Inside Out: online but undaunted

25 May 2021 -

For the second year in a row the Inside Out LGBT Film Festival is happening online. For the 31st time, there are more tantalizing films than there will be time to consume between Thursday, May 27 and Sunday, June 6. Even if one is strictly adhering to the stay-at-home orders. We may be missing out on the raucous and notorious parties, and the word of mouth will only be on social media, but Inside Out is still an event on which the LGBT calendar hinges. 

I spent more time perusing the catalogue than it took me to binge watch Halston. Allow yourself time to explore everything, with streaming there is no chance of screenings selling out so you won't miss that film that turned out to be more popular than anyone expected. And you'll be able to pace yourself. While the numerous features are given extensive blurbs, the shorts collections (where many of the treasures lie) give the individual films only one-liners. The shorts selections are always hit and miss but with streaming, you can always fast forward through a short that doesn't live up to your expectations. And it is important to remember that being a size queen is counterproductive, good things do come in small packages.

Fitting for spring, wistful during lockdown, there are lots of gay romances - tentative, torrid and/or thwarted - on display. From the Korean A Distant Place, the Swiss and Turkish Beyto, the German mumblecore Boy Meets Boy, the Namibian Kapana, to the US chef and Mexican immigrant kitchen staff  in I Carry You with Me, the heart wants what it and the loins want. The 'Afterglow' shorts collection also contains its fair share of romantic interludes from cruising the World Trade Center in the '80s and '90s, to erectile dysfunction, to polyamorous fishermen. The 'Delicate" and 'This Is Me Trying' shorts collections are also packed with gay romance. And this is just focussing on the boys instead of all the other letters in the LGBT spectrum.

There is crossover with other festivals. Two - a tale of lesbians on the hunt for sperm donors - will also be featured in the upcoming Toronto Jewish Film Festival. Moffie which is already available on some streaming sites and DVD/Blu-ray arrives at Inside Out boasting awards from multiple gay film festivals but also nominations in many mainstream (but aren't all film festivals at least a little bit gay?) festivals. I previously reviewed Moffie and concluded that it was "as if Bruce Weber had shot a documentary about life in the army." Oddly, the Inside Out catalogue did not use one of the many shirtless photos that Moffie's publicist's have been using to sell the film. Bloodthirsty, a lesbian werewolf film, has been a hit in various horror film festivals and it is a film I am very eager to be frightened by.

Inside Out did provide me with some screeners and I tried to sample different genres. Sure to be a hit is the documentary Drag Invasion. A troupe of RuPaul's Drag Race winners and runners up, travel to Peru and are startled and delighted to find themselves treated like rock stars and performing in front of thousands. There is a lot of sanctimonious speechifying about the power of drag and how liberating it is, but the sheer exuberance of the backstage bitchery and onstage exuberance is intoxicating. There are also many interviews with Peruvian fans who take Drag Race very seriously and, living in an essentially homophobic culture, the queens who arrive are indeed invading activists. Most heartwarming, and hilarious, is an onstage encounter between the inimitable Bianca Del Rio and a Peruvian housewife who manages to werk Del Rio into silence. And no-one will be immune to a proposal, one of the many good deeds the queens perform, that reduced me to stifled tears.

Everything at Once is a very different documentary. Paco and Manolo are Spanish erotic photographers who publish the magazine Kink. The magazine is not very kinky (they insist they didn't know that the word 'kink' had fetish connotations) but it is full of male nudity. The photographers are mired in the tired argument that erotic photography is art instead of porn. They do make some good points but the joy is in watching them work. The models get their say and are articulate but not as intellectually expansive as the photographers who wear t-shirts with John Giorno prints and quote Kerouac and Mapplethorpe. Their dialogue overlaps which makes the subtitles a gift, with a discussion ideal for Inside Out where they fret that as gay men they happily "watch heterosexual films but heterosexuals can't make that leap" and appreciate gay art, film or literature. The covid coda feels unnecessary but getting there is fascinating. The photographers agree that "the best photos, the best portraits, are after they have just cum." And they prove themselves correct.

Poppy Field is another film that has received awards and accolades from both gay and other festivals. Set in Romania, Poppy Field begins with a seemingly slightly closeted man, Cristo, being visited by his more cosmopolitan and apparently Muslim lover who stops over is on his way to Paris. The men connect physically but are having trouble verbally and emotionally, a situation exacerbated by a visit from Cristo's sister. Just as the film seems to be about to become a turgid but compelling domestic melodrama it takes the first of many twists. Cristo is a police officer and is called to a protest by far right zealots who are disrupting the screening of a lesbian film. Again, very fitting for Inside Out. From there a nuanced exploration of the pain of the closet, toxic masculinity and the difference between acceptance and equality unfolds. There is also a literal shaggy dog story that is devastating and also brilliantly performed and shot. Poppy Field reaches no conclusions, not even plot wise, but is extraordinarily powerful and thought-provoking. 

My must-see list also includes Can You Bring It, a documentary on a remount of Bill T Jones and Arnie Zanes's groundbreaking 1989 ballet D-Man in the Waters. You Will Still Be Here Tomorrow wherein a gay man has to come out to his father, afflicted with Alzheimer's, on every visit. The Canadian documentary Small Town Pride. The intriguing drama How to Fix Radios with young queers working in a bait shop. Mama Gloria about the fabulous trans activist Gloria Allen. A Sexplanation which bills itself as "provocative conversations in the pursuit of sexual truth and knowledge." And at least one or two more romantic - tentative, torrid and/or thwarted - to give me hope for the future. That is just scratching the surface. Unfortunately I can't say that I will see you at the movies, but I will see you online and next year, hopefully, in the theatre.