Wide-Ranging Gay Festival Opens Tuesday

The seventh annual Los Angeles International Gay and Lesbian Film and Video Festival commences Tuesday at 7:30 in a new setting, the new Directors Guild on Sunset, and with its most ambitious, impressive and far-ranging program to date. Running through Sunday, it boasts a record 46 films from more than a dozen countries.

Anne-Claire Poirer’s “Salut Victor!” is a perfect opening-night attraction, a delightful and poignant story about a friendship that develops between two very different men, the ebullient, uninhibited Victor (Jean-Louis Roux) and the austere and closeted Philippe (Jacques Godin), who meet in a retirement home. This French-Canadian film is an unabashed heart-tugger, but beneath its charm and sentiment, we sense not only a tangible mortality but also the great toll exacted from both these old men because of their sexual orientation.

Roger Stigliano’s imaginative “Fun Down There” (Wednesday at 10 p.m.) is an exceptionally sunny comedy about a sweet-natured, spindly young man (Michael Waite) who leaves rural Upstate New York for the East Village, where he finds a warm, welcoming community and not one but two lovers.

Shusuki Kanedo’s “Summer Vacation: 1999” (Thursday at 7:30 p.m.) is a very Japanese romantic fantasy, darkly bizarre and kinky and stylish in the utmost. It deals with a small group of adolescent boys who inexplicably are allowed to stay, entirely on their own, over the summer at their remote and luxurious private school. The first of the film’s many twists is that the boys are played by girls!

Other Thursday offerings include the first of three programs from “Out on Tuesday” (at 9:30), a series by and about gays and lesbians produced by Britain’s innovative Channel 4. A kind of gay “60 Minutes,” this crisp, highly entertaining and informative series covers everything from mystery novelists who have created lesbian detective heroines to two real-life heroes, a pair of South African gay activists, one black and one white. There is a sharp segment on how Saatchi and Saatchi, one of the world’s top advertising agencies, would “sell” homosexuality, another on why gay and lesbian Hollywood actors must remain closeted. A subsequent “Out on Tuesday” deals with the crucial role gay discos have played in the pop music industry.

Also screening on Thursday (at 10 p.m.) is Juliet Bashore’s bold, daring and disturbing nonfiction drama about a young porn director (Tigre Mennett) who has become hooked on porn star (and full-time exhibitionist) Sharon Mitchell, who in turn has hooked Tigre on heroin. On another level the film contemplates the power of sex, both real and illusory.

Friday brings another opportunity to see Gregg Araki’s low-low budget yet accomplished “The Long Weekend (O’Despair)” (at 7:30 p.m.), which views with both compassion and amusement three friends, gathered for a reunion, who are resisting growing up and who indulge mightily in self-pitying Angst. One of the most thoughtful films in the festival, “Desire” (Friday at 7:30 p.m.) by Stuart Marshall suggests persuasively how Germany’s turn-of-the-century concern with nature and physical culture fostered enlightened attitudes toward sexuality yet also fed Nazism’s master-race theories; very informative on the fate of homosexuals and lesbians in the concentration camps.

Dorothy Todd Henaut’s “Firewords” (Saturday at 2:30 p.m.) introduces us to three dynamic French-Canadian feminist writers, Louky Bersianik, Jovette Marchessault and Nicole Brossard. Bersianik is especially concise on how the oppression of women is embedded in language.

Laurens C. Postma’s “Derek Jarman--You Know What I Mean” (Saturday at 7 p.m.) offers an enlightening introduction to Britain’s inconoclastic experimental film maker, who bears a remarkable resemblance to D. W. Griffith--tall, patrician and with a hawk-like profile--and who has nothing good to say about Margaret Thatcher. In addition to discussing his complex films, Jarman displays a typically British stiff-upper lip in regard to his testing HIV positive.

Also on Saturday (at 7:30 p.m.) is Charlotte Silvera’s “Prisonnieres,” a well-made, non-exploitive women’s prisoner picture in which two of the film’s many characters (played by Fanny Bastien and Corinne Touzet) fall in love. There are solid performances from such familiar actresses as Marie-Christine Barrault, Annie Girardot and Bernadette Lafont.

Jean-Yves Laforce’s “The Heart Exposed” (“Le Coeur Decouvert,” Sunday at 7 p.m.) is fine French-Canadian drama dealing realistically with two men--one of whom has a 5-year-old son--falling in love. Among the many films not available for preview are Ulrike Ottinger’s “Ticket of No Return” (Friday at 10 p.m.) and Frank Ripploh’s “Taxi to Cairo” (Saturday at 5 p.m.), from the maker of the notorious “Taxi zum Klo.” Information: (213) 665-0622.