It’s that time of the bi-month, and the coolest bunch of queer film geeks are getting together for Chicago’s every-other-month queer short film screening! Threat Level: An Evening of Queer Shorts at The Elegant Mr. Gallery 1355 N. Milwaukee 3rd Fl. 7:30 doors / 8:00 screening, $5-10 sliding scale.
Featuring…
The Saddest Boy in the World – Jamie Travis
Red Stitches – Todd Goings
Asian Boyfriend – Wayne Yung
Ice Skate Canada – Mark Peacock, Michael Boyuk, B-Girlz
Canada Next Top Showgirl – Mark Peacock, Michael Boyuk, B-Girlz
The Perfect Score – Caryl Ann Hathaway
Yes, those screen shots are pre-O face. They are taken from Immersion: Porn By Robbie Cooper, a film that shoes people talking about their relationship to pornography and splices it with footage of the people masturbating while watching it. An exclusive for Wallpaper, this allows you to test your level of comfort in exploring your own sexual repression. Surely you can talk about it, but how well do you fare when around other people watching it? Find out! Get some popcorn and invite a friend to watch with you!
Threat Level: An Evening of Queer Shorts, the Chicago Queer film/video screening, is seeking submissions. This is a bi-monthly screening series of both new and old short (max 30 minutes) queer film/video work. If you identify yourself or your work as somehow queer, then you and your work belong.
Submissions due July 3rd for the upcoming July screening – the LAST of Threat Level in its current form.
Stay tuned for Autumn ’09 when Threat Level morphs and becomes…
• Quarterly!
• In both NYC and CHI simultaneously!
• Full of magical surprises!
Please send all submissions to:
“Threat Level”
c/o Feder/Rosskam
1265 W. Early Ave #2
Chicago, IL 60660
**please send only DVD’s, along with a short description of the work, and contact info of the filmmaker**
So it’s about a month old already, and I know that is an internet credential lifetime but Spring has been keeping me outside and the storms tonight are just what the doctor ordered for a quiet night alone with the world at my finger tips. The above 5.5 minute video by Miranda July is SO worth your fabulous time, as how often do we get quality programming that was intended for a free upload? Not that often. “The Hallway,” a 125 foot hallway – English in one direction / Japanese in the other is what we are walking through here. From the Yokohama Triennale 2008, this piece is made available courtesy of Hara Museum. I like that this video could wind up being a nice segue from July’s writing back to another movie (AH HA! I just went to ye olde imdb.com and saw that she is writing and directing a new feature-length film called “Satisfaction,” wherein “a young couple’s relationship is put to the test when one of them embarks on an ecological mission” thank you internet!) “The Hallway” really adds to July’s catalog: it takes her keen sense of narrative and turns it inside out. While you are walking through it, the dream it paints is consistently grounded by the hand written time line. Never sparring her trademark humor and earnestness, you leave the hallway possibly just having made some decisions about where to go next. LOVING it. Be sure to take a look at the mock-blog comments over at her site.
Threat Level, the bi-monthly screening of queer short films, is happening this Friday and the theme is musicals. I’m not sure there is anything gayer than a trans-positive musical, so FUCKING HOORAY for that. A little more exciting though, is that this time, Threat Level is showing a sneak preview of Riot Acts: Flaunting Gender Deviance in Music Performance, the documentary about trans-musicians produced and directed by Actor Slash Model. This film is gearing up to be the first of its kind: we’ve seen docs about certain performers, but this film will capture the state of queer music today while tackling issues related to being transgendered. Chicago has always been a hotbed for queerness, but this film will further put us on the map.
Friday, May 15th
Elegant Mr. Gallery
1355 N. Milwaukee Ave 3rd Fl
Doors 7:30pm / Screening 8:00pm
$5-10 sliding scale
I can’t tell you how bad I wish I was going to be in NYC the week before Pride. BUTT magazine just announced two pre-Pride Celebrations. The first one, called BANG, will be at The Knitting Factory with performances by Salem, Hunx and His Punx, and Sissy Nobby (more on Sissy Nobby in another post). The 2nd party will be at at Terence Koh’s gallery, Asia Song Society (ASS), and it will be a queer video film fest. They have just anounced an open call for submissions, and will be accepting films until May 20th, the show opens on June 19th.
I’ve was sent some interesting European televison ads with sensitive protrayals of trans gender identity. It’s a little jarring when the products are plugged but still pretty incredible to think that these were aired on TV. After poking around ye olde youtube, I found some other vids worth posting.
Italian ad for Campari
Transgender Children – Out of the Shadows
This one seemed to be a Public Service type of film for educational purposes.
The best was this youtube channel for Laidbaqq, a young black trans man’s video blog about his present experiences, challenges and questions. In this video, he responds to people who think they know who is and who is not trans based on physical traits and hormone taking.
I was already enjoying this song and playing it in my DJ sets, then the label sent me a link to the video. In it, two pretty boys brood alone at home before meeting at a park, then they make out. What could be some plain-jane depictions of idealized body types turns out a little sexier–they could be boyfriends, or they could be on a first meet up after chatting online. And it could be racially mixed. In any case, the making out is hot. And the song is nice – the production doesn’t get rave-y, the vocals have a punky vibe and the subtleties in the synths keep my attention. Adrian Lux‘s 2nd single, “Can’t Sleep” is available from La Vida Locash, and he also has a free downloadable 1 hour mixtape called “Vanity Fair #2,” available if you click here. Tracklist and streaming video of it after the jump.
This might get taken down pretty quickly, but Bruno, the new Sacha Baron Cohen movie looks great. The high-femme fashion troll takes a world-wide foray into confrontational sexuality, and where Borat turned out to be an intellectual examination of racism, this could do the same for homophobia. Add to that SBC’s core audience of capital D-udes, and you have mainstream subversion bow tied with a hot british actor. WERD! Trailer NSFW.
