Gay Film Festival Widens Its Social Vision

When the L.A. International Gay & Lesbian Film & Video Festival (opening Friday at the Directors Guild Theater in West Hollywood) began screening films in 1982, the fledgling festival was seen by some as an overdue response to Hollywood’s reluctance to depict gay and lesbian people in the movies.

But now, festival director (and founder) Larry Horne believes that the annual festival “has come of age” and “no longer exists solely in a defensive and angry relationship to mainstream media.”

Horne attributes the festival’s growth to gay and straight audiences eager for alternatives to what he calls “Spielbergian/Rambo middle-class madness.” He also cites the recent emergence of a prestigious board of directors.

But he gives most of the credit to the international gay and lesbian film makers whose work he has come to know during frequent trips to European film festivals.

“I think AIDS has forced some film makers to push past standard coming-out stories to create more inclusive social visions where gay characters don’t endlessly question their sexuality,” he said of the 35 festival films, scheduled to be screened through July 20.

Horne chose Yu Kan-Ping’s 1986 film, “The Outsiders,” for the opening-night gala benefit not just because it’s the first film about homosexuality to be licensed by the government of Taiwan, but because, he said, “this film represents a new generation of gay films.”

“These gay gang members are completely at home with their sexuality, even if their society isn’t,” he added.

“I looked for films thematically in tune with the Stephen Frears’ ‘My Beautiful Laundrette,’ ” said Horne, referring to the 1986 movie where a passionate affair between a street tough and a young Pakistani guy is set amid a story about the collapse of Britain’s social order. Horne found two such films--Ayelet Menahemi’s 1988 “Crows” and Jonathon Sagalle’s 1987 “At Home”--at the recent Israeli Film Festival.

“The gay men in these films aren’t wracked with the self-doubt you might expect among people living in a warrior country such as Israel,” Horne said.

Derek Jarman’s 1987 “The Last of England” is about imaginary terrorists in a futuristic Britain after the fall of the government.

Horne described how one young man seduces a male terrorist in order to create a bond between the hostages and their captors, adding that “it’s one of the sexiest moments in the festival, that takes place in a movie much more about politics than homosexuality.”

Horne pointed to Ulrike Ottinger’s 1984 “The Mirror-Image of Dorian Gray in the Yellow Press” as a “Germanic depiction of female assertiveness” that breaks with lesbian stereotypes.

Included in the festival is a retrospective of Andy Warhol films. Warhol represented the dawning of the gay avant-garde before he was co-opted by the mainstream, Horne said, adding, “It’s time now to reclaim him.”

Horne is also proud to reclaim Mauritz Stiller’s 1916 movie, “The Wings,” considered by some to be the first gay-themed film ever made. Stiller, who discovered Greta Garbo and brought her to the United States, is also the subject of Claes Olsson’s 1986 documentary, “Garbo, Stiller and I.”

These two films link the festival to the century’s dominant film history. Has Horne become so mainstream that he’s soft-pedaling his Hollywood critique?

“I’m not sanctioning Hollywood or its tragic silence regarding AIDS or gays or lesbians,” he answered.

“But to posit two separate worlds--a mainstream and an alternative--is naive. There’s such a thing as a cultural landscape which we both occupy, reacting to and influencing each other. This year we are strong enough to to be more than a cultural gadfly, but a cultural leader, too.”