Film

CHICAGO - This weekend, Artist, curator, writer, filmmaker, and independent publisher, Billy Miller of Straight to Hell (a.k.a The Manhattan Review of Unnatural Acts) will be live narrating a selection of slides and films by male physique photographer and filmmaker Bob Mizer, publisher of Physique Pictorial (started in 1953), which introduced the work of George Quaintance and Tom of Finland. Mizer notably photographed the former Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenneger and Andy Warhol superstar Joe Dallesandro. The two evenings of illustrated lectures are presented by White Light Cinema at The Nightingale (1084 N. Milwaukee Ave.), featuring selected works from 1953-1992.Lectures start at 8pm, Saturday and Sunday, May 5 and 6. GOTR interviewed Miller by email.

Economist-turned-actor and filmmaker Patrick Wang—the director and star of the gay sleeper hit In the Family—couldn't be farther from convention. A conversation with a civil-rights attorney inspired Wang to write his first feature film about issues faced by unmarried gay partners.

As in countless detective and mystery stories, the driving force behind a blackmail scheme that results in multiple deaths and the ruin of a successful public figure is a photograph. What salacious image could cause this amount of destruction? (contains spoilers)

In this stand-up comedy act, Queer as Folk writer Del Shores roasts fellow actors and imitates his Southern Baptist Texan family, who inspired the many idiosyncratic characters that made his Sordid Lives movie and TV series such classics.

One might be able to tell from the multitude of naked men in his films, but experimental director Derek Jarman has been well-regarded as a portrayer of homosexual longing and its repression. In fact, it was still illegal to engage in any sexual activity with someone of the same sex until 1967, shortly before Jarman began his work. (contains spoilers)

GOTR's preview of the LGBTQ segment at the 28th Annual Chicago Latino Film Festival showing at Landmark Century, AMC River East, and Insituto Cervantes with festival receptions at River East Arts Center. This year's festival honors gay Catalan director Ventura Pons and opens with his latest film Year of Grace as well as a special premiere of gay filmmaker Tom Gustafson's latest project, Mariachi Gringo, with the director and his partner Corey James Krueckeberg (Were the World Mine) in person. 

Every country needs its coming out film. Jitters, by writer/director Baldvin Zophoníasson, is a solemn coming-of-age Icelandic drama played evenly by unknown actors and tells the bittersweet story of a teen gay boy Gabriel (Atli Oskar Fjalarsson) going through the rights of passage common to every generation, but specific to Millennials.

GOTR Editor-in-Chief, Sawyer J. Lahr, reviews, The Beat Hotel, the latest documentary from First Run Features, illustrating the burst of creativity in this seminal period following the obsenity charges against the publication of HOWL by gay beat poet Allen Ginsberg.

Jason Travis (GoldDerby.com) recaps his favorite subject--the Oscars-- what the academy got right, and where it misplaced the annual industry accolades. 

Though Davies is a foremost gay British director, sadly his update of the 1952 Terrence Rattigan play by the same name doesn't take the extra leap. Why not re-imagine the affair between two men as Rattigan envisioned? The play was originally adapted for the screen by Rattigan and directed by Anitol Litvak in 1955 with star Vivian Leigh as Hester. In this update, Davies elaborates on the reference to the devil and the deep blue sea- an illusion to sailors in the English Navy who worked the lower decks between the sea and their superiors; he swashes the screen in blue and sepia-tone murkiness, lulling us into extended conversations, typical of Rattigan's style.

Breaking Glass Pictures releases these Black Briefs on March 6, an apt name for psychosexual affairs kin to last year's Tree of Life and Shame. At least some of these shorts are worthy of that comparison. This shorts collection is the first in a series of compilations from the director of Make the Yuletide Gay, Rob Williams and Guest House Films. 

Crazy Horse (2012) opens at The Music Box Theatre on whose website it explicitly states that no one under 18 is admitted, as if R rated titles for those under 17 were only a suggestion and not an MPAA ratings policy. With the addition of Crazy Horse, Wiseman completes a trilogy of films about iconic French institutions captured in La Danse - The Paris Opera Ballet and La Comedie - Francaise ou L'Amor Joue. Crazy Horse choreographer, must deliver three new acts in two or three weeks without closing the theater for rehearsals, which is open seven days a week with two shows a night and three on Saturdays.

As co-founder of the International Men of Leather competition, Chuck Renslow, tells documentary film director Mike Skiff, "Whatever your pleasure or fetish, we want you." The Award-winning Breaking Glass Pictures release produced by Third Rail, Kink Crusaders, documents IML as a place where a Doctor, Policeman, or licensed Psychotherapist can gather in a safe and public place to explore his/her fetishes and engage in BDSM - for the uninitiated, BDSM stands for Bondage, Discipline, and Sado-Masocism.