Rauch, David

1994

One of the first gay works made entirely on digital video.

Coray, Tony

1994

No further information available.

McClean, Steve

1994

Postcards is inspired by the poetic and autobiographical writings of David Wojnarowicz, specifically his books Close to the Knives and Memories that Smell Like Gasoline. The film weaves together three fictional stories from the life of a young gay outsider. A violent suburban childhood spent with an abusive father in New Jersey in the early 1960s is seen from a queer child’s perspective; it leads to his years as a teenage hustler on the streets of New York, and eventually to his adult fascination with anonymous sex, the American desert and the open road. The film deals with the conflict between the young David and his family, and later, between David and society at large; in representations which are suppressed in the dominant culture—those American taboos of sex and desire, death and AIDS. "McLean has found himself a brilliant cast of unknowns, and it is to his great credit that he can balance such naturalistic scenes that seem to owe much to the spirit of Cassavetes with the more stylized and eliptical moments. For the film draws its strength from the way it jumbles together the different segments from David’s life and makes connections between them. Certainly McLean has created an extraordinarily textured film full of moments that will blaze in the audiences memory. The cinematography that evokes the sunglazed landscapes and the twilight interiors alike as burnished fragments, the soundtrack’s snatches of plaintive pop songs that spin their own melancholy tales, along with Stephen Endelman’s ethereal score haunt the mind long after the last reel. It may make for a bleak portrayal , for despite the sparks of comedy and the moments of tenderness, the film unwinds towards a terrible mourning. But McLean’s distinctive vision sends the message home to the heart like no other.

Nix, Laura

1994

An autobiographical exploration of my relationship with a Victorian armchair.

Giannaris, Constantine

1994

The collapse of Eurocommunism makes for strange bedfellows in the latest from Constantine Giannaris (Caught Looking, North of Vortex). Ilias (Stavros Zalmas), a bored and blasé thirty-five-year-old Athenian, falls in love with Panagiotis (Panagiotis Tsetsos), a muscular, eighteen-year-old economic refugee from Albania. These two have nothing in common, sexually or otherwise, but that doesn’t stop them from embarking on an emotionally lopsided, ill-fated relationship.  Giannaris’s Genet-tinged narrative, related as much through carefully wrought imagery as dialogue, is heavy on atmosphere and the palpable sensation of desire. Taken literally, A Place in the Sun’s scenario is a queer activist’s horror—the beautiful Panagiotis isn’t above bilking and bashing gays, and Ilias willingly becomes an accessory after the fact to a capital crime—though anyone who’s ever been caught up in passion’s wild throes is likely to empathize with Ilias’s romantic and moral dilemmas.

1950

Demme, Jonathan

1994

When a man with HIV is fired by his law firm because of his condition, he hires a homophobic small-time lawyer as the only willing advocate for a wrongful dismissal suit.

Yung, Wayne

1994

Employs accordion accompaniment and explicit male/male sex to discuss the politics of sex.

Rorex, LeeAnn

1994

A hilarious monologue about New York City and lesbian bars.

Ruven, Paul

1994

Part of a film triptych on AIDS supported by the Red Hot Organization in London, this haunting film symbolically explores the pain of loss and the search for community. With lush and startling imagery, director Paul Ruven takes us on a vision quest for liberation from the daily prison wrought by our emotional and psychic repressions.