Saturday Afternoon at the Movies

(Tongzhi in Love was slow and a good documentary of gay life in China, but not very emotional or moving.)

The thing about film festivals is that you often go to see lots of movies that you normally wouldn't go to see. And, with shorts, that gets magnified several fold. Today's features that we chose, Stepping Out, were on the whole rather dark. And, for a Saturday afternoon, early evening not exactly the kind of mood one wants on the 40th Anniversary of Stonewall.

Among those in our set today were: The Casuarina Cove (Singapore, Junfeng Boo, 19 min.); Diana (United Kingdom, Aleem Khan, 11 min.); Dish (USA, Brian Harris Krinsky, 16 min.), Feedback (USA, Michael Lucid, 9 min.) and Tongzhi in Love (China, Ruby Yang, 30 min.).

That being said, the only movie I can recommend of the five we saw was Dish, and even that was not high on my list. Not that the movie itself was bad, it just wasn't really my demographic and so its music, style and relevance, although important, was just not my cup of tea.

There was one thing I did learn about culture from the movie, and that was the term "Emo" kids. (According to Wikipedia Emo kids are a whole subculture of music, fashion and style that I had no idea existed.) Emo kids Israel and Louie walk around their east Los Angeles neighborhood dishing and “sexting” about their high school classmates. After listening to Louie boast about his sexual escapades, Israel decides he has some catching up to do.

After seeing the movie I don't think I like these kids any more than I did before. But at least I understand more about how their sexual identities, social lives and fashion sense is all about. Damn do I feel old.