. 97 min. Brattle Theatre. 4:30 PM
Program curated by Alberto Bianco, our new team member from the Toulouse LGBT Film Festival.
Total Running Time: 97 min
QUEER ASIA.
Total Running Time: 85 min. Bright Family Screening Room, Paramount Theatre. 6:30 PM
Three wonderful films that explore the LGBT life in very different parts of Asia. From an overly protective mother in Tapei to a raunchy taxi driver in Seoul and a first ever documentary on two transgender women in Northeast China, this program will open your eyes and maybe make you laugh and cry a little bit.
XENIA. Directed by Panos Koutras. 134 min. Greece/France/Belgium. Brattle Theatre. 7:00 PM
Strangers in their own birthplace, 16-year-old Danny and 18-year-old Odysseus cross the entire country in search of their Greek father, after their Albanian mother passes away. Determined to force him to acknowledge paternity, little do they know that the road to the much-coveted Greek citizenship is paved with ghosts from the past, adult savagery and a dream that needs to come true, no matter what. Reaching the end of this initiatory journey they eventually come of age even if Greece refuses to follow Language: Greek/Albanian/Italian