Regent Releasing films Patrick, Age
1.5 and Little Ashes are set to bookend the 11th
annual Miami Gay & Lesbian Film Festival.
The 10-day festival gets going on
Friday, April 24 with Director Ella Lemhagen's Patrick, Age 1.5.
The dramedy begins with joyous gay couple Sven and Goran thriving
in the suburbs of Sweden, daydreaming about starting their own
family. A dream plagued by disappointing setbacks. So the men are
delighted with the news that a baby boy, Patrick, will be placed in
their care. But Patrick is not 1.5 as the agency described, but a
15-year-old homophobic teen with a criminal record. Anticipate
laughter and perhaps a couple of tears as we glimpse into the lives
of a contemporary gay couple.
Also being screened at the fest will be
Canadian director John Greyson's Fig Trees. The film popped
up at the Berlin International Film Festival in February where it won
a Teddy Award for Best Documentary/Essay film.
Greyson's Fig
Trees is an experimental film that documents the struggle for
AIDS patients in South Africa to gain needed access to treatment.
The film blends actual footage of AIDS activist Zackie Achmat's 1999
treatment strike, where he refused medicine until it became available
to all in his country, with singing actors against a backdrop of an
opera. It is narrated by a squirrel that is an albino.
In Suddenly, Last Winter we find
out that the homophobic despot of Italy is the Vatican.
It is filmed by Roman couple Gustav Hofer and
Luca Ragazzi, whose domestic bliss had largely insulated them from
the deep rooted anti-gay attitudes of their countrymen. But the
“shock and awe” response from church leaders and right-wing
organizations to a proposed gay civil unions bill in the winter of
2007 leaves the couple shell-shocked.
The setting is
Italy, but the narrative is eerily similar to California summer of
2008, making Suddenly, Last Winter a very interesting look at
the universal thinking of gay marriage foes.
And closing the
festival on Sunday, May 3 will be the U.S. premiere of Director Paul
Morrisson's highly anticipated Little Ashes.
Biases are
challenged in Little Ashes, including the love shared between
two men as Spain broils in social unrest. In 1922, eccentric painter
Salvador Dali (Robert Pattinson, Twilight) arrives at
university where he befriends poet Federico Garcia Lorca (Javier
Beltran) and artist Luis Bunuel. As Salvador and Federico draw
closer, the pair struggle to reconcile their artistic ambitions,
societal obligations and growing love for one another.
Little Ashes
arrives in arthouse venues on May 8.
Gay Entertainment
Report is a feature of On Top Magazine and can be reached at
ontopmag@ontopmag.com.
On the Net: The
Miami Gay & Lesbian Festival site is at www.mglff.com/2009.