It's Time to Vote

Yes, it's that time of the year again - elections for films for the winter season. Check out all of the nominated film's trailers (see Jim's email of 10/4/13 for the list). If you can't find Jim's email, here is a list of the films (titles only). Check IMDB to see the trailers.

Fanie Fourie's Lobola

The Discoverers

The Sapphires

Fruitvale Station

Kon-Tiki

20 Feet from Stardom

The Girls in the Band

In Darkness

Hitler's Children

Goodbye First Love

Like Someone in Love

Starbuck

After the Wedding

The Hunt

Something in the Air

Blue Jasmine

The Kid with a Bike

A Bag of Hammers

Much Ado About Nothing

Austenland

The Way, Way Back

Before Sunset

Divided We Fall

In a World

The Attack

You must be a NCFC member to vote. Vote for your favorite EIGHT films by emailing your selections to ncfilmclub@gmail.com. The deadline is Oct. 13.

Our next film is Any Day Now which will be showing Sunday, Oct. 13. John Anderson has made some excellent, thought provoking notes about the film so we can come prepared (just like a film class!).  So study up and come to the film with questions and comments for the discussion session.

The term “independent film” can be interpreted in a number of ways:  It can be a film produced outside of a major studio, a film supporting the unique view of its director, or a movie whose point of view is outside of traditional societal norms.

For a number of decades, movies catering to or depicting what we would today call the L.G.B.T community fell automatically within the latter definition.  Besides prevalent public disapproval of homosexuality, the M.P.D.A. Production Code, which the major studios upheld from 1934 until 1968, all but forbid specific references to its existence.  When Hollywood films rarely broached  the subject, as in Tea and Sympathy and The Children’s Hour, it served as a catalyst for advancing the subjects of rumor and scandal, not gender and sexuality.

The absence of homosexuality in Hollywood cinema did not keep gays from attending the movies.  On the contrary, the melodramatic excesses of certain feminine romantic melodramas became campy fodder for the L.G.B.T underground film movement.  Jack Smith’s Burning Creatures paid homage to kitschy glamour queens such as Maria Montez, while Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising amplified the fetishistic undertones of B movie biker flicks.  By the end of the 1960s, the Andy Warhol/Paul Morrissey collaborations offered a dead pan take down on traditional notions of tinsel town glamour. When representing homosexual themes was no longer verboten, art house  directors such as John Waters and Rainer Warner Fassbender refracted often dire depictions of the gay underworld through the prism of garish American melodrama.

What unified the independent L.G.B.T cinema during its formative years was a skewered, ironic take on the women’s weepies and domestic melodramas that gay men identified with when their identities were closeted by censorship, social conformity, and legal oppression.  Influenced by playwright Bertolt Brecht, L.G.B.T. cinema emphasized the artificial structure of film spectacle, making the audience aware that it was watching a movie, as opposed to trying to suspend its disbelief.  It attempted to transform the way that audiences saw movies: not as dreamers wafting through frenzied states of material bliss, but as alienated voyeurs forever removed from the fantasias of American consumer excess.

Since the 1980s, social forces have allowed movies to form a more accommodating relationship to traditional modes of movie storytelling.  Diminished public opposition to homosexuality, medical options for procreation, and the inheritance issues gay couples faced during the AIDS crisis shifted the community towards addressing its concerns through civil rights initiatives and family law.  Activism shifted from community consciousness- raising to a focus on individual rights and choices.  Consequently,  L.G.B.T. movies today frequently embrace the traditional  empathetic  style of Hollywood storytelling .  Longtime Companion, The Kids are All Right, and this week’s NCFC selections Any Day Now tug on the heartstrings without invoking self reflexive distance.

The irony of course, is that tear-jerkers, once a staple of Hollywood studios, are no longer produced en masse by major film distributors.  What were once mainstream movies have been shunted to independent models of distribution, and are independent only by the fact that they are shot without big studio financing.  By chasing the international market with big action/science fiction spectacles and talking animated animals, major companies have left the making of traditional genre films to the minors. Certain gay themed films are more mainstream in their attempt to make the audience feel the emotions of their characters, but the genres that these films invoke feel marginalized because they no longer fit the marketing demands of the old Hollywood system.

Any Day Now has been criticized in some circles for its overt sentimentality.  The story chronicling the trevails of a gay couple in the late 70s and early 80s as they adopt a jeopardized teenager with Down’s Syndrome, is shot in a highly immersive style with naturalistic performances by Alan Cumming, Garrett Dillahunt, and an utterly beguiling Isaac Leyva as the afflicted boy.  Our emotions are drawn out through the seductiveness of the characters, making their joys and sorrows become our own.  How do you respond to this type of moviemaking, and do you think it effectively stages the political issues surrounding sexuality and the family raised in the course of the melodrama?

Of course, one might argue that Any Day Now deliberately revises the traditional ways that independent L.G.B.T.  cinema structures the relationship between spectacle and spectator, allowing viewers to emotionally commit to the idea that normative familial structures and institutions are the most optimal path towards achieving emotional wholeness.  Is this a reflection of same sex relationships gaining more mainstream acceptance, or an acknowledgement that gays have a larger investment in protecting legal institutions that preserve their rights and property than in previous generations?

In any event, Any Day Now represents an era when the promise of family as a force for unifying the self is being extended to the L.G.B.T. community.  Whether or not the institution can sustain this sense of fulfillment beyond the sphere of cinematic illusion is a question that movies alone can’t answer.

Critics Corner
One of our members, Gail Brown, has been reviewing movies that she sees and has kindly agreed to  share her views of the new film Gravity with us:

I am still on ‘overwhelm’ from the movie yesterday.  Probably without a doubt, the best ‘space’ film of all time. Seven of us attended and we reviewed it between an 8.5 and a 10.  

If you are into the making of a movie, in terms of special effects…then you MUST see this film.  The visual effects are unbelievable…we did not see it in 3D but we felt like we did…Sandra Bullock was fantastic and believable considering she acted alone for most of the movie.  She will give Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine) a run for her money for the Oscar no doubt.

Surprised that George Clooney took such a secondary role …but my guess is that he really wanted to be part of this project and work with this director. Kudos to the director, Alfonso Cuaron and cinematographer, Emmanuael Lubezki for this groundbreaking film.

I am not a sci-fi fan at all but this one was well worth seeing…some of it is definitely ‘edge of your seat’ entertainment.  Those people who can’t wait to participate in space travel may be having some second thoughts after seeing Sandra’s ordeal!!!!

See you Sunday.