daemonluna

Awww, Lethbridge had its first queer film festival! We went for Thursday night, and there were film shorts. Some of them were really good! ... some of them were not.

First off, there was free popcorn, pitchers of koolaid arranged in a rainbow, and tons of candy. Chewy, sour, convenience store candy. Mmmm, sugar. (Added bonus: watching

xmas_holly demonstrate that clearly

zulu/

queenzulu's foraging skills were inherited from the maternal line. Popcorn and candy FTW!)

There were a couple of well-intentioned almost-but-not-quite films, but... oh dear lord, then there was this one. With a guy dressed in drag down the left side of his body and in formal men's wear down the right, and he was marrying himself. The ceremony was presided over by an Elvis impersonator, and there was a wedding party of drag queens and drag kings, and.... you're probably thinking now that this doesn't sound too bad. A bit experimental, perhaps. But let me tell you right here and now that this was exactly like sitting through the wedding video of someone you've never met, complete with shaky camera-work, self-composed vows, and oh dear lord it just would not end! There was no point and it was totally self-indulgent. The girl has a similiar take here.

And I can't say I really GOT the black light glowing naked Dolly Parton look-a-like drag queen singing Whitney Huston at the end, but, meh. I'm sure it was profound in some context or another.

The up side: an adorable Spanish? maybe? film about two girls meeting in the park, an earnest student film about a boy too shy to talk to his crush on the bus, an awesome short about a young Chinese girl not comfortable with being a girl, an illustrated short about a nice Jewish gay man taking a trip to Prague and the elderly couple who keeps trying to set them up with their daughter ("What a nice Jewish boy like you needs is a nice Jewish girl...") and a local student film about road-tripping it to Vancouver Pride.

That last one was in its own class of awesome. It was less polished and nuanced than a lot of the films, but totally captured the way it feels to go on a road trip with friends towards something important, and brought you along with them for the in-jokes and the getting lost, and the fatigue and the giddiness. The parade footage was pretty neat to see, but the best part was watching their reactions, this bunch of friends in their early twenties from a prairie city in Canada's bible belt, all of a sudden in the middle of a big-city GLBT community and hit hard with a sense of belonging. There were tears, on-screen and in the audience. I think it was the most affecting and effective film of the whole night.

So yeah, I'm glad friends dragged us out to this, and I hope there's a next year!