Provocative and visionary! The MadCat Women’s International Film Festival is based in San Francisco, but one hesitates to call it a “San Francisco festival.” Programmed for the past ten years (this September[…]
Author: Gary Morris
Gary Morris founded Bright Lights Film Journal as a print publication in 1974; it became a web-only magazine in 1996. He is the author of the monograph Roger Corman (Twayne Publishers, 1985) and the editor of Action! Interviews with Directors from Classical Hollywood to Contemporary Iran (Anthem Press, 2009). Trailer Trash: Dumpster Diving with Jenni Olson
High camp in three minutes or less The idea that bigger is better may play better in the lexicon of size queens than in le cinema contemporaire. Hollywood’s insistence on[…]
Quickies: Random Short Reviews from Cycles of Porn to Small Faces
“Turn towards me. I’ll make do with your heart beating next to mine.” Cycles of Porn: Sex/Life in L.A. Part 2 (Jochen Hick, 2005) Fans of the gay porn documentary[…]
Documentaries · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
Speaking Out: Pioneering Doc Word Is Out Turns 29
Assimilate this Like any marginalized culture, queerdom carries on its own constant internal debate: to separate or assimilate? Separation means embracing the inner pervert, celebrating the diversity in the community[…]
Epic Sweep: On Kurosawa’s Sprawling Red Beard
This one’s got it all, including the kitchen sink Kurosawa’s cinema is large in every sense of the word. He often spent a year or more on preparation, sometimes had[…]
Festivals & Awards · LGBT & Queer
More Fun in the New (Queer) World: The 2005 Portland Lesbian and Gay Film Festival
Out of the closets and onto the screen Queer film festivals have always been a crucial flashpoint for community. Starting in the 1970s, with the now sprawling San Francisco version,[…]
Documentaries · Visual Artists
Surreal Women: Leonor Fini and Kay Sage Documentaries
“All there is to do now is scream.” One view of “outsider art” is that it’s often the product of a hyper-productive, typically male naif who’s closer to his own[…]
Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
Quickies: Random Short Reviews from 119 Bullets + 3 to Transgeneration
“Dafydd Thomas (Lucas), a delusional queen in PVC fetish drag, jealously guards his status as ‘the only gay in the village’ even when competing queens arrive to challenge him.” 119[…]
Quickies: Random Short Reviews from Bobby Abate to The Whale Rider
“It’s a spring break party 24/7 365 days a year!” Bobby Abate In his online bio, queer avant-garde filmmaker Bobby Abate compares himself to Britney Spears. Like her, he says,[…]
Activist & Political · Directors · Documentaries · Reviews
Rebel Girls: Six Documentaries by Kim Longinotto
On Dream Girls, The Day I Will Never Forget, Divorce Iranian Style, Shinjuku Boys, Gaea Girls, and Runaway The combination of reality TV and George W. Bush’s ascendancy (one wants[…]
Directors · Exploitation & Erotica · LGBT & Queer
Private Rituals Made Public: The Lost Erotica of Fred Halsted
“The whole world wears a jockstrap!” One of the late George Sanders’ greatest contributions to culture was found in an interview with Rex Reed (in the book Conversations in the[…]
Directors · Interviews · LGBT & Queer
The Kid Behind the Camera: Chatting Up Darren Stein
Put the Camera on Me‘s queer wunderkind speaks I first saw Put the Camera on Me at the 2003 San Francisco International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, and wrote about[…]
Documentaries · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
The Rage from Nowhere? Arthur Dong’s Licensed to Kill Interviews Murderers of Gay Men
“I’m bad, but I’m locked up.” When we think about how society reinforces its laws, we usually think of law enforcement agencies doing what they’re contracted to do in protecting[…]
Activist & Political · Documentaries · Experimental & Underground
Crossing the Bridge: Jenni Olson’s The Joy of Life (2005)
Navigating a haunted, and haunting, world In 1994, film historian and programmer Jenni Olson’s friend Mark Finch, a critic who was co-director with Olson of the San Francisco International Lesbian[…]
Zuckerman and Zugsmith on Sirk
GEORGE ZUCKERMAN ON SIRK Robert Wilder’s novel had been shelved and written off (because of Breen office objections and a threatened lawsuit by the Reynolds tobacco family) when I first[…]
Quickies: Random Short Reviews from Angel Blue to Ruan Lingyu to The Toilers and the Wayfarers
“Here’s to lost beauty. May it always be nearby with the potential to keep you warm.”
Introduction to Bright Lights’ Douglas Sirk Issue
This is our first issue dedicated to a single director. Douglas Sirk was the logical choice. While not exactly a household word himself, some of his films were among the[…]
Body and Soul: Bresson’s A Man Escaped and Lancelot of the Lake on DVD
Death, destruction, and … hope
Quickies: Random Short Reviews from Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean to The Witch Who Came from the Sea
“God made us all perfect, truly he did!”
Links + BSA
