From the "On The Scene" Archives:

by Matthew Breen

The most immediately noticeable addition to Outfest 2000, the 18th Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film Festival (July 6-17), was the adoption of eight animated mascots. It seems no event is truly complete these days without a mascot, from Taco Bell to the Olympic Games. But a film festival? Outfest's "Super 8" -- Flame, Fairy, Tongue, Butch, Gaydar, Lipstick, Circuit, and Baby Dyke -- are meant to represent the various aspects of the gay community. Unfortunately, the pre-film trailers starring each of these ill-conceived Disney-fied mascots met with an overwhelmingly unenthusiastic response.

One could argue that the offensive mascots -- and yes, one is actually a tongue with legs and a face -- are a decade too late, and that queer filmmakers have largely moved beyond the need to categorize characters and films in the same way they once needed to. And while the question of categorization (what actually constitutes gay cinema?) is likely to always be in the mind of programmers, Outfest seems to have put that question aside in favor of finding a diverse cross-section of film. Festival programmers make advances in the diversification of gay and lesbian cinema by including programs like "Afro-Explosion," celebrating African American cinema, "Platinum," celebrating experimental and avant-garde film, and the "5 @ 5," giving a prime-time platform to five first-time filmmakers. In addition, Outfest presented a spate of documentary and Latino films and proportionately as much foreign fare as any other international film festival.

In its dedication to documentary filmmaking, this year's opening night film was "The Eyes of Tammy Faye" (Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey), introduced by its narrator, an uncharacteristically butch-looking RuPaul Charles. This genuine crowd pleaser of a flick, dedicated to the plight of Christian zealot Tammy Faye Bakker Messner, the only televangelist who displayed early and ongoing support for gays and people with AIDS.

Prior to the film were the endless thanking of sponsors (the festival was presented this year by Absolut Mandrin and IFILM who, as one programmer put it: "encourage you to drink and get online"), and the presentation of the 4th Annual Outfest Achievement Award to the doc-making duo of Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman by their "Celluloid Closet" narrator Lily Tomlin. Their Outfest 2000 entry, "Paragraph 175," named for the archaic German law prohibiting homosexuality, interviews all but two of the known gay survivors of the Nazi regime. It is a singularly powerful documentary and surely one of the most important gay films this year.

"Tammy Faye" wasn't the only film with religion at its core this year. "Blessed Art Thou" (Tim Disney) was a misfire of a transsexual/virgin birth fable in a monastery. "Call To Witness" (Pam Walton), a slow-paced video documentary, examines the struggle out gay and lesbian clergy face in relationships, including expulsion of their congregations from the Lutheran church. Both films take shots at the establishment, variously painting organized religion's higher-ups as weak-willed or frightened and regimental.

First time filmmakers get a pretty fair shake at Outfest, especially in the 5 @ 5 program. "Just One Time" (Lane Janger) proves to be a cute and innocuous examination of a ménage à trois fantasy. Another first-time effort, "Get Your Stuff" (Max Mitchell) was much more grating, with flat characterizations and insulting implications about the gratuitous infidelity of gay couples. Among Latino entries was "Nuyorican Dream" (Laurie Collyer), winner of the Audience Award for OUTstanding Documentary Feature. The film is evidence of the sea change in gay films in the where the emphasis in not on the fact that every participant is fey, or shirtless, or a go-go boy, but that the subject's sexuality is merely an element of a larger life.

As for foreign fare, Outfest 2000 was the year of Ozon. French director François Ozon brought two films this year. His "Criminal Lovers," a disturbingly murderous twist on the "Hansel & Gretel" fairy tale won the Grand Jury Award for OUTstanding Foreign Narrative Feature. "Water Drops on Burning Rocks," based on a play by then-19 year old Rainer Werner Fassbinder, unspooled as part of the festival's popular Outfest Under the Stars program at the Ford Amphitheatre, and while "Criminal Lovers" was a definite hit, "Water Drops" left the audience a bit stunned. "Burlesk King" (Mel Chionglo) was a torturous installment in what has become an Outfest staple -- Filipino stripper/hustler flicks. Kudos for incorporating burgeoning Tagalog film, but this example was unbearable. The British series "Queer As Folk 2" satisfactorily finishes up where the original and enormously popular season left off, and "From the Edge of the City," a Greek film, again about hustlers, highlights an unfortunate trend in gay film -- mistaking titillation for content.

Far more important for the gay cinema canon is the bold "Urbania" from Unapix Films, one of the most powerful films about violence against gays in recent memory. "Urbania" (Jon Shear), was awarded the Grand Jury Award for OUTstanding American Narrative Feature.

Other Outfest Under the Stars program highlights include a couple of films you're likely to see in theatrical release this autumn. Strand Releasing's "Psycho Beach Party" (Robert Lee King) and Lions Gate Films' "But I'm a Cheerleader" (Jamie Babbit) are both candy-colored confections -- punchy, silly and enjoyable. "Psycho," a hybrid '60s surf and '70s slasher pic, camps it up featuring the best drag performance in this year's fest. "Cheerleader" (again featuring an out-of-drag RuPaul) makes light of ridiculous but real homo-rehab camps.

"Cheerleader" was preceded by the presentation of the Outie awards. The big winner at the ceremony, presided over by returning host Bruce Vilanch, was Thomas Bezucha's debut feature "Big Eden" walking away with both the Grand Jury Award for OUTstanding Actor in a Feature Film (Eric Schweig) and the Audience Award for OUTstanding Narrative Feature. At the Awards Night, festival executive director Stephen Gutwillig announced that this year's festival set all time attendance and box office records for the organization.

The closing night film, "Broken Hearts Club" (Greg Berlanti), included perhaps the straightest cast in a ultra-gay saga of a group of friends in West Hollywood -- which happened to be just a few dozen blocks from the screening and closing night party at the El Ray where cast members Dean Cain, Timothy Olyphant, and Nia Long were joined by LeAnn Rimes, James Van Der Beek, Judith Light, Christina Applegate, Jonathan Schaech, and Hollywood's newest gay celebrity, Danny Roberts from MTV's "The Real World." Other celebs at various festival functions were Alan Ball, k.d. Lang, "Trick's" J.P. Pitoc, Kevin Williamson, and Lesley Ann Warren.

[Matthew Breen writes film reviews for My Orange County, an Orange Counter Register website (www.myoc.com)]