Films Examine Life in Melting Pot
The Laguna Beach Festival of Arts will present a weekly series of independent films by American, German and Finnish directors focusing on life in the American melting pot.
The seven-film series, “Windows Onto an American Landscape,” begins today with “Longtime Companion,” Norman Rene’s acclaimed look at the toll AIDS has taken on a group of gay men in New York. It originally was shown in 1990 on PBS’s “American Playhouse” series.
Other films include “Rosalie Goes Shopping,” a comedy by Percy Adlon (“Baghdad Cafe”); “Paris Is Burning,” Jeannie Livingston’s controversial documentary about a New York ball for gays who dress in drag, and Aki Kaurismaki’s “Leningrad Cowboys Go America.”
The films reveal “the myriad attitudes and realities of life in the United States today . . . (offering an) introspective look at the people and the situations that make up the melting pot we live in,” said series organizer David Sabaroff, who has been working for several years to bolster the image of the Laguna festival as something more than just a kitschy tourist attraction.
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