The Utah Review has screened many of the films on this year’s slate for the Utah Film Center’s Utah Queer Film Festival. The following is a detailed run down of the entire slate of feature-length and short films.
FEATURE FILMS
Documentaries
The ABCs of Book Banning 2023/ USA/ Documentary (Sheila Nevins)
While this MTV Documentary Films short, which runs just shy of a half-hour is Nevins’ directorial debut, she is nevertheless a titan in the world of nonfiction film making, with more than 400 credits as producer or executive producer and as the winner of 32 Primetime Emmys. As noted in a Deadline article published last year, “Nevins, 84, was inspired to make the film after watching a vi video of Grace Linn, a 100-year-old woman who addressed the Martin County School Board in Florida in March, speaking passionately against book banning. Linn explained that her husband had been killed in action in World War II, defending American liberties.” In an interview, Nevins said, “I thought, fuck, this woman is a hundred years old, and she cares and she’s talking to a school board. Why don’t I make one of my last enterprises this? Because I really, really care about this whole book banning thing. I think it’s the beginning of fascism. If this woman could do it at a hundred, I could fucking do it at 84. And I was going to go out there and I was going to make this film.”
A House Is Not a Disco 2024/ USA/ Documentary (Director: Brian J. Smith)
A very solid directorial debut for Smith, an actor whom many might have seen in Sense 8, A House Is Not a Disco is an enriching historical chronicle about the most famous homonormative community in our country, Fire Island Pines, located approximately 50 miles from New York City.
A well blended mix of archival material and contemporary interviews, the documentary is situated around an entire season (2022), so viewers hear perspectives from the small number of yearlong residents and season workers, as well as the throngs of visitors, volunteers and activists who cumulatively epitomize a sense of family that surprisingly feels like what one reviewer properly termed it, Grover’s Corners, as envisioned in Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town, about a fictional community in the early 20th century.
Smith is eminently egalitarian in bringing in many diverse voices to the film, which effectively magnifies the warmth and affection he strives to portray in this love letter to Fire Island Pines. It remains a durable community, as the film reflects upon generations of queer community history, including campaigns for equality, HIV and AIDS and the continuously evolving culture that expands to include the broader spectrum that defines a 21st century gay community. In fact, one of the greatest challenges the community faces today are the impacts of climate change, as evidenced in the erosion of beachfront landscapes and the threats it poses to nearby properties. The screening will open with the short film: One Story at a Time: Celeste Lecesne by Eve Tenuto, Natalia Lyudin.
A Long Way From Heaven 2024/ USA/ Documentary (Director & Screenwriter: David Sant) is the latest in a series of Utah-based documentaries that have focused on the stories of Brigham Young University’s queer underground and others who were raised in Mormon families. The film is presented by the Artist Foundry‘s Utah Filmmaker Showcase program.
This documentary is a very good updated complement to Utah Film Same-Sex Attracted, a documentary directed by Maddy Purves and Zoie Young, which when it premiered at this same film festival four years ago, provided one of the most comprehensive views to date of the challenges LGBTQ+ students at BYU confront in navigating a strict honor code and the efforts of the student support group USGA (Understanding Sexuality, Gender and Allyship) to gain official recognition on the campus.
Sant’s documentary springs from a story that gained national attention, when activists and Allie’s lit the famous Y in rainbow colors, which overlooks BYU’s campus in Provo. The stakes for queer BYU students have not changed. As with the earlier film, many of those who are featured in the film were aware how it could create risks in their relationships with peers, families and others in the Mormon community. Sant includes two other examples of the most widely shared events from that period, including the 2019 commencement speech by BYU student Matt Easton who came out during the ceremony and Jillian Orr, who revealed a rainbow flag sewn inside her graduation gown during BYU graduation ceremonies in 2022. Other stories noted include a queer lacrosse athlete who decided to quit the sport rather than face an honor code investigation and sanctions. There also was a BYU counselor, who since left the university, who helped to connect Queer students to support services, under the radar.
Like Same-Sex Attracted, A Long Way from Heaven is balanced, as it also shows students who reflect positively upon their experiences at the school. The result is that each new generation of queer students at BYU is committed to improving the environment, which also honors the extraordinary patience and discretion their predecessors have exercised to win a modicum of respect and affirmation for living their true identities and nurturing their own spiritual and emotional intelligence.
A dynamite offering among an already solid offering of documentaries, Chasing Chasing Amy (2023/ USA/ Documentary (Sav Rodgers) makes for a brilliant media culture case study. Naturally, Chasing Amy, the 1997 film directed by Kevin Smith is at the core of Rodgers’ unique enterprise here. Since Rodgers watched the film for the first time, at the age of 12, he became obsessed with it, even making it the focus of a TED Talk.
What stands out in this film is that during its making, Rodgers not only became part of the documentary narrative, originally conceived as a look at how the film intersected and engaged the queer community, in terms of his own coming-of-age (Rodgers came out as a transman during the filming of his project) but also about his own love story with Riley, a woman whom he married after completing the film. In fact, it is the director’s story that shifts our perspective quite significantly about how many in the queer community originally viewed the film, which generally was negative, contentious and anything but flattering. Smith is not only thrilled by Rodgers’ interest in the film but was unequivocally supportive of the director’s willingness to come out as a transman as well as appreciative of his perspective on the film which Smith had considered previously. But, among the most interesting scenes in the discussion about the film come in the exchange between Rodgers and Joey Lauren Adams, who starred in Chasing Amy. Suffice it to say, Adams, while open and willing to discuss the film and her outside relationship with Smith, is not persuaded by the director’s appreciative take on the film’s story and character treatments.
In an interview published elsewhere, Rodgers explained about how his place in the story grew organically: “And as time goes on, you have to listen to the incredibly smart, intelligent people around you who are giving you feedback and giving you honesty and sharing their truth with you. And as they’re responding to cuts, I have to listen or else I’m not being a very good collaborator, am I? And so, while I did not set out to be in the movie, I’m glad that it all turned out the way that it did. And I think we can see that a little bit on camera, just how reluctant I was for some parts of this. As it pertains to Riley, she was game from the jump. She was like, ‘What is this? You want me to do what now? OK, great.” She is the most supportive, most wonderful person, charming, charismatic, and I’m so glad that people get to see her the way that I see her.”
The film has garnered major awards, including Best Documentary Award at 2023 FilmOut San Diego; Grand Jury Prize Feature at 2023 Hell’s Half Mile Film & Music Festival; Jury Award Winner at 2023 Tampa Bay International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival; Best Documentary Feature at 2023 St. Louis International Film Festival; Best Documentary at 2024 Omaha Film Festival.
Combining elements of documentary and relevant bits of fiction, Desire Lines (2024/ USA/ Action (Jules Rosskam), ends up working marvelously in its unique hybrid treatment, incorporating archival materials and interviews, as a gateway into the topic of transmasculine sexuality. The film earned a special jury prize in the NEXT category at Sundance this year, as well as the Thessaloniki Silver Alexander Film Forward Award.
In an interview published elsewhere, Rosskam articulates quite clearly about the meaning and intentions of the word ‘desire’ in the film title, its acknowledgment as a false binary and how his relationship to it mirrors those of the subjects portrayed in the film. “My relationship to the film’s title is similar to those in the film. When I came out as trans, I experienced a shift in my desires,” Rosskam explains. “This was scary and, in some ways, undesirable. I didn’t actually want to be attracted to men. The reality is that I’m attracted to all kinds of people and bodies, and I always have been. But the experience of desire while occupying one kind of body versus another not only feels different but has different social implications. I also think about desire as existing not just in a sexual realm but, in a psychoanalytic sense, as the driving force behind why we do anything Perhaps more than anything else, I desire to know [everything].”
Indigo Girls: It’s Only Life After All 2023/ USA/ Documentary (Director: Alexandria Bombach). Some of the most impactful moments in the documentary, It’s Only Life After All, a comprehensive retrospective on Atlanta-based singer-songwriters Amy Ray and Emily Saliers who continue to perform as the Indigo Girls, appear in the first third of the film. The documentary received its Sundance premiere in 2023.
There are numerous fascinating clips culled from a rich treasure of home movies, cassette tape recordings and television programs that director Alexandria Bombach included in the film. The story about the Indigo Girls emerges as a valuable archive of musicians who broke industry ground in many ways but also as a platform for further study about a fresh perspective on southern history, feminism and identity in the New South, as noted in The Utah Review feature from 2023.
Again from The Utah Review’s Sundance feature:
“It was refreshing to see the formative coordinates that not only defined the Indigo Girls but also represented subtle differences between the two artists. Saliers was a transplant to the South, who was born in New Haven, Connecticut, while her father was a Yale graduate student majoring in theology. They moved to Decatur when Saliers was 10 years old and her father was hired as a professor at Emory University. Ray, a year younger than Saliers, was born in Atlanta and is proud of her southern heritage which has spanned at least five generations. Her father was a doctor who also had served in the U.S. Navy.
It was in high school when the duo began collaborating on writing songs. Ray was still a high school senior when Saliers started her freshman year at Tulane University. While Saliers had hopes of becoming an English teacher, she left Tulane after two years — a combination of homesickness and transforming episodes in her self-identity being the reasons for deciding to return to Atlanta. Meanwhile, in her own dissatisfaction with college at Vanderbilt, where she regularly encountered homophobia, Ray came out as gay and had her first romantic relationship with a woman who was a student at the University of Georgia.
“Perhaps the fondest memories Ray and Saliers share in the film are their performances at the Little Five Points Pub in Atlanta, which became the launching ground for their career and fame. These recollections reinforce the emergence of a new southern identity of pride, advocacy and enlightenment.”
Summer Qamp 2023/ Canada/ Documentary (Director: Jen Markowitz) is a documentary following a group of LGBTQ+ youth at an idyllic lakeside camp in Alberta. The film premiered at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. Aptly describing it as a “bubble of queer joy,” Pat Mullen highlights how open and candid the campers are with the directors in recounting their own stories of gender identity. “There are tales about coming out, and coming out again when some of them realize the elusiveness of labels and the fluidity of gender. Young campers like Ren share how they have no gay friends in their small town and simply don’t know how to interact with people or how to be comfortable around them,” he summarizes. “Ghoul, meanwhile, tells how they don’t understand the binary at all. They simply prefer fluid identity through cosplay and make-up.” The screening will be preceded by the short film: Bay Creek Tennis Camp by Michele Meek.
One of the documentaries is a wonderful time capsule from 1995, Wigstock: The Movie, directed by Barry Shils. Wigstock was a drag music festival staged in New York City’s East Village neighborhood and the film captured performances by Crystal Waters, Deee-Lite, Debbie Harry, Miss Coco Peru, and RuPaul. Just as valuable is the bounty of behind-the-scenes footage documenting rehearsals, stage crew prep, audience members’ reactions.
The World According to Allee Willis (2024/ USA/ Documentary, Director: Alexis Manya Spraic) about the songwriter best known for writing the theme for the Friends sitcom, along with the Earth Wind & Fire mega-hit September. Pointer Sisters’ Neutron Dance and The Color Purple musical. Born in Detroit, Willis, who died in 2019 at the age of 72, had the sort of life story that served the most appealing creative objectives for a documentary film which has enjoyed solid attention since its debut earlier this year at South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin. It is a definitive account, as the Detroit Free Press noted: “The documentary is in many ways the late songwriter’s own handiwork: As a fastidious if chaotic recordkeeper and collector, Willis left behind detailed notes for a prospective film about her life and career. It became a road map for director Alexis Spraic.”
Narrative
All Shall Be Well (2024/ China/ Drama (Director: Ray Yeung) is definitely not to be missed or overlooked. Yeung is a distinguished director and this film won the Teddy Award for Best Feature Film at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival. Five years ago, Twilight’s Kiss, another Yeung film, was just as superb, about an aging Asian gay male couple. In the latest story, the story revolves around Angie and Pat, a well-to-do lesbian couple in their middle sixties who have been together for more than three decades. Pat dies unexpectedly and Angie contemplates the future without her beloved partner. Echoes of the Edith Windsor landmark civil rights case for same-sex marriage equality, which the US Supreme Court court decided in 2013 in her favor, drive the narrative in this film, which takes place in Hong Kong.
But, the body of law Angie confronts is much different than what eventually became legal in the US. While her late partner’s family had previously treated her well when Pat was alive, the surviving relatives slowly but surely are ready to pull the rug out from under Angie, who faces the prospects of leaving their beautiful Hong Kong apartment. The reverse does not happen suddenly. Pat’s brother, who has not enjoyed similar economic success, is the legal executor of the estate and is eager to move into the apartment. Family members describe the relationship that Angie and Pat had as best friends, not life partners. Even Angie’s nephew and his steer want to move into the apartment.
But, Yeung also is careful and sensitive not to demonize these family members as blatant money grabbers. Their backstories illustrate the economic struggles that many must endure in Hong Kong. The raw cruelties of ‘business is business” cast a shadow but do not descend in a way that might make us boo and hiss at the relatives. The ending of the film fits, reverberating with the expectations of the title of the story. The screening will be preceded by the short film: Making Up by Ryan Paige.
Another international standout is Camila Comes Out Tonight 2021/ Argentina/ Drama (Director & Screenwriter: Inés Barrionuevo, Screenwriter: Andrés Aloi). Camila, a budding feminist, has moved to Buenos Aires and is having a difficult time muting and hiding her political passions from public interactions at her new school. The context of Argentinian politics is important to note here:: the country’s history has often been filled with years of military rule and it has maintained strict laws against abortion, mainly because of the presence of the Catholic Church. The scene of Camila and her friends at a women’s rights rally emphasize the narrative’s political tone, which comes to its greatest pitch in a climactic scene near the end of the film. But,the film also has a stylized sensual appeal, prominent in scenes that heighten its overall sex-positive vibe. The film has taken several honors, including the Jury Award (Premio Maguey) at thr 2022 Guadalajara International Film Festival; Best Director Award at 2022 International Film Festival of Kerala Prix Libertés Chéries. The screening will be preceded by the short film, Hello Stranger by Amélie Hard.
Filled with pop music references, Chuck Chuck Baby 2023/ United Kingdom/ Drama (Director: Janis Pugh) is positioned as an audience pleaser. Helen’s life is drudgery: she still lives with her ex-husband and his much younger girlfriend and their newborn, tends to his mother who is terminally ill and she works at a local processing plant bagging chickens for roasting. When there is an opportunity for a new start for love, the story is animated by a playlist that enters frequently into the narrative, including many well-known songs from artists including Neil Diamond, Janis Ian, The Cascades, Lesley Duncan, Minnie Riperton, The Manhattan Transfer, Little Anthony and the Imperials, Renaissance and Julie Felix. In an interview published elsewhere, Pugh talked about her choices of music for the film. “The use of music in the film is a significant part of my work; it is used to convey the wants and desires of characters,” she explains. “It’s much more than mood and atmosphere; it is very much part of their emotional journey. Although the film is a story of love, it is also a story of barriers and fences and what happens when we shut people out. I think from the moment I started writing this film, I really wanted the audience to cry, laugh, sing, cry a little bit more and then go home with the film in their hearts and pull down their own fences.” The screening will be preceded by the short film, Mother by Meg Shutzer and Brandon Yadegari Moreno.
Mascarpone: The Rainbow Cake (2024, Italy, Narrative, Alessandro Guida) is a follow-up to an Italian romantic comedy made three years ago. In the latest installment, Antonio and Luca are seeing each other for the first time since Denis’s death. Luca, who has hit rock bottom after the death of his friend, was lucky enough to meet Tancredi, his current boyfriend, while Antonio, who had fallen in love with a photographer from Milan in the first film but decided to break it off and stay single, has focused on strengthening his skills to become a well-known chef in a pastry shop. It is clear that there is still a special relationship between the two, but Antonio mistakes Luca’s affection for something more and does everything he can to ruin his relationship with Tancredi, even though Cristina (Antonio’s best friend) does not approve of his behavior.
The Summer With Carmen 2023/ Greece/ Drama (Director & Screenwriter: Zacharias Mavroeidis, Screenwriter: Fondas Chalatsis). This film from Greece is certainly among the top two or three comedies to have ever screened at this festival. It is bright, incredibly intelligent and substantial in story treatment even as it offers a generous side of male eye candy” Demosthenes, an actor turned public servant and Nikitas, who is anxious to make his first break as a filmmaker, spend their summer collaborating on ideas for a screenplay that is based on events from a summer two years before. Nikitas is anxious because the producer is looking for scripts that are Greek, sexy, fun and low budget.
Carmen, by the way, is a chihuahua but this dog (a pet which Demosthenes’ former lover adopted but then changed his mind) is essential to all of the Greek poetics and dramatic structure that animates an ingenious approach to this film genre. It sets a high mark for queer cinema storytelling and for rounding out characters, and positions Mavroeidis as a director on par with the likes of Pedro Almodóva and Joel and Ethan Coen. Furthermore, the director’s background in architecture came in handsomely, with fantastic scene designs and lots of stairways. Also, composer Ted Regklis’ score, which fuses brilliantly the Greek musical tradition of rebetiko with iconic Baroque timbres including the harpsichord, complement the narrative.
Short Film Collections
HallowQueen short film showcase
Devilish good dystopian fun in keeping with the festival’s HallowQueen theme abounds in the selections of short films for the seasons: Amphibian (2023/ China/ Action (Director & Screenwriter: Jie Zhang, Screenwriter: Jin Yeahzy), tapped for an Independent Shorts Award honor, builds nicely on the metaphors of amphibians, with four members of a queer cultural collective around Pharos, constantly shifting identities. Beach Logs Kill (2024/ USA/ Drama (Director: Haley Z. Boston) is set at a high school football game, where an outsider attempts to connect with her crush, the star quarterback. When the game goes horribly wrong, the outsider believes she’s the only one who can save the beloved quarterback. Future Flowers (2022/ China/ Drama (Director & Screenwriter: Hao Zhou) merits special attention in how it deepens the narrative with a relevant socio-political lens. “Future Flowers echoes growing concerns about China’s declining birthrate and proportionally aging population. Hao centers on two queer people, Du and Ling, caught up in a sham marriage trying to have a baby amidst these developments, all under the auspices of a government-coded family planning phone app,” critic Perry Meas writes. “Hao offers a sarcastic, dry quip about the status of queer people in China today, and the imposing surveillance-like methods for securing social harmony, productivity, and stable birth rates. It reflects a deeper cynicism about Chinese society. However, the critique and symbolism in Future Flowers can be a little too on the nose.”
Piecht (2023/ Germany/ Drama, Director & Screenwriter: Luka Lara Steffen) centers around a teen (Johanna) whose countryside vacation is far from being a respite from city life, especially when she discovers the right-wing extremist views of the community. Safety State (2024/ USA/ Drama (Director & Screenwriter: Jeanette Buck, Screenwriter: Rani D. Crowe) is set in the dystopian near-future, as a gay and a lesbian couple form an unlikely friendship when they flee the Midwest for safety in New England. Willa Justice: Drag Queen Private Eye 2024/ USA/ Drama (Director & Screenwriter: Jonathan Andre Culliton) is best described, as noted in Boy Culture Blog, as a short film which “locks in a visual style that makes it part Quentin Tarantino, part Barbie, part Valerie Solanas.”
Queer BIPOC short film showcase
Leading off the trio of films is Emerald City 2024/ USA/ Drama (Director & Screenwriter: Josef Steiff), a story about two lone hitchhikers, unknowingly connected by the secrets they carry, as they cross paths near the US-Mexico border where they develop a tentative friendship that gradually becomes more. Of note, a review in Short Films Matter summarizes its cinematic strengths: “The film’s charm lies in its duality: it’s romantic yet filled with an underlying tension. You’re lulled by the warmth of their growing connection, only to be jolted by the reality that hangs between them. The writing is endearingly honest, capturing the sweet awkwardness of new affection, while also delivering moments that hit with emotional force. Steiff’s direction is sharp, turning what could have been a simple road trip into a cinematic experience brimming with depth. Matthew Hayward’s cinematography is stunning. Every shot is a work of art, with lighting that bathes the characters in a glow that feels almost otherworldly, particularly in the scenes at Emerald City, the campground where their intimacy blossoms.
If (2023/ India/ Drama, Director: Tathagata Ghosh, Screenwriter: Buan G.) emerges from a narrative about an arranged marriage which tears a lesbian couple apart, but with a mother’s love, perhaps, another future is possible. As Ghosh explained, the story is based on “people and incidents around me. I wanted to search for love in the darkness. The film sheds light on-the challenges faced by queer individuals. My film is my cry of anguish in these troubled times. A cry which I hope will be heard and won over by love.” Remember, Broken Crayons Colour Too (2023/ Switzerland/ Documentary, Directors: Shannet Clemmings, Urša Kastelic) highlights Shannet, a Black transgender woman from Jamaica, who shares her journey of healing as she wanders the empty streets of a European city. Among the honors the short film has received include the Special Jury Award for Documentary Short Film at 2024 Flickerfest International Short Film Festival; Documentary Short Jury Award at 2024 SXSW South By Southwest Film Festival; Best Student Documentary Short Winner at 2024 Palm Springs International ShortFest.
Utah Queer local filmmaker showcase
This is a marvelous sextet of local shorts and the range of story treatments and cinematic approaches make for engrossing viewing and consideration, based on The Utah Review screening. Canyon Chorus (2023/ USA/ Documentary, Director & Screenwriter: Chris Cresci, Screenwriter: Makenna Wall & Tim Kressin) is an uplifting entry, set against the backdrop of Utah’s Desolation Canyon. Mikah Meyer, a world-record traveler and LGBTQ+ advocate, reflects with three close friends and his mentor, Larry Edwards, on their stories and the power of mentorship within the queer community. Dear Money: A Trans Perspective (2023/ USA/ Documentary, Director: Fletcher Gibbons) is compact but substantial, as a trio of trans siblings explain how access to money has impacted their lives, especially in seeking gender-affirming care.
First Date (2024/ USA/ Drama, Directors: Ashlyn Brooke Anderson, William Cowser, and Parker Ralins, Screenwriter: Ash Anderson) is a snappy, well-paced narrative that hits its groove in exploring the possibilities of queer and polyamorous dating, with humor and gentle emotions. An animated short, Grounded (2024/ USA/ Drama, Director: Andrea “Andy” Whipple) tells a tale about a pre-transitioned trans boy who is transformed into a harpy and learns the importance of knowing one’s limits.
Raw and scrappy in the best aesthetic way, a film from Spy Hop Productions’ nationally recognized PitchNic program, TRANS PUNK (2023/ USA/ Documentary, Director: Margo Plumb) hits its creative brief as “The Narrative of Being a Societal Menace,” handily dismantling the main pillars of hate-filled rhetoric, misinformation and unmerited hyperbole about the transgender community. Utah Drag (2024/ USA/ Documentary, Directors: Sally Shaum & Kelton Wells) is the best among several recently produced short films documenting the flourishing drag scene in Utah.
Features for Virtual Screening (Oct. 27-Nov. 3)
Backspot (2023, Canada, Narrative, D. W. Waterson): Riley is given the chance to cheer with the all-star squad, Thunderhawks. With a competition looming, Riley must navigate her crippling anxiety, her relationship with her girlfriend, and her desperate need for approval from her new coach.
Break the Game (2023, US, Documentary, Jane M. Wagner): After coming out as a trans woman, world-record-holding gamer, Narcissa Wright loses her massive fanbase. To win them back, she attempts to set a new world record in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, while live-streaming every minute of her mythic quest. Drawing from an archive of more than 3,000 hours of Narcissa’s livestreams, intimate verite, and 8-bit animation, BREAK THE GAME is a moving exploration of gamer culture, the realities of online harassment, and the mental health implications of living a digital life.
León (2023, Argentina, Narrative, Andi Nachon, Papu Curotto) Julia has just lost her life partner, Barby. Torn between her grief and a world that is crumbling without her, she strives to preserve the restaurant they built together and her bond with their son León; a relationship now threatened by a willful grandmother and the return of an absent father. León is about relationships and the joyous and difficult task of loving and understanding one another.
The Queen of My Dreams (2024, Canada/Pakistan, Narrative, Fawzia Mirza) is a dramedy spanning 30 years in the life of a Pakistani-Canadian family, exploring intergenerational connections between mothers and daughters, East and West, and home and away. Infused with humor, romance, music, and Bollywood fantasy, and inspired by personal experiences, family stories, and intertwined with Pakistani history and collective memory, the film shows the expansive journey of women seeking to define and decide their own paths, while simultaneously learning—and remembering—how to love.