Governi, Valerio
Cipelletti, Claudio

1997

Sichel, Alex

1997

Tomboy, Texas

1997

Documents a video artist's alien abduction experience. Local Bay Area filmmaker.

Novaczek, Ruth

1997

Set in New York and London, 5050 is about a relationship, a reflection on love gone wrong, and dual responsibility; an argument, a separation, and the nature of love are explored in images and text, cut like a music video with a jazz rhythm.

Gonick, Noam

1997

The Winnipeg general strike as seen through the window of a semi-fictional bath-house/barber shop

Swenson, Laurel

1996

Young, angry and in-your-face, these women talk about poverty, classism, and the day-to-day trials, absurdities and joys of being a young, low-income lesbian mother.

Kwan, Stanley

1996

Leaping with admirable amounts of enthusiasm and passion for Chinese film, Hong Kong director Stanley Kwan – recipient of our 1999 Frameline Award – creates a bewitching documentary full of subversive gender images from across the spectrum of Chinese cinema. From Mainland films of the 1930s to the latest über-violent films of John Woo, Kwan exposes the ways in which genderplay and queer imagery have been a facet of Chinese film throughout its history. Within the first three minutes of his film, Kwan enthralls with powerful images from his own life experiences as a gay man, as a filmmaker and as a lover of film – and reveals how these parts of his experience may or may not be interrelated. Yang + Yin also takes a close look at the mainstreaming of traditionally gender-subversive texts as they were translated into Chinese films, highlighting such examples as Farewell My Concubine, and Tsui Hark’s remake of The Lovers. But Kwan saves the best for last, bringing the academic and the personal together in an intense conversation with his mother regarding some of the films discussed earlier, her son’s “lifestyle” and how Kwan's sexuality affects her feelings about tradition.

Bega, A

1996

Jessica Bega's documentary Worthy Mothers follows two very different lesbian couples as they go through the adoption process. Joy and Margo are an interacial professional couple who adopt their daughter Felicia through a private agency. Sheila and Jo have motherhood thrust upon them with little time to prepare when Jo's sister gives up custody of her sons Jeffrey and Cody. Both these couples must battle the legal and social issues lesbian mothers are confronting today.

Reichman, Rachel

1996

Rachel Reichman’s debut film is a hauntingly realistic look at life in a rural town with a failing economy. Cynthia Kaplan plays Jenny, an out of work twentysomething who is stuck in a passionless marriage with a boring factory worker. She spends most of her day going to interviews for dead end jobs, all to no avail. The only thing that seems to bring her any joy is the clandestine affair she is having with her next-door neighbor. June, played by Sonja Sohn, is everything Jenny’s husband is not: twenty, self-assured, black and female. The two walk around town barely suppressing the sexual energy between them that is just waiting to explode. They have to make do with finding back alleys, abandoned cars and clearings in the woods where they can be alone. But while Jenny doesn’t seem to mind being stuck in this depressed town, June is planning her escape. She is in school and has plans to go to a university and these plans do not include Jenny. Rachel Reichman’s careful direction and subtle script are brought together by the strong performances from the lead actresses in this powerful character study of two women trapped and yearning for a way out.

George, Tanja

1996

Three women, two centuries, one desire. When three women from different centuries realize that there is more to life than a carear, a marriage, a beauty, they finally take control of their lives.