Spring Break
The Daily OrangeFilm open dialogue at Reel Queer Festival
By Catherine Yu-Shan Hsieh
Posted: 3/29/07, 11:53 PM EST Section: Feature
While the audience burst into laughter watching "Available Men" at the Reel Queer Film Festival, "The Lost Tribe" invited the viewers to embark on a soul-searching journey, followed by a trip back in time with "Brother to Brother."
The eighth-annual festival returned to Syracuse University last night, with a turnout of about 25 people.
The festival opened last Thursday and Friday, and will conclude its five-day run Saturday.
"[The festival] is a good opportunity to see films you wouldn't normally get to see, to experience cultures you wouldn't necessarily be close to," said Kevin Shoemaker, biology graduate student at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry.
The festival is put together by Open Doors, a Syracuse University graduate student organization that promotes lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues. It is a way to raise the awareness, said Khris Dodson, environmental communications graduate student at SUNY-ESF.
"We tried to [select the films] with a multicultural approach," said Jessica Bacon, another facilitator of Open Doors, and a disability studies graduate student.
That multicultural approach is why Open Doors brought films covering a variety of issues to this year's festival.
A 15-minute comedy of errors, David Dean Bottrell's "Available Men" is about a chance encounter between a Hollywood agent and a sensitive gay man who mistake each other for the people they were scheduled to meet.
Director Rachel Landers taps into conflicts between religion and sexuality in "The Lost Tribe," as she tells the story of an ex-Mormon lesbian atheist who travels from her hometown in Australia to Salt Lake City.
A technical malfunction with the DVD player briefly interrupted the showing of "The Lost Tribe," sending some of the festival's attendees home early.
"Brother to Brother," directed by Rodney Evans, tells the story of Richard Bruce Nugent, an elderly black writer from the Harlem Renaissance, who meets a young gay artist in a New York homeless shelter.
The eighth-annual festival returned to Syracuse University last night, with a turnout of about 25 people.
The festival opened last Thursday and Friday, and will conclude its five-day run Saturday.
"[The festival] is a good opportunity to see films you wouldn't normally get to see, to experience cultures you wouldn't necessarily be close to," said Kevin Shoemaker, biology graduate student at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry.
The festival is put together by Open Doors, a Syracuse University graduate student organization that promotes lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues. It is a way to raise the awareness, said Khris Dodson, environmental communications graduate student at SUNY-ESF.
"We tried to [select the films] with a multicultural approach," said Jessica Bacon, another facilitator of Open Doors, and a disability studies graduate student.
That multicultural approach is why Open Doors brought films covering a variety of issues to this year's festival.
A 15-minute comedy of errors, David Dean Bottrell's "Available Men" is about a chance encounter between a Hollywood agent and a sensitive gay man who mistake each other for the people they were scheduled to meet.
Director Rachel Landers taps into conflicts between religion and sexuality in "The Lost Tribe," as she tells the story of an ex-Mormon lesbian atheist who travels from her hometown in Australia to Salt Lake City.
A technical malfunction with the DVD player briefly interrupted the showing of "The Lost Tribe," sending some of the festival's attendees home early.
"Brother to Brother," directed by Rodney Evans, tells the story of Richard Bruce Nugent, an elderly black writer from the Harlem Renaissance, who meets a young gay artist in a New York homeless shelter.
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