LLGFF: DIY

Travel Queeries, dir Elliat Graney-Saucke
The Lollipop Generation, dir GB Jones
Bandaged, dir Maria Beatty

A couple of films that put the Q in LGBT, so to speak, Travel Queeries and Lollipop are both long in the making, a reminder of how hard it is to make DIY films that go under the radar of funders. Travel Queeries documents queer subcultures across Europe, from London to Belgrade and features an array of inspiring real-life characters who work under the most arduous conditions, from the activists who brave violent attacks in Belgrade and Warsaw, to the artists who liven up their surroundings in Copenhagen. The film also points out how these cultures are being united, with the Internet and travelling activists serving to link disparate cultures, a function the film serves, as well.

GB Jones is a legend in Toronto, co-founder of the original homocore zine JDs and the dyke band Fifth Column. Her magnum opus The Lollipop Generation was started in the early 90s and has only just reached completion, so feels a bit piecemeal, with star Jena von Brucker's hair colour changing from scene to scene. Surely a continuity editor's nightmare. I don't mind the DIY roughness of the film and positively revel in the grainy Super 8 quality, which suits the story of a teenaged runaway (von Brucker) and her adventures with the street kids she meets.

My reservations lie more with the storyline, with von Brucker reduced to a mere linking device, as the story shifts to street teens Peanut, Janie and Rufus, who are pursued by the "Horrible Homos", porn makers with a taste for kids. The appearance of Vaginal Davis, whose character picks up a boy outside a school, flings him over his shoulder and then attempts to have sex with him, is just plain creepy. Davis has great comic appeal and the scene appears to be played for laughs, but what is the message? That paedophilia is funny? That the situation, in which the only black character in the film is a sexual predator, is meant to be a comment on social stereotypes and so should be read ironically? Jones seems to revel in sexually explicit scenes, with a plethora of blow jobs, at the same time she seems to be decrying sexual exploitation of street kids. The message seems hopelessly muddled and so undermines the film.

While Bandaged is coming from a completely different place, it stars Susanne Sachsse, who has featured in several Bruce La Bruce films, as well as leading Berlin's Cheap arts troupe, which numbers Vaginal Davis among its members. I had high expectations for this film, which was billed as a horror period piece. The set-up is intriguing, as Sachsse's Nurse Genova arrives at a remote mansion to tend to the wounds of Lucille, a suicidal teen, at the behest of the girl's domineering scientist father.

Nurse Genova has a questionable record, with a penchant for putting patients out of their misery which is not in line with the Hippocratic oath. She becomes attached to the girl, with much face-stroking and suggestive washing. But what are her motives? And where is dad getting his amazing skin grifts from? Yes, these are the dual plot lines and they play as ridiculously as they sound. The dialogue is so stilted, it sounds dubbed, badly. The best shots are reserved for syringes, and Sachsse is called upon to act in some of the worst sex scenes committed to film. So bad, it's good.

Berlinale Retrospective I: Cheap

Anyone venturing into the atrium of the Filmhaus during the Berlinale would have found him or herself part of a giant art installation. As part of the experimental Forum Expanded strand of the festival, the art collective known as Cheap had turned the space into their Cheap Gossip Studio, adding some light relief to the heavy duty A-R-T going on elsewhere.

Cheap's latest production, with US drag artist Vaginal Davis, is the German fairy tale Max und Moritz, which will premiere in Berlin on 19 April.

The Cheap Gossip Studio, hosted by Davis [see photo above], became the place to be seen for the Berlinale, featuring a circular bar offering Kaffee and Kuchen, various art installations, films and live "Beauty Moments" every evening. Newly arrived in Berlin from Los Angeles and revelling in the atmosphere, Davis offered me a "grand tourina" of the space as well as a helping of his tongue-in-cheek philosophy. The beauty moments, he explained, were key "because we can always look more beautiful. That's very important--beauty. Who cares what you're like on the inside? It's about the outside. That's what counts 'cause that's all anyone sees anyway." A self-proclaimed Sex Repulsive, he made numerous claims for public sex occurring pretty much everywhere in the Studio but I saw no evidence of this.

Though the promised Isabella Rossellini beauty moment failed to appear, others included Miss Pascal offering makeovers and "The Whoracle at Delphi" providing misinformation.

Short films in the space's Rooftop Gallery included Shannon Plumb's lengthy one featuring drag queens attending a fashion show, Marie Losier's of aliens emerging from pots of pasta and Davis's of his friends dancing on a roof. In the Red Gallery Davis had another film featuring him and Cheapie Marc Siegel shrieking over photos taken by the latter's grandfather Sam of various celebs in the '60s and '70s, with Davis suggesting various libelous explanations for their expressions.

Cheap began in 2001 with a co-production performance piece. Its members include Tim Blue; driving force Susanne Sachsse, formerly an actress with the Berliner Ensemble; and Daniel Hendrickson, both of whom are personally involved with Siegel. All very post-modern. They invited Davis and others to collaborate on what the latter describes as a "funky, performancey piece that had these cheap aesthetics, an incorporation of availabism."

Availabism, coined by Kimber Fowler, refers to using what is available to create art and is something Davis has always embraced. "All you need is creativity. I take trash and make sculptures and costumes." The group also shares an admiration for queer experimental filmmaker Jack Smith.

Interestingly, according to Davis, the queer community was a bit suspicious of the group, especially those who knew of Siegel as a gay man. Davis observed, "German sexuality to me is so bizarre. Germans either like to get fisted or cuddling. It's either fisting or cuddling but nothing between that. It's extremes."

He is quite pleased that Sachsse has emerged as a leader within the group. "She puts the projects together. It's so great to have an art collective where it's female-driven... A feminine presence is the main spark to igniting the work and that's really, really rare. Because usually, whether it's straight men or gay men, everything is all about the men. It all becomes about them. The females become kind of tagalong." Sadly, I never got to interview the formidable Frau Sachsse because she was always busy, but I can say she has a crushing handshake.

A lifelong resident of Los Angeles before his recent move to Berlin, Davis sees the German capital emerging as a destination for artists. He has already seen an influx from New York. His own move was prompted by spiralling rents in his hometown. As he explains, "If you don't have cheap rent if you're an artist, you can't do your work 'cause all your time is being spent trying to have a roof over your head. Berlin has got a tradition of [being] bohemian and funkiness." He expects to stay in Berlin for the foreseeable future and travel around Europe to do installations and spread his message of "trying to motivate others to be as comfortable as possible within themselves".

Cheap's version of Max und Moritz transforms it into a girl gang with one boy. Davis, who plays Witwe Bolte, cackles and exclaims that "the boy is their bitch!" Cheap's production of Max und Moritz premieres in Berlin on April 19th at Theater an der Parkaue. It will also play in Hamburg and Graz.