Swede Caroline

 

This indie comedy promises much, positioning itself firmly within the micro genre of British whimsy. Jo Hartley stars as the titular Caroline, who has been disqualified from a giant veg growing contest in Shepton Mallet.  She attracts the attention of a documentary maker who vows to follow her as she works toward the next year's contest. 

So, we are in mockumentary territory and that is where the film falls flat, with lots of hand-held shots, long mumbled conversations that go nowhere and utterly unfathomable plot twists involving exes, rival growers and a swinging couple who are detectives. 

Somehow the writer-director team of Brook Driver and Finn Bruce manage to make this almost entirely laugh-free. Hartley does her best but the writing is flat, the characters lacking heft and the story nonsensical. Alice Lowe turns up for a needless cameo with an alleged Swedish accent and then runs away, possibly to batter her agent. 

One of the issues is that we never learn much about Caroline or the two men in her life, Paul and Willie, with whom she spends much of her time. Paul is her housemate and Willie their neighbour, but it is hinted there is history among them which is never clarified and their relationships remain underwritten.  

Possibly if this had been scripted more tightly, it might have worked. As it is, the film drags on and on toward an absurd climax involving corrupt politicians and murky deals. Okey doke. 

The overgrown veg look intriguing and the diversion in a country house offers some amusement. But Swede Caroline suffers from stunted growth. 

Swede Caroline opens in UK on 19 April. 

BFI Flare: Life's a Beach...

 Possibly my last reviews from this year's Flare, although there are many films left unseen. 

Lesvia, a personal documentary from Tzeli Hadjidimitriou offers an insider's perspective on the fabled isle of Lesvia aka Lesbos. The filmmaker grew up there and is also a lesbian, so she has a life's worth of material to work with, starting from her earliest memories of visiting Eressos in 1980 and seeing naked women. There is great archive footage of the various eras of Eressos, from camping on the beach, to the development of lesbian-owned businesses, to downturns in tourism.

There is also a rather juicy conflict between the locals and the visitors which the filmmaker also outlines with a series of interviews, no doubt getting unvarnished views owing to her local status. If one might want a little more on just why Lesvia attracts so many lesbians owing to its status as the birthplace of the poet Sappho, well one must look elsewhere. 

Heavy Snow

As for Heavy Snow, well, I was just baffled. A Korean melodrama about the relationship of two school girls, Su-An and Seol, it veers off into bizarre diversions involving surfing and hiking through snow. By the end I was not even sure it was meant to be a real romance between two women but rather a metaphor for self-deception or a fever dream or even a death hallucination. Possibly one of the worst films I have ever seen. Or a work of obscure genius. No idea. 

BFI Flare: Double Lives

 Well, my Flare viewing has slowed to a crawl but I shall soldier on. Loads more films to see. 

I started Riley last week but only finished it today as I left it to watch other things. I was not engrossed by the first few minutes but it picked up and has a lot of things to say about family pressures and breaking free of expectations. High school football star Dakota Riley is expected to do great things, especially by his coach who is also his father. For some reason the team's quarterback Jayden is staying with Riley and their sexual tension is palpable. Except Jayden presents himself as a ladies man.... There is a needlessly complicated time structure involving an older man Riley tries to hook up with. Plus loads of bare sweaty chests and throbbing homoeroticism. An out gay character proves not to be such a great ally. And the ending is open. So, hmm. Pretty decent.

What a Feeling

What a Feeling is more of a farce but also features characters trapped by familial expectation, in this case two middle-aged women in Vienna, Fa and Resi, whose paths cross at a lesbian bar before they attempt to hook up. But Fa is not out to her family, while Resi has just been dumped by her husband of 20 years. It is laugh out loud funny in places, even if the coincidences and improbabilities mount up. But how great is it to hear an Irene Cara song soundtrack a lesbian romance?

BFI Flare: Queens of Their Dreams

 Continuing with my Flare viewing I present two films in which women find themselves at odds with the women in their families.....

Queen of My Dreams

Fawzia Mirza's The Queen of My Dreams is a stunning work and I am disappointed it was not the opening or closing night film. A sweeping work jumping back and forth in time between late 20th century Canada and Karachi in the 1960s, it finds Azra fretting at her complete disconnection from the life of her overbearing mother Mariam. They have nothing in common, she thinks, until her father collapses on a trip back to Karachi and Azra and her brother travel back to their parents' home country to deal with family matters. 

Azra then flashes back to her mother's coming of age in the 1960s, when it was expected she would marry a man with the approval of her parents and she chafed at restrictions placed on her. Sound familiar? 

Amrit Kaur plays both adult Azra and younger Mariam and the film has great fun with exploring the sounds and sights of times gone by, with film star Sharmila Tagore proving to be a touchstone for both women. When the film moves to 1990s Nova Scotia it is less compelling, but there is enjoyment in young Azra beginning to realise her queer identity while being pressed into service at her mum's Tupperware parties. 

I have seen two of Mirza's previous films but this is a massive leap forward for the writer-director, handling a huge cast on two continents and such a complex storyline. Brava.

You Don't Have....

The short You Don't Have to Like Me also features a protagonist at odds with her surroundings, in this case a masc presenting woman wandering the streets of New York feeling misunderstood and judged by all and sundry. Even her mother is on her case to find a man. The story is told in a voiceover which gives it a poetic quality, though there is one very amusing scene set on a subway when she seems to find a sense of community. A promising work from director Safiyah Chiniere. 

BFI Flare: Dudes Duding

Well, I have finally finished my first two titles from Flare. 

The Greek drama The Summer of Carmen plays out like a very meta version of Queer as Folk with some unrequited longing, various shades of masculinity and a very cute dog complicating things. Spoiler: nothing bad happens to the dog, the Carmen of the title. 

Hairy, hunky Demosthenis is unable to let go of his ex Panos, who acquires said dog and then foists it on him. Drama queen Nikitas watches from afar, increasingly frustrated by Demosthenis focusing so much attention on his shags and less on their friendship and attempts to write a script. The time frame jumps back and forth between their present visit to a rocky beach and back to the summer of Carmen's arrival, when Demosthenis was in a family crisis, as well. 

The only way I could tell what time it was was by Nikitas' hair colour. The chemistry between the two is quite good and the lovers and ex-lovers are much more in the background. Admirers of the male body are in for a treat, as much of the screentime allows the teddy bear-like Demosthenis to strut around nude or half nude. I expected the film to expand a bit more on the friends' underlying dynamics but this was only hinted at. Very clever if overlong. 

Jason Patel in Unicorns

Unicorns is an odd couple pairing of a white Essex lad, Luke, and his attraction to Ayesha, a glamourous south Asian drag queen he meets.... well I am not quite sure where because the film was quite vague about locations. Early on she asks him, "You're not from round here," which suggested it was up north but may actually have been London. 

Anyway, Luke is straight and a single dad (and a West Ham fan!) who presses his father into service as a babysitter while he drives Ayesha from gig to gig. The two leads,  Ben Hardy and Jason Patel, have great chemistry but the plotting is a bit choppy, with their relationship taking great leaps in no time at all, such as a visit to a fun fair with Luke's son that seems improbable. 

The families are not well drawn and a subplot involving the boy's mother arriving seems to dissipate abruptly. But it's an intriguing reunion of the My Brother the Devil crew of Sally El Hosaini and James Krishna Floyd, here serving as directors and writer, respectively. The theme of toxic masculinity is well observed through Luke's transformation and ability to act on his feelings. 

BFI Flare: Five Films for Freedom

 This year's crop of Five Films for Freedom, which heralds the start of BFI Flare, is especially strong. 

Along with the dramas of Halfway and Cursive is the unusual animated docudrama of Little One, in which an unseen narrator asks her two dads how they knew they were ready to be parents. The interview takes place on camera but with the very stylised rubbery animation, an unusual combo. While it is acted, it does feel as if it could be a documentary. Quite clever. 

Compton's '22 is a documentary with arty leanings, as young queer gender  non-conforming artists watch footage of interviews with survivors of the 1966 Compton's Cafeteria riot. They then perform responses to it in song and dance on a set resembling said cafeteria as a way of enacting a bond with this earlier generation. 

The longest film is a coming of age drama, The First Kiss, in which a teenager goes on a first date with a guy hoping to get a kiss but confronts entrenched homophobia. It is sweet and sad and shows how needed the security of queer culture is. 

GUT

 

photo: Mara von Kummer

Just caught up with GUT, the 3-part series which aired in Germany last year. Made by and about music legend Gudrun Gut, it is a fascinating portrait of the artist as country Frau. Once I stopped thinking of it as a documentary and more as experimental film I quite enjoyed it. 

Gut's rural home in Uckermark is the setting for the programmes, with her resplendent in overalls and sometimes wellies, striding around her property collecting apples, followed by cats (not clear how many there were) in what looks like high summer. It is a gorgeous setting, perfect for reflecting on a life in music and much more. 

Each of the three episodes has a theme, seemingly plucked from the aether: the blank page, Mmmmm and everyday life. Why these when so many others could have worked? No idea. Perhaps that was Gut's whimsy. 

But these do give the viewer a chance to hear some choice anecdotes and witness visits by musical collaborators Manon Pepita and Bettina Köster (online) from previous bands, as well as Monika Werkstatt artists Pilocka Krach and Midori Harano, who rock up and twiddle some knobs in the outdoors  in the final episode before everyone sits down for a fish supper, courtesy of Gut's visit to a fish farm earlier on. Yes, really.

It's quite eccentric in tone, with a lot of visual flourishes, such as turning the green leaves pink or setting Gut and her partner Thomas adrift on a lake with an abnormally large moon shining down on them. I liked that it was not just a talking heads profile. 

She mentions a possible second series set in Berlin, so it will be fun to see what outfit she chooses as she speeds around the metropolis on her bicycle. 

Grief and Art

 I had a loss in 2023, a rupture in my life. I have cried and reflected and it still hurts. I find it interesting how grief manifests in creative works and who is given permission to grieve and for whom or what.

When I viewed Maestro recently, I was struck by how emotionally unintelligent Leonard Bernstein is portrayed. He seems dumbstruck by his wife's upset at him having a lover and missing his children's events. After she dies, he carries on with his work and takes other lovers. One review described his joie de vivre and sense of freedom in this time. I wondered if it was denial or lack of empathy. Who can say? Perhaps his ability to compartmentalise his life allowed him to fulfil his artistic desires, even if it made him a crap husband. 

By contrast The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, which I have just found on Netflix, shows a man devastated by grief and unable to carry on happily in his life. Louis is a talented artist but after his wife Emily dies, he finds life very difficult. More so when his mother, sister and his beloved cat Peter also die. As the narration tells us, Louis cried every day for two years after  Peter died. Many may find this amusing. Not so me. Maybe Louis had more of a connection with his cat than with his mother or sister. The cat arrived early in his marriage, so may also have been his last bond with his dead wife. Why shouldn't we grieve animals as fully as human beings? 

Was Wain mad? Delusional? Neurodiverse? His contemporaries found him to be the former. But I wonder if he wasn't just more tuned in to other life forms than society found acceptable. I hope he and Peter and Emily found each other. 

Not So Happy Endings

Farewell to 2023!

Recently, I finished the Netflix series Sex Education which gave me pause to reflect on how shows end well or badly. It's hard to remember one that ended well but long-term fans of Sex Education were particularly annoyed with how it finished after four seasons. 

I am guessing Covid and various strikes may have played a part but Season 4 did seem oddly paced, introducing new settings and characters and then rushing to tie everything up in the concluding episode, which was 8 rather than 10 or 12. It really did feel muddled and I felt they got rid of the wrong characters. I really missed Anwar, Olivia, Lily and Ola. So many questions: What will become of Elsie? Will Cal get surgery? Has Ruby really got over Otis? We will never know. 

But I was not that satisfied with how Grace and Frankie ended last year after eight seasons. For a start it was not so much Grace and Frankie as Grace and Frankie's kids and exes. Bud as a stand-up? Coyote searching for his ex? Not that interesting. Thank heavens for Dolly Parton's cameo. 

Fans of Killing Eve are still cursing the showrunner for how that show ended last year. I am only on Season 2 so can't get too excited or let down, but it is funny how difficult producers find it to wrap up long-running shows. 

I thought Derry Girls did OK even though I really wanted Clare to find a girlfriend and did not really buy James and Erin as a couple. 

Atypical was one of my favourite shows and I thought that ending was mixed, too. I didn't mind so much leaving Izzie and Casey's ending open but I did not buy the sudden interest of Doug in travelling with his son. Nope. 

Bringing it back to SexEd, introducing new characters in the final season can really backfire as they take attention from the main characters and don't necessarily add anything. Witness Never Have I Ever which ended this year. I loved that show but why add new love interests and rivals in the last year? I wish they had spent more time on the friends Fabiola and Ramona and less on various pointless love triangles. Sigh. 

Here is hoping for happier endings and joyful beginnings for 2024.

Dolly Parton Rockstar

 

Well, this is unexpected. Rockstar, Dolly Parton's first rock album, prompted by her induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, spans 30 tracks of fist-pumping, guitar strumming, wide-legged RAWK. Plus, some power ballads. Anyway....

If you did not have Dolly warbling alongside Paul McCartney, Pat Benatar and Kid Rock on your 2023 bingo card, well, join the club. I was speechless as I listened. Mostly for all the right reasons. 

One could play a really fun game of Rock Wish List for a project like this. I would have loved to hear what Dolly could do alongside Tina Turner or a contemporary band like Idles. Hell, what about Ozzy Osbourne or Slipknot? But, no. It's a bit more safe, with a lot of her contemporaries and then a few "kids" like  Miley Cyrus. No Lil Nas X? He was all over Twitter wanting her to appear on "Old Town Road" a few years ago. Perhaps for Rockstar v. 2 if that appears. 

For this album, though, most of the superstars play quiet support to Dolly's vocals and it works well on such tracks as "Every Breath You Take" with Sting relegated to backing vocals. On "What Has Rock and Roll Ever Done for You" Dolly is clearly enjoying  her back and forth with Stevie Nicks, but the song is not up to their talents. 

When Dolly takes centre stage she really rules. "Purple Rain" is a gorgeous gospelly take on Prince's classic. Only someone like Mavis Staples could have enriched the vocal but Dolly's voice stands alone and I only wish the guitar solo had been a bit more commanding to build the power. 

"Wrecking Ball" alongside Miley Cyrus is OMFG and Dolly goes there, quoting "I Will Only Love You" for the first time on the album. Will the video recreate the original? We can only wait. 

"Satisfaction" done as a trio with Pink and Brandi Carlile is a proper stomper and quite fun. 

When Lizzo and her flute turn up for "Stairway to Heaven" we know we have truly reached peak 2023 weirdness but it works a treat. 

I love the trio of Emmylou Harris, Dolly and Sheryl Crow on "You're No Good", offering a tip of the hat to Linda Ronstadt, who also straddled country and rock back in the day. 

Simon Le Bon, Steve Perry, Rob Halford and John Fogerty offer very little on their tracks but thanks for coming. 

The truly bonkers  finale features Dolly soloing on "Free Bird" and then basically restarting the song and duetting with the corpse of Ronnie Van Zant, courtesy of his widow allowing her the use of his original vocals. 10:45 is the duration of this album closer. It's exhausting and exhilarating. 

Plus, there are B-sides and extended versions I have not heard. The mind boggles. Truly, Dolly, you are too generous. 

Honestly, this is the most fun I have had listening to an album in ages. 

BFI London Film Festival highlights

 I say highlights, but they are simply a sampling of what I saw. Not much, but how wonderful to be able to go out to the cinema again! I am cautious--I mask and distance as much as I can, and hardly anyone else does, which is disconcerting. But I was thrilled to be able to sit in a cinema seat and watch a screen. 

Actually, Curzon Soho's cinema 2 worked out well for me, because I was in the back row and on the end, in what felt like was the usher's seat. Ample legroom and nobody near me. Hurrah!

The films. Well, I only saw two features, both by celebrated auteurs but with very different outcomes. I am embarrassed to say I had never seen anything by Aki Kaurismäki before, though I know him by reputation. His latest, Fallen Leaves, is a curiously slight piece of work, at heart a two hander of lonely man and woman pursuing each other. There are other minor characters and also a dog, but really it's just those two being awkward and laconic and not much happens. The Ukraine war is on the radio as a backdrop, but I am not sure of the significance. The humour is dry and the performances were good but I was left unmoved by the thing. 

Todd Haynes' May December is a different beast, an unsettling expose of human denial, betrayal and deceit. I was a bit shaken by it. Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman are excellent as subject and actress playing subject. Their dance of power is played out as a slow burn over the film's length, with excellent support from Charles Melton as Moore's husband. I will say no more. 

As usual for the last few years, I also watched the shorts available online and found a few of note. Khabur (dir Nafis Fathollahzadeh) explores the ethnographic studies Germans made of their excavations of a site in Syria in the early 20th century. The director repurposes these to expose the assumptions of superiority and exploitation behind the works. She then gives voice to one statue as it sits in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. I found the sound mix a bit iffy, but the film is strong. 

Essex Girls  (dir Yero Timi-Biu) is a contemporary story of a girl navigating different social groups and trying to find her place in among them. Well acted and features Corinna Brown (Tara in Heartstopper!) in a supporting role. 

The other one I really liked was an animation, Boat People (dir Thao Lam and Kjell Boersma), which is the director's remembrances of leaving Vietnam with her family as a very young child. What she knew then and understands now are of course quite different. 

I hoped to get to some of the art exhibits but did not. It was good to be back. 

Fringe! Queer Arts and Film Festival

 The festival finished last week but I have taken some time to finish watching films and gather my thoughts. 

Naturally, I spent a bit of time pondering my own film, Lactasia, which made its belated UK debut. The screening was socially distanced and relaxed and was somewhat masked. It certainly was a new experience for me to see people lying on bean bags at a festival screening. We were even offered gay masks! Well, rainbow ones. I have kept one as a souvenir. 

Here is a pic of the installation I put up at Rich Mix for my screening. 

But the other films I saw ranged from the high camp of Captain Faggotron to a whole programme of witchy experimental shorts. Captain Faggotron was great fun and a distant cousin to Lactasia in its B-movie values and humour. And it was set in Berlin, which is always a delight to see on film. 

I also saw a newly digitised version of Lesbian Avengers Eat Fire Too, which is an old favourite of mine. It looked great and it's always great to spend time with these amazing activists, now seen at a distance of 30 years. I think a lot of the youngers viewers were really impressed by what they saw and some women told me they wished they had been there. I had, of course, and was wearing my Lesbian Avengers T-shirt to prove it!

I viewed several shorts programmes, including the romance-themed Queer Summer Lovin'. The standout in this programme was definitely Youssou & Malek, which was very clever and beautifully shot. The two leads had great chemistry as a young couple faces being split up by life choices. 

The end of my attendance at the festival in a live capacity was the shorts programme Enchanted Visions, which featured an array of truly baffling and bewitching films, some more abstruse than others. I am not sure I truly understood any of them, in fact, but that may have been because I was utterly exhausted by that point. 

Suffice to say it was an exciting week for me, my first live festival in three years and a chance for people to see what I have been working on for eight years, too. 

Made in East London

Tomorrow my film Lactasia gets its UK premiere at Fringe! Queer Film and Arts Festival in London. It's been a long process to get to this point, with many bumps in the road, not least Covid which delayed our post-production process by two years. 

still from Lactasia

Nonetheless, it's gratifying to finally get the chance to see the film on a proper cinema screen with an audience. And the film is very much steeped in East London, from its references, to its rehearsals, to its locations. Here I shall run through a bit of what that looks like. 

Rich Mix, the venue where the film is showing tomorrow, was the site of our rehearsals for our zombies, who stalk the film with their quest to find The Others. Two of the three zombies showed up for this meeting in September 2017, as we worked through what zombie drag queens sound like and how they move. It was great fun working through this. 

still from Lactasia

The montage sequences sprinkled throughout the film were largely shot in Shoreditch and Bethnal Green as I wandered up and down shooting interesting backdrops with a particular interest in street art such as murals and graffiti. Many of these, of course, no longer exist, as street art is usually ephemeral, unless it's Banksy's! But I felt that capturing a snap shot of how those streets looked at that moment gave the film a particular feeling of NOW. 

still from Lactasia

The climactic scenes at a goth club were shot in Bow, and I confess I have not been back since we shot there in 2019 but I assume the railway bridge is still there, quite eerie at night. 

Since our production and post process was so long, entire locations have disappeared. Some scenes were shot with the actors walking past such buildings as Mirth and Percy Ingle which have shut down. 

I have an especial fondness for a particular small alleyway in Walthamstow where our scenes of zombies trudging past a busker were soundtracked by the local sparrows in full song. I loved that sound, not quiet as the alleyway has been supplanted by blocks of flats. I hope the birds have found a new and better home. 

Elizabeth Fraser at 60

 Happy Birthday, Ms. Fraser!

Can it be 41 years since Cocteau Twins' first album, Garlands? Here's a live version of "Wax and Wane", my favourite of their early work. 

And now she has a new creative outlet courtesy of Sun's Signature with her partner Damon Reece. 

I had the pleasure of speaking to Liz back in the 1990s when she talked of lacking confidence to venture out on her own. She was working with tape loops and really enjoying herself. It's take far to long to hear her post-Cocteaus work but damn if "Underwater", which was released under her own name years back and has now been reworked for the duo, isn't a gorgeous piece of work. The irony of it having a lyric video, when for years, Liz refused to release her lyrics, is quite amusing. 

Many happy returns, madam.

RIP Sinéad

 This one is hard. Like many I have spent the last 24 hours immersed in the incredible back catalogue of Sinéad O'Connor who passed yesterday at age 56. 

"Be kind to Generation X," someone wrote on Twitter, and that is exactly how I feel. One of our own is gone and it really, really hurts. Here is one of my favourite songs by her, performed live in 1988 at a gig I should have been at!

I never met Ms. O'Connor. I'm sad to say I never interviewed her although there were near misses back in the 1990s. Many have amazing interactions to report, her humour, her sharp observations and pointy opinions to the fore. I was just a fan. 

But I can say that in my very polarized lesbian house in San Francisco, where we spanned a range from teens to 30s and from folkie to Riot Grrrl, we only agreed on one thing: we all loved Sinéad. So much so that we erected a shrine to her on one wall of our common room. I donated the poster, in which she slouched staring directly into the lens of the camera. Someone else draped fairy lights around it and a third added a home-made Irish flag. Anyone passing by the flat when the light was on could see it from across the road. That pleased me. She was our beacon. 

Slán abhaile. 

Women Make Movies Pride Month

 In line with their promotion for Women's History Month in March, Women Make Movies, the New York distributor, has offered free access to an array of its films for Pride month. 

I have so far watched four and and am on my fifth, but will concentrate on what I have finished. 

Among the highlights are Esther Newton Made Me Gay (dir Jean Carlomusto), a reflection on the life of the anthropologist who made drag queens her focus in the 1960s. Newton tells her story with a great deal of humour, though serious subjects such as lesbophobia and health issues nibble at the edges. I would have liked to see a bit more of her partner, the performance artist Holly Hughes, but the doc is quite rich with archive footage and interviews with exes, friends and a bit of academic pondering, which is the weakest aspect. 

Another writer, the poet Kitty Tsui, tells her story in Nice Chinese Girls Don't (dir Jennifer Abod), which is very much a piece to camera with a bit of archive footage. Her poems are a highlight of this short piece. 

In Love, Barbara (dir Brydie O’Connor), it falls to Hammer's widow Florrie Burke to tell the story of their relationship and the burden of curating her partner's work. She mentions "turning over the archive" but does not say to where or whom. 

It could end up at the Lesbian Herstory Archives, which gets its due in The Archivettes (dir Megan Rossman), with a range of interviewees reflecting on their time there and its evolution from Joan Nestle's apartment to its dedicated space in Brooklyn. I would have liked a bit more on what is in the archives but the film covers its changing face well. 

Tina and Ronnie

Still digesting the news of Tina Turner's passing and I can't help but think about the parallels with the life of another iconic singer, Ronnie Spector, who passed in 2022: both in the 1960s miniskirt era; both playing with family members in their acts; both involved with abusive men who controlled their careers; both escaping and finally re-emerging in the 1980s. 

Turner had a longer career arc and was able to enjoy a retirement in Switzerland with her second husband. But I see the word "survivor" attached to both and they are both worth remembering for their personal qualities as well as their music. 

I was among those teens who bought Private Dancer in the 1980s and marvelled at Turner's incredibly lived in voice, the strut in her walk in her videos. Later I dug deeper into her oeuvre and appreciated her ability to sing and dance at the same time. See "Proud Mary" for evidence. Wow!

I still have a soft spot for her duet with David Bowie on "Tonight", especially the little boogie they do and the way she throws back her head to laugh at something he says. 

Fly high, Tina. 

Dyke March at 30

Happy Birthday, Dyke March! 

I have written before about the March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation on 25 April 1993. 

But, of course, the night before that was the first ever Dyke March, a smaller but by no means less thrilling affair. It remains one of the greatest experiences of my life, caught up in a sea of drumming, dancing, singing, chanting lesbian humanity, marching from Dupont Circle to the White House, watching rapt as Lesbian Avengers stood in a line and ate fire. 

This video by Lesbian Avengers captures some of the scene. I can still remember some of these people. They are total (s)heroes.

Poets In Vogue

This was a small exhibit tucked away upstairs at the Southbank, in the National Poetry Library I never knew existed. Always good to make cultural discoveries and the exhibit is well worth seeing for the thoughts it inspires and the conversations it sparks.

On show are textiles relating to a handful of women poets. My first thought on arriving was the prevalence of writers known to have mental illness--Stevie Smith, Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton for starters. The items on display are not necessarily original or even created by the writers, which confused me. Plath's skirt hangs next to a record player. But there is a large recreation of a red dress worn by Sexton. And there is a collection of shirt collars for Smith, but it's not clear if they are hers. Gwendolyn Brooks has a large typewriter with exploding forms. Hmm. 

Also of interest are the records displayed, recordings of Smith, Plath and Dame Edith Sitwell, who is given an enormous dress cum boudoir for her display. I have lived in smaller flats than this dress! Dame Edith's recordings show her to be worthy of such a display as she emotes in her best received pronunciation. One can imagine the gestures accompanying such discourse. 

And then there is Audre Lorde, represented by a vivid caftan hanging opposite Sylvia's skirt. The text reveals it was made to accommodate her asymmetrical form post-mastectomy. I wept. 

One participant easy to overlook because it is by the entrance is the display for Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, the one writer with whom I was not familiar. Only when I looked her up did I realise her fascinating story. I wish I had known about her earlier. 

BFI Flare: Warnings from History

 Willem and Frieda is a gripping watch as Stephen Fry wanders present-day Amsterdam, like an absent-minded professor intoning lessons. The city looks lovely, with its lapping canals and twinkling lights. But the story he tells is of an extraordinary band of rebels who defied the occupying Nazis via forgery and sabotage. 

The titular heroes were two creative types, struggling artist Willem Arondeus and cellist Frieda Belinfante. Both were openly gay and when called, they stepped up and became part of a forgery circle producing legal documents to allow Jews and other hunted citizens to escape. 

The climax is an attack on the Population Registry, to sabotage the Nazis matching up the forgeries with the genuine documents. This would make a brilliant film in its own right. One can only admire the guts and determination to take a stand. The attack was on 27 March 1943, so a recent anniversary. One hopes there is at least a plaque commemorating it. 

The short doc Golden Voice brings us another astonishing story, of a trans man who met his wife  when both were working as forced labour under the Khmer Rouge in 1979. The story-telling is poor, a mix of badly recorded interviews and random shots of people wandering fields, but underneath is a tale of fortitude and self confidence.