Today was the day I crashed, as I knew I would. Really, two days on a high is more than enough.
I saw two films yesterday - though technically one was two separate films because they were both about lesbian feminist activists. The first one, "Passionate Politics," covered the work of Charlotte Bunch, from her early work with the Civil Rights Movement, to her branching into feminism and starting women's shelters all over the world. The second film, "A Force of Nature," was a bit more whimsical in its take on Ellen Ratner, showing her constantly trying to kiss bizarre animals (fish, goats, turkeys, you name it.) The first five minutes were people talking about how terrifying she is and how much they love her; she is an unstoppable force of nature.
The second (or third, depending how you count) film I saw was "My Brother the Devil." It was the first fiction film I saw at the Castro, and the reason I burned out quite when I did. First, the accents. It is a British film about Egyptian immigrants, and to Midwestern ears, that is such a bizarre cockatil of accents I found myself wishing badly for subtitles.
But really, it was the story that annoyed me. It was a coming-of-age drama, so I was not too keen on it to begin with, but my group pressured me into it, and it was about siblings. There aren't very many queer stories with siblings, have you noticed that? Despite there being a correlation between older brothers and being gay. I went in at least open to the possibility that it would not suck.
Maybe it was just cultural differences, but I could not get into the story. There were a lot of subplots that did not quite seem to connect: the big brother trying to leave the gang, the little brother trying to follow him into the gang, the big brother realizing he's gay and getting a boyfriend, the little brother getting a girlfriend. Of them all, the little brother getting a girlfriend was the most superfluous, and I suspect that it was put in there to make the film more palatable to straight audiences. Actually, the big brother being gay was also kind of a pointless plot point. The little brother is really upset when he first finds out, but after he gets shot he's okay with it. It makes no sense. Or maybe it was explained in the dialogue. But really, at a queer film festival, you should not say that a character being gay added nothing to the plot.
That's my rant on the first film here that I truly did not like; hopefully there will not be many more.
I was completely burned out after "Devil," and even though I knew it would help if I ate, I did not have the energy to go out and find food. So when I returned to the condo and found one of my classmates had made huge amounts of pesto pasta, as well as raspberry scones, I just about died of gratitude. It gave me the strength to power through our storyboard with my group.
For some reason I still can't post pictures, which is inordinately irritating.
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