Bull, Marilyn

1998

Music video of fabulous local industrial folk band.

In this all girl punk rock program we’ve got three new rockin’ music videos: Tribe 8’s Estrofemme, Shrubbery’s Another Beautiful Thing, and Stone Fox’s Loose Composure. Then, in Lez B. Friends, a biker gang torments straight people by kidnapping their children, selling them to lesbian couples, and making them into sex slaves. Plus Lucy Thane's She’s Real, Worse Than Queer, a video-documentary by and about dykes who find in punk rock a culture and a life they can tolerate. Performers include Fifth Column, Team Dresch, Tribe 8, g.b. jones, the legendary Phranc, and many more.

Moodyson, Lukas

1998

Agnes, soon to be sixteen, is in love with Elin, a rebellious girl from school who has more than one admirer. Elin's feelings for Agnes begin to change after going to her birthday party as a joke.

The first feature film from 29-year-old director and highly acclaimed poet Lukas Moodysson, Show Me Love has been a tremendous success in Sweden. Not only was it Sweden's entry for this year's Academy Award as Best Foreign Language Film, it rivaled Titanic as Sweden's number one box office hit.  A sensitive, funny and bittersweet story about two teenage girls growing up in a small town named Amal, who find liberation in a conservative setting. One of these teens is the pretty and popular 15-year-old Elin (Alexandra Dahlstrom) who desperately wants something to happen in her life. Her older sister, Jessica, is eager to set her up with numerous guys. Several people are already in love with Elin, including the unpopular Agnes (Rebecca Liljeberg), who is rumored to be a lesbian. The story kicks in with Agnes reluctantly holding her 15th birthday party at the insistence of her well-meaning mom. Bored and aimless, Elin and her sister decide to go to Agnes' party, and Agnes' mom shows them up to Agnes' room. Being left alone in the room for a few moments affords Elin and Jessica a chance to steal a look at Agnes' computer. What they discover prompts Elin to agree to a bet – she'll kiss Agnes for 20 krona. No sooner said than done. Elin kisses Agnes and runs off howling with laughter. Feeling guilty, Elin later returns and asks for forgiveness. The two girls take a walk, get to know each other, and end up kissing again – this time for real! During the next few days at school, however, Elin is cruel to Agnes and ignores her. While Agnes puts up with the increased homophobia from her fellow students, the super cool Elin finds herself racked with thoughts of Agnes.  Show Me Love explores the minds of the teenage girls with surprising sensitivity. The result is an unclichéd contemporary story about longing, the joy and pain of being in love, the comical and heartbreaking aspects of growing up – and the courage it takes to be different.

Young, Scott

1998

Shooting Star celebrates the Senior Women’s Basketball league, and the notion that age only limits us if we let it, by taking a life-affirming look at the role basketball plays in these women’s lives. An inspiring look at an all-female, fifty-plus basketball team.

Hick, Jochen

1998

Glossy magazines, porn stars, washboard stomachs and street hustlers: Hollywood faithfully provides the public with a seemingly inexhaustible flood of male erotica. Sex/Life In L.A. brings together nine young men who earn their livings with their bodies. There are porn stars: Matt Bradshaw, porn actor and hairdresser; Kevin Kramer, who’s planning his transformation from porn legend to legitimate actor; and Cole Tucker, porn star and successful entrepreneur. And there’s Ron Athey, a performance artist who’s also the subject of this year’s Hallelujah! Finally, there are unemployed hustlers and models like Patrick and David, and ex-porn stars like John Garwood. To each of the men interviewed, the body is both the object of desire and the subject of art, and they all show their bodies freely. (The scene where Tony Ward spontaneously jacks off in the bathtub is worth the price of admission.) For some it’s been their ticket to success, and for others it’s been their downfall. In the end, Sex/Life In L.A. entertainingly depicts the survival strategies of some of the male image industry’s major players.

Kuan, Kian H.

1998

An introspective investigation of living in two different cultures - a Chinese and a Gay culture. Using collages of words and images, order and chaos is depicted in these two cultures. Eloquent images, narration and text articulate the balancing act necessary to accommodate queer identity and ethnic heritage.

Fung, Richard
McCaskell, Tim

1998

[From IMDB]: "In a courageous, straight into the camera, monologue the film maker tells us what it's like to be the school fag. The only one that is out about being gay in a small town high school."

School Fag is a monologue by fabulously swishy and self-possessed 19-year-old Shawn Fowler, who waxes eloquent about his days as a Wonder Woman wannabe.

Rosenfeld, Shoshana

1998

Scent uVa Butch lets viewers catch a whiff of the lives of more than 20 butches – from a 23-year-old Texas charm-school graduate to a 53-year-old mohawk-sporting diesel dyke.

Defurne, Bavo

1998

A teenager adores his sailor friend.

Lujan, Al

1998

What happens when two Latino leathermen get caught up in the intersection of culture, kink and desire? Culture, kink and desire collide with a Latin twist.

Henderickx, Guido

1998

According to director Guido Hendrickx, S. is "about a hurt girl looking for happiness." S., portrayed by phenomenal first-time actress Natali Broods, is an erratic, traumatized young woman who has nothing to hold onto in life. Abused by her father, unable to communicate with her disturbed mother, she wanders through the world, aimless and alone.  She has a fleeting moment of happiness when she finds work in a peepshow and becomes lovers with the beautiful Marie. But even love can't stop her downward spiral. Either by rotten luck or cosmic intention, every other person she encounters is bad news: a philandering boyfriend has sex with an ex-girlfriend right in front of her; a priest visits her at the peep show where she works, then stalks her; a man attacks her in a deserted subway station. She responds to each of them the only way she knows how – she kills them.  Incredibly violent and containing graphic sex, both hetero and homo in nature, this film is much like a car wreck. Its gorgeous hues and miserable lives are painfully disturbing, yet you can’t help but stare. A series of collisions of lost lives along a road to happiness littered with dead bodies, harsh realities and blood galore.