Fung, Richard

1996

Richard Fung's Dirty Laundry looks at sodomy and prostitution among the Chinese in 19th-century Canada.

Kennedy, Sarah

1996

A love story between a girl and her motorcycle. Local Bay Area filmmaker.

Cholodenko, Lisa

1996

A spontaneous dinner party fills with increasing paranoia.

Hayes, Lisa

1996

A woman recounts her friend’s humorous struggle with an excessive perspiration problem which parallels her sexual re-orientation in the hilarious Dike.

Spence, Richard

1996

A romantic gender-bender when boyhood friend meet again accidentally twenty years later.

Sachs, Ira

1996

Devoid of sentimentality and stereotype, The Delta is a first feature of extraordinary lyricism, sensitivity, and compassion. Awash with the sensual textures and sounds of Memphis and the Mississippi, Ira Sachs’ film transports us deep into a rich and regional naturalism strangely evocative of British social realism. The film’s character and articulation of place, however, are distinctly American. The carefully constructed narrative follows the burgeoning romance between two ill-matched young men: Lincoln, an affluent white teenager, and John, a working-class emigré born to a Vietnamese mother and an American G.I. Following their fleeting liaison in the front of the family station wagon, Lincoln unexpectedly invites John to spend the night navigating the Delta on his father’s boat. Sachs’ tender exploration of the politics of class, sexuality and racial difference transcends the symbolic weight of his characterization, creating a film of great depth and anguished complexity.

1996

A gay New Yorker returns to his childhood home in the South for his sister’s coming out ball and contemplates his own coming out in The Debutantes.

Bonder, Diane

1996

A young girl's fantasy about matricide comes true and she is left to reconstruct her memories of Mom through the movies with the help of some meddlesome aunts.

Smith, Leslie L.

1996

David and Gwen search for love and absolute truth.

This smart feature film by Leslie Smith touches on the universal theme of looking, and longing, for happiness. David, a disheveled documentary filmmaker (played by Anthony Rapp, currently starring in the Broadway smash Rent), is always searching — for love, for the perfect roommate, for money to pay the rent. In his quest for a roommate, David meets Gwen (Camryn Manheim), who becomes his friend and confidante. Gwen’s on a trip of her own, in the throes of divorce and looking for some peace. While looking for love (or a reasonable facsimile) David’s not so lucky: he encounters the dates from Hell, from the guy who wants sex after three words of small talk, to the man whose main passion in life is hummus. These hilarious episodes, while exhausting and discouraging for David, provide for tasty bits of humor and wit. The film, which cost only $22,500 to shoot, will have you hoping David doesn’t find what he’s searching for.

Feng, Wu

1996

During the Han Dynasty, it was called the passion of the cut sleeve. The expression originated from the story of the Emperor who was sleeping with his male lover stretched out across his sleeve. When the Emperor wanted to get up, he cut off his own sleeve so as not to disturb his lover. More than two thousand years have passed and the lives of Chinese homosexuals are no longer celebrated in the official histories. It was not so long ago that the government declared that homosexuality in China did not exist. Yet the tumultuous changes in China in the last ten years have also brought new lives to lesbians and gays. In the tradition of activist cinema, two courageous Chinese men have documented for the first time the daily lives of lesbian and gay men in the People's Republic of China. They have traveled throughout the country — from Urumqi in the west to Hainan Island in the south — and learned about the survival techniques of their sisters and brothers. They bring safe-sex literature and stories of others who are like themselves. In some cities, the directors also took their camera to the parks, discos, bars and homes of lesbians and gays who were willing to let us into their lives. Interviews with intellectuals, workers, writers, a former Peking opera singer, and one of the directors himself bring us the realities of an unknown world and what the darkness before dawn looks like in the People's Republic of China.