From the Editor

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.

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.

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.

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.

Openly gay, LAPD press-credentialed photo-journalist, Mike Skiff, reports for ReelGayTV and has been a longtime freelance videographer for the annual International Men of Leather competition held in Chicago where he filmed the IML documentary Kink Crusaders in 2008. The event is produced by Chuck Renslow, who co-founded IML with his late partner Dom Orejudos who started the competition in 1978.

Go Over the Rainbow interviewed Mike Skiff about the making of his latest documentary in production, The Bruno Project, his part in the movement against Prop 8, and how his first feature directorial debut, Kink Crusaders, healed from aftermath of the assault he suffered when Sacha Baron Cohen's film crew pulled a stunt at a Prop 8 rally he was documenting in Los Angeles two days before the general election.

From scholar and filmmaker Dagmar Schultz, comes, Audre Lorde - The Berlin Years 1984 to 1992, a documentary about Lorde's years living in Berlin mentoring fellow feminists, attending speaking engagements, and performing readings on behalf of the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies at the Freedom University, Berlin where Kennedy gave the "I am a Berliner" speech in 1963. There, Lorde co-founded the Afro-German movement.

Editor-in-Chief Sawyer J. Lahr reviews Tomboy, a transsexual coming-of-age story by up-and-coming French Writer/Director Celine Sciamma (Water Lillies), returning to Chicago for a one-week run at The Music Box Theatre, Friday, Jan 27 through Thursday, Feb 2nd.

Editor-in-Chief Sawyer J Lahr reviews Marriage Material, the free film released in celebration of Joe Swanberg: Collected Films of 2011 featuring Silver Bullets, Art History, as well as yet-to-be-released The Zone (Summer 2012) and Privacy Settings (Fall 2012).