Reel Queer Premieres

Reel Queer, Harvard's first full-fledged bisexual, gay and lesbian film festival, will conclude a week of BGLAD events at the College. Sandi Dubowski, Rachel Eisendrath, Christian Willaure, Meredith Nierman and a woman who has asked to be called "Anita" organized the festival.

Crimson: What are the aims of independent gay/lesbian/bi film? Can mainstream film ever capture the same audience?

Christian: Hollywood will never remove the need for independent film. If Hollywood deals with gay and lesbian issues it will only deal with [them] Hollywood style. That goes for films about straight people too, independents are the only ones you can expect to do alternative presentations.

Sandi: Mainstream gay film--what little there is--has misrepresented the gay community. We are not all upper class white males in New York, like Longtime Companion, And mainstream gay film is never sexy, it never explores the erotic.

Meredith: Longtime Companion had one purpose, it was not a very brave attempt, it was about AIDS, and not even well-done about AIDS.

Sandi: And that was the first AIDS story that got told, that's what sells in the mainstream. It's the independents who are dealing with original subject matter, and they are finally getting some attention: Paris Is Burning, My Own Private Idaho, Poison; there has been a gay film boom in 1991-92.

Reel Queer Lesbian, Gay, Bi Film Festival Longfellow Hall, Radcliffe Yard April 9 Through April 12

"Anita": Hollywood, in its own tokenized way, is responding to that boom, vaguely approaching the question of gay/lesbian/bi lifestyle on L.A.Law, Thirtysomething, The Simpsons, Roseanne.

Sandi: In 1886-86, there was also a gay film boom, but they were all love stories, they were safer. These films being made now are even more experimental, in the ways in which they deal with race and class.

Rachel: It's great, because all the new technology has made it possible to do film with small budgets. A lot of the films are in different formats, short 10-20 minute works, black and white, no ncreative, disjunctive sound. At the same time [that] gays want to see themselves represented in the mainstream, this festival is a chance to see [that] gave have their own independent modes of production, they have control over their own production of culture--we create our won narrative as well as commentary on Hollywood narrative.

"Anita": Film festivals are crucial because distribution's hard--the films are underfunded and often censored. Going to the gay/ lesbian/bi film festival is a chance to see another culture, as much as to go see a foreign film. Queer life has its own culture--and its own diversity--in race, class, region, eating style...

>Sandi: If we could do some things differently, I feel like it's good we have a lot of Black lesbian and gay work, but not much Asian or Latino work--there should be more of that shown here.

Meredith: It's empowering too, this film festival, it's a place to come and see what the community looks like., It's something really wonderful to be in a room of all queer or queer-positive people.

Rachel: We have a very little recorded history. A lot of marginalized groups, as they come into academic discourse, are trying to reach back and preserve history. Where do we go to read about our tradition, there aren't many resources? In that way, we've always had a history, but we only have a discourse now.

Sandi: People say to me "Gay film? Porn, right?" No, but more sensual than Longtime Companion. The films we've chosen are on the cutting edge of cultural expression.

Meredith: It's good place for straight people to see how other people around them live all the time, except [straight people] usually don't bother to see it.

"Anita": We extend an invitation to Peninsula to come.

Sandi: This shouldn't be seen as threatening to anyone, what it is is a very exciting artistic moment.