Coming August 26 . . . Stay Alert for Details
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queerVOICE
Pride & The Words They Speak
James Duggan
copyright 2010
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Last Sunday I went to New York City to celebrate Pride. What
a parade! Even though I was raised on Long Island, and worked and played
in New York City,
I had never been to this world class celebration before. Over 350 groups and
500,000 people turned out for this annual event, including the Governor of New
York and the Mayor of New York City.
Later in the day, I had the pleasure of
attending a private party hosted by a lovely couple, Larry and Joe, who have
been hosting their annual Pride party for over 30 years. It made for a
wonderful day. The crowds, the party, the love and positive acclamation
all made for a memorable experience. I even made a visit to the Stonewall
Inn where it all started.
New
York City has been celebrating Pride for 40
years since the infamous Stonewall Riots and has grown each year to the great
celebration and commemoration it is today. On the other side of this is Durango, Colorado
where the inaugural Four Corners Pride Festival was held with "hundreds" in
attendance.
Durango has a
population of just over 15,000 people and is known more for its bike races than
just about anything else. But a few brave souls decided it was time to
show the people of the area that, yes, indeed, queers live, work and play all
around the four corners section of Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona.
While reading about this event, I was
impressed that even today new Pride events are popping up all across the country.
In both large cities and small towns Pride continues to grow. But with
Pride, there are the ever persistent voices of dissent.
Comments posted online to the Durango
Herald news article about the Four Corners Pride Festival where typical of the
objections our opponents have towards us.
One writer
posted: "I know you have deep hurts; your Father wasn't around for you, or
your Mother hurt you while you were young. And now your(sp) trying to place
salve on your open wound with a person of the same sex....Run to God, not more
pain...Jesus Christ can set you free
from your pain......Please!!"
My response:
I'm tired of hearing this argument. My father was and is a great man who
showered us with love and was ever present in our lives and my mother never
hurt me as a child; she was by far the most loving and supportive person in my
life.
Another posting
read: "Why is a Pridefest necessary and important?? We do not hate
LGBTQ folks--- We just don't agree with their thought process, and wonder why they
need public gatherings to show off their sexuality."
My
response: We are not showing off our sexuality; we are celebrating our
very being. For too long, we have been marginalized and ignored as a
class of people. We will never again be ignored and will continue to show
off the rich diversity of our community until we are all free to live our lives
as equals.
Yet another
posting read: "Oh my God!! Why do these people have to take up time,
and use city parks to show off their WRONG, WRONG, WRONG lifestyle?? Why can't
you be NORMAL???"
I love this
one--the old "what can't you people just be normal argument." We take up time
and use city parks because we are free citizens of the Untied States. Our
sexuality is not a lifestyle; it simply is a fact of our birth. As to normal,
we are as normal as another group of people--whatever normal is?
Pride lives and
grows across America
and around the world. It is a movement propelled by a truth that our
lives are rich, diverse, and honest. It is a movement that can not be
stopped or hindered by the blindness of our neighbor's bigotry or by the will
of governments.
In the face of
opposition, we will prevail because we have truth on our side--a truth that
states that all peoples are created equal! Via La Pride!
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What It Looks Like From Here
Thom Cardwell
copyright 2010 |
 It's
that time of year again! Forget work! Forget chores! Forget your usual routine!
Think only about films and get your schedule in order so that you don't miss
out on the selection of 125 films being premiered at the 16th Philadelphia QFest 2010,
July 8-19.
Veteran
artistic director Raymond Murray
with his team of experienced programmers, including the return of Travis Crawford, the acclaimed devotee
of "Danger After Dark," will be premiering 10 titles as a segment of QFest to
satisfy the taste of film goers who missed out on the cancelled CineFest this
past spring.
"It's
not all about horror," explained Crawford, "but really many International films
that can't be readily pigeonholed into a film genre." How's that for challenging your film
aesthetic?
But
back to the queer content of the summer film festival.
For
starters, life for festival attendees has been made considerably easier as the
venues are the Ritz East One and Two
and the Ritz at the Bourse, so every
screening is within walking distance of only a few blocks in Old City.
Then
there's some new options for selecting what specific films anyone wishes to
see. For the first time ever at any film festival in Philadelphia, there are two opening night films on July 8!
Wendie Malick in You Can't Have It All
 | And
it's definitely "love that's in the air" as "You Can't Have It All" directed by Jay
Arnold and co-written by me with Arnold is "a sparkling, wacky
comedy about finding love" starring Jon
Lindstrom ("As the World Turns"), Wendie
Malick ("Just Shoot Me") and newcomer Chris Murrah, shot entirely in
Philadelphia. You don't want to miss out
on this first of nine World Premieres at this summer's festival.
Then
"Elena Undone" has its East Coast
Premiere. Lesbian programmer Kelly
Burkhardt is proud of the Nicole Conn's
tale of "destiny about bringing together two women from different walks
of life serendipitously together in an enchanting homage to the power of love"
as the kick-off to the lesbian film lineup.
Elena Undone
 | Then
we'll all converge together to celebrate our "Sweet Sixteen" with a party at a
new venue for QFest at the Liberty View
Ballroom & Terrace, at the Independence Visitors Center, where mixing
and mingling with the cast and crew of "You Can't Have It All" and "Elena
Undone," dancing the night away to the music from DJ Stephen Durkin and light bites and libations featuring festival
cocktails from Smirnoff Vodka, Bluecoat Gin, Barefoot Wine, Smart Water,
VitaminZero, among others, will make
the beginning of the 12-day event entertaining and memorable.
Of
course, there's more news to come about QFest 2010 from me in the next few weeks.
So,
as the cliché goes, I'll see YOU at the
movies!
And
just in case you were wondering about how I'm feeling about being part of a
film premiering on opening night, yes, "I'm both elated and petrified."
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Thom's Closet
Thom Cardwell
copyright 2010 |
 Fans
of queer fashion photographer Bruce Weber will be happy to know that this month will mark the
return of the ever- popular, even collectible, Abercrombie & Fitch quarterly catalog that will be released,
after a seven years absence, on July 17 for $10 a copy.
Devotees
of Weber's signature photographic expressions of young male (and female but
with considerably less emphasis) body worship can pre-order the first edition
of the re-launching of the A & E catalog online or can pick up copies
in-store.
A
& F recognized as one of the leading fashion "teen retailer" with the
worship of the All-American preppy image was at the top of the heap, despite
its high-priced flannel shirts, cool message tee-shirts and jeans suffered its
normally large revenue share of the consumer market once the recession hard hit
the fashion industry.
Pressured
by various conservative factions who accused A & E of the catalog's content
being full of "sexually suggestive
photographs" abruptly discontinued publishing the quarterly in 2003 without
offering any explanation.
The
catalog, with its theme of "VIP
Backstage Pass" promoting a fictionalized screen test, is part of A &
E's back to school campaign that will also include in-store displays.
While
industry analysts predict that the catalog will not directly impact sales of A
& E clothing, the media exposure will have an overall positive effect upon
the brand.
"[A
& E] is starting to reconnect with some of their customers and want to
drive more traffic into their stores and e-commerce site. A catalog is one way
for them to do that," said Howard Tubin,
a RBC Capital Market Analyst.
Though
I must confess that I'm far from the A & E demographic and don't own any of
their clothing, I am a huge admirer and collector of Weber's work and still own
all of the original catalogs in addition to his many coffee table photographic
books and portfolios in addition to a few of his documentary films, including Chop Suey Club. And I'm thrilled that A
& E, for whatever reason, is bringing back their visually enticing catalogs
for all of us to enjoy.
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What They Said and Did!
copyrighted 2010
| Queer
poet of America,
Allen
Ginsberg was, as many queer men seem to be, a hopeless romantic when
he came to the male object of desire.
One of the leading figures of the Beat(nik) Movement, Ginsberg became
and  remains the Walt Whitman of the modern world. He is the subject of a
soon-to-be-released feature film, "Howl," about his famous poem and the
obscenity trial that ensued. The film will premiere at Philadelphia QFest 2010
on July 9 and 11. Ginsberg appears in another film in the festival, William S.
Burroughs: A Man Within, a documentary
about his intellectual writer friend and mentor. But back to Ginsberg. In Allen Ginsberg Journals: Early Fifties,
early Sixties, edited by Gordon Ball (Grove Press, 1977), he writes: "Love.
He is our deepest self. Mysterious, actual, delightful and sorrowful at once,
fell of gentility and imprudence, a beneficent spirit, a god acting thru human
masks. He is the same in all, neither man nor woman. We all have the same sense
of bottom self. He is the solitary." Perhaps the philosopher-king Ginsberg
was thinking of his straight friend, the legendary Neal Cassady, who he was
hopelessly in love and refers to extensively in his journals simply as "C. . .
." ___________________________________________ Remember
Eminem? Well, it seems that these days the
37-year-old, divorced father of three
daughters, and resident of Michigan hasn't only changed his hair color from the
dyed platinum back to his natural brown  and uses his real name, Marshall
Mathers, but many of his attitudes, opinions and viewpoints. On the release of
his newest album. "Recovery," Eminem, whose be clean for two years and
currently seeing a rehab counselor on a regular basis told The New York Times
(June 20, 2010) that "Anything that I've
ever said I certainly was feeling at the time. But I think that I've calmed
down a bit. My overall look on things is a lot more mature than it used to be."Though he doesn't feel that his estranged relationship with his mother who
actually sued him for defamation, his gay-bashing are significantly over. When
asked if he'd support same-sex marriage, a mellower, gay-friendlier Eminem
answered: "I think if two people love
each other, then what the hell? I think that everyone should have the chance to
be equally miserable, if they want to be." ___________________________________________ While
New York Magazine (May 31, 2010) recently called the incredible Tilda Swinton,
"the actor's non-actor" (whatever that means but it has something to do how she
practices the art of acting so effortlessly, so  exquisitely) who we already
know can play-literally-almost any role, even male and female within the same
film (remember "Orlando"?) Swinton currently appears in her latest film, "I Am
Love," (her first time serving as a producer) and described herself more as a
"collaborator" than as an "actor" in the traditional sense. One of the most
honest women in film, she shared her personal but quite different perspective
on even winning an Oscar for "Michael Clayton". "The Oscar's a huge mistake, a red herring. I know most people, whether
they act or not, would like to set their sights at standing in front of 3
billion people accepting a golden statue, I never have, so I feel a little
sheepish about it. I'm like the person in Pass the Parcel, like the music
stopped at the wrong time."
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