Reclaiming the gaze since 1993
The 21st annual Lesbian Looks film series opens Wednesday February 12th at the Loft Cinema with Reaching for the Moon (Bruno Barreto, Brazil, 2013), winner of the Audience Award for Best Dramatic Feature at both Outfest and Frameline.
In 1989, together with a group of female friends, Su Friedrich rented and renovated an old loft in Williamsburg, an unassuming working-class district of Brooklyn. In 2005 this former industrial zone was designated a residential area and the factories, manufacturers and artists’ lofts were priced out by property speculators lured by tax breaks. Friedrich spent five years documenting with her camera the changes in the area between East River and the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. She shows the demolition of industrial buildings and the construction of trendy new apartments for wealthy clients, watching old tenants leave and new inhabitants arrive. As she keeps meticulous record of developments, the extent and speed of the upheaval becomes clear. Her own tenancy agreement expires too and so her documentary images and trenchant commentary become the tools of her growing anger.
Coral Bonelli was first known as “Pinolito,” a child actor in the 1970s Mexican film industry. The son of a mariachi and an actress, he grew up poor but a natural performer and was steered by his passionate stage mother, Lilia. After working in movies, “Pinolito” performed on the demanding cabaret circuit and then announced that he would become a woman. With her devoted, aging mother by his side, Coral deals with social prejudice and struggles to piece a living together.
Lunchtime screening and discussion with sexual health educator and filmmaker Dulce Garcia, whose film With Conviction, features femme lesbians of color including poet Jewelle Gomez.
Dulce is a fierce Queer Xicana Femme born in Mexico City and raised in East Los Angeles, where she evolved from a high-risk youth to an outspoken community activist. She received her Master’s in Ethnic Studies from San Francisco State University. Blending book smarts with street smarts, Dulce’s passion and commitment to serving underrepresented and underserved communities is evident through her years of work in cross-cultural and multi-gendered organizations, especially those serving queer youth of color. Her short film With Conviction won the 2011 Queer Women of Color Film Festival’s first ever Audience Award.
Waiting for You
(Lisa Fingleton, Ireland, 2013)
Unconditional
(Hanna Teachy, Kelly McKenna and Rhonda Chan-Soo, 2013)
Lennie and Pearl: Living in the Overlap
(Mary Dalton and Cindy Hill, 2013)
Three documentary shorts: An intimate diary traces two women’s five-year journey towards motherhood on a small farm in Ireland; how second-parent adoption laws in North Carolina harm children and parents in same-sex families; Lennie Gerber and Pearl Berlin have shared a passion for social justice and each other for over 40 years, and now their love inspires the fight for marriage equality in North Carolina.
