QDOC

[May 28th, 2008]

The Portland Queer Documentary Film Festival returns to the Clinton Street Theater this weekend with a fresh batch of real-life stories ripped from the LGBTQ headlines. A few highlights:

Suddenly, Last Winter [DIRECTORS ATTENDING] And you thought Oregon was having a hard time with same-sex marriage. Imagine how tough it would be if the Vatican was in your backyard. That’s what confronts Gustav Hofer and Luca Ragnazzi. This incredibly cute queer Italian couple of eight years—who just so happen to be journalists—throw themselves into the middle of a highly charged political debate both on the streets of Rome and in the halls of government, after a new party rises to power and presents a draft law that would give rights to unmarried and gay couples in this devoutly Catholic country. In short, Gustav and Luca find out their countrymen aren’t ready for such a radical “new” idea. But that doesn’t stop the documentary they directed from being a sweet and hopeful view into the lives of two men who truly love each other and are struggling for a way to have their homeland recognize that love. When Luca fearfully states, “We live in a microcosm of our own,” you realize he is talking for all of us, not just for a queer couple in Italy. BYRON BECK. 8 pm Thursday, May 29. Hofer and Ragnazzi will attend.

Beyond Conception: Men Having Babies

The title suggests this doc will delve into the lives of men having babies, like the Bend trans man Thomas Beatie, who went on Oprah as the first “legal” man to carry a child. This documentary however, produced for the Discovery Health Channel, zooms in on one gay couple who decide to go the surrogate route. And, truthfully, it’s more of a horror flick than some of Wes Craven’s best. The oddly unaffectionate gay boys who want a new kid come off like rich dicks and offer fewer emotions than Nicole Kidman’s face. The lesbian who decides to carry “their” child seems to get the short end of the pregnancy stick as the men try to distance themselves from all the baby-mama drama. And, here’s the part that’s left out of this emotionally complex story: This surrogate shit is expensive. Too bad the filmmakers, in an effort to downsize the participants into bite-sized clips, didn’t share the real costs, both financial and emotional, to everyone involved. Now that would have been a good documentary. BYRON BECK. 4 pm Saturday, May 31.

She’s a Boy I Knew

Like many movies about alternative sexuality, She’s a Boy I Knew preaches only to the choir: militant queers and their allies. But the choir’s gonna love it. In a nutshell: Writer-director Gwen Haworth has finally got things sorted out. Born “Steven,” she wrestled for 30 years with the difficult decision to undergo gender reassignment. Now, after a much-discussed vaginoplasty and a boatload of hormones…she’s dating women. That’s right, Gwen wasn’t just a woman trapped in a man’s body, she was a lesbian filmmaker. It’s an interesting autobiography, albeit somewhat marred by the kitschy directorial style. (Why—oh why?—must all gay documentaries incorporate cutesy cartoon sequences?) In the end, though, the film is useful for one very practical reason. Have you ever wondered what kind of equipment M-to-F transsexuals are actually working with? I mean, after all the surgical dust has settled? Well, watch closely, because here you actually get to see it. JOHN MINERVINI. 5:30 pm Sunday, June 1.

The Times of Harvey Milk

[DIRECTOR ATTENDING] Rob Epstein's Oscar-winning account of San Francisco's first gay city supervisor—the first openly homosexual elected official in the nation—was released in 1984, six years after Milk and San Fran Mayor George Moscone were gunned down by unhinged, Twinkie-fueled fellow supervisor Dan White, but the movie's title now echoes with far greater import. As a portrait of Milk the man, the film is understandably wanting—he appears mostly in TV news footage, where he comes across as a gregarious and canny politician. But it is as an evocation of a time that the movie shines. Gay rights and public opportunities are far more extensive today (witness the election of Sam Adams), but the atmosphere of Castro Street in the '70s was a unique recipe of expectancy and outrage, a brief moment of buoyancy captured by Epstein in controlled, elegant images. The fragility of the mood—crystallized by Milk's cry, "You gotta give 'em hope"—is accentuated by the movie's release at the cusp of the AIDS epidemic, which made Milk's death, in its capricious cruelty, feel like a warning shot. AARON MESH. 7:30 pm Sunday, June 1. Gus Van Sant, who is finishing work on his biopic Milk, is scheduled to join Epstein for a post-screening conversation.