Documentary – Bitch Flicks

‘Queerama’: A Tapestry of Queer British History

An unexpected gem directed by Daisy Asquith, the documentary outlines the milestones, setbacks, stigma, and celebrations of the LGBTQ movement in the UK from 1919 to the present. It incorporates electro beats, limited dialogue, and some steamy scenes, cut with cards detailing important milestones for the LGBTQ community. … Though much as the majority of queer history is persecution, oppression, and erasure, ‘Queerama’ is a strangely joyful monument to it all.

Guest post written by Becky Kukla.

Opening Sheffield Doc Fest this year was an unexpected gem in the form of Queerama. Produced entirely out of the British Film Institute (BFI) archives, the documentary outlines the milestones, setbacks, stigma, and celebrations of the LGBTQ movement in the UK from 1919 to the present. It incorporates electro beats, limited dialogue, and some steamy scenes, cut with cards detailing important milestones for the LGBTQ community.

The unusual result comes from the mind of Daisy Asquith, a documentary director probably best known for her funny, yet poignant TV documentary Crazy About One Direction which delved into the lives of One Direction fans. Asquith, who received nothing short of vitriol from the young fans for her film, calmly succeeded in creating a film that was both critical and understanding of young teen culture. She showed us that “Directioners” were every bit as obsessed and in love with One Direction as the media portrayed them to be but also, that we as humans, all have obsessions.

Asquith’s keenness to dissect social ideologies is realized fully in her latest feature film. From the the beginnings of gay relationships on-screen, as early as 1919, right up to the publicly fought battles for adoption rights and marriage equality, Queerama details queer British history in a way it has never been seen before. There are frank interviews with politicians, scientists, and all manner of “experts” where the discussion ranges from homosexuality being sinful, to being reversible with the right therapy, to those who practice it being labelled as mentally ill. There is a strong exploration of the idea of lesbianism as invisible — Queerama points out that there have never been any laws against women having sexual relations with one another.

Weaving previously unseen news footage, with steamy subtextual scenes from the early days of cinema — Queerama is rich in both content and emotion. Certain archival footage brings up feelings of anger, but these are almost always followed with footage of the queer community and of positive representations of LGBTQ culture. The crossing over from fiction to news archive and back again brings up the cyclical nature of art and life. Which imitates which? As we see queer couples becoming publicly intimate on UK television shows of the 1980s, we also watch in horror as the AIDs crisis unfolds.

The soundtrack is glorious (I’ve already made my own playlist on Spotify) and it soars flawlessly from racy, upbeat electro tracks to slower, more melancholic moments. Asquith overlays footage from the 1950s and 60s with contemporary pop music, bringing the visuals into the 21st century. At times, it feels like an educational music video — the songs blurring into one another, barely stopping for the fairly limited moments of dialogue. Songs like John Grant’s “Jesus Hates F*****s,” set against scenes of a very sexual nature, provides more insight into the conflicted identities of LGBTQ folk than a fictional film ever could.

Humor, in the soundtrack and visually, plays a huge part in the documentary. It isn’t a comedy, there is too much tragedy and discrimination for it to be comical, but it’s reflective of the queer British movement. Color, laughter, and celebrations exist amongst the tears. Juxtaposing certain songs and archives against one another — particularly stern experts mixed with the beautifully queer lyrics of Herucles & Love Affair — gives their words less meaning, and it is easier to laugh at the backwards mentalities that certain people hold (and still do).

As a part of the LGBTQ community, I found myself staring at a history that I only partially recognized. A documented, filmed history, real history — most of which I had never looked at. The selection and use of archival footage is truly astounding, and Asquith repeatedly cuts sequences together to create the idea of an expansive queer narrative; a living history, a narrative which spans beyond its reach. Queerama feels like a tapestry. Growing up in the 1990s and 2000s, homosexuality and bisexuality was becoming accepted. There was (and is) still a lot of stigma, bullying, and discrimination but watching Queerama made me realize exactly how far we have come. It’s this progress we need to celebrate, yet simultaneously keep an eye on the past to make sure it doesn’t come back around.

I think everyone, whether you identify as LGBTQ, are an ally, or none of the above, should watch Queerama. Though much as the majority of queer history is persecution, oppression, and erasure, Queerama is a strangely joyful monument to it all. It will make you laugh, cry, dance, and think — quite possibly all at the same time. It says, “Despite it all, we are still here.” It’s a testament to perseverance and to queer visibility.

It is, quite simply, a breathtaking experience.

Becky Kukla works in factual TV by day, and by night she writes about representation in film and television, and rants about politics on twitter. You can find her at Femphile or at Film Inquiry.

International Women-Directed Films at the 2017 London Feminist Film Festival

The London Feminist Film Festival is all about “celebrating international feminist films past and present.” It “will provide a safe space to explore, celebrate, organise, and inspire.” Now in its fifth year, the festival will run from August 17-20.

Here is the 2017 London Feminist Film Festival’s trailer:

THURSDAY, 17 AUGUST | 6:00 pm

Talk Back Out Loud + panel discussion with Kaori Sakagami (director), Rhodessa Jones (protagonist of the film and acclaimed theatre director & performer), and Naima Sakande (Programme Lead, Young Women’s Work, Leap Confronting Conflict). Chaired by Marianna Tortell (CEO, Domestic Violence Intervention Project).

Talk Back Out Loud EUROPEAN PREMIERE
Director: Kaori Sakagami / 2014 / USA & Japan / Rating: U / 119 mins

“The Medea Project: Theatre for Incarcerated Women, an all-women theatre group originating in San Francisco, produces work by and for women who are HIV-positive and/or have experiences of being incarcerated in the US prison system. The women in the theatre group are often marginalised and silenced by and within the prison system, health services and the art world; through the Medea Project led by Rhodessa Jones, they claim and celebrate their own identities, space and survival. This film challenges the othering of women who have been diagnosed as HIV-positive and/or criminalised by white patriarchal institutions and communities.”

FRIDAY, 18 AUGUST | 6:00 pm

INDIAN WOMEN CLAIMING SPACES + panel discussion with Geetha J (director, Akam), Vaishnavi Sundar (director, Aage Jake Left), Manuela Bastian (director, Where to, Miss?), and Viji Rajagopalan (Domestic Violence Intervention Project).

Akam (Inside) UK PREMIERE
Director: Geetha J / 2007 / India / Rating: U / 12 mins / English and Malayalam with subtitles

“A visual poem, an intergenerational portrait of three women. The focus is on the akam – the inside or the domestic space.”

Aage Jake Left (Go Ahead and Take Left)
Director: Vaishnavi Sundar / 2017 / India / Rating: U / 5 mins / Hindi with subtitles

“Anju is a traffic constable in the north-eastern state of Sikkim, where women have more freedoms than those in many parts of India.”

Where to, Miss?
Director: Manuela Bastian / 2015 / Germany / Rating: 12 / 83 mins / Hindi with subtitles

“Devki’s biggest wish is to become a taxi driver – she wants to ensure other women can travel around Delhi in safety, and would like to be financially independent. While striving for her goal, she must contend with opposition from the men in her life and the deeply-rooted traditions of society. Where to, Miss? follows the story of this courageous young woman over a period of three years, as she navigates the roles traditionally assigned to women whilst trying to maintain a sense of her own identity.”

SATURDAY, 19 AUGUST | 1:30 pm

FEMINISM AND THE ARCHIVE + panel discussion with Althea Greenan (Curator at the Women’s Art Library at Goldsmiths University), Samia Malik (from theWomen of Color Index reading group that explores the Women’s Art Library catalogue at Goldsmiths to visibilize WoC artists’ work) and Julia Wieger (co-director of Hauntings in the Archive! and co-founder of the Secretariat for Ghosts, Archival Politics and Gaps (SKGAL), at the VBKÖ).

“We will screen the European premiere of feature documentary Hauntings in the Archive! This will be followed by a short talk by Selina Robertson on her research with the Rio Cinema’s 1980s–1990s feminist film curation archive.”

Spuken im Archiv (Hauntings in the Archive!) EUROPEAN PREMIERE
Directors: Nina Hoechtl and Julia Wieger / 2017 / Austria / Rating: 12 / 72 mins / English and German with subtitles

“Hauntings in the Archive! reflects on and exposes the his/herstory/ies of the Austrian Association of Women Artists (VBKÖ) through its century-old archive of letters, photos, catalogues and thousands of other documents. The Secretariat for Ghosts, Archive Politics and Gaps curates the material to conjure up the spectres of the multiple lives of the VBKÖ that meet and share the scene in the film: ghosts of national socialism encounter colonial fantasies and old and new feminist agencies.”

SATURDAY 19 AUGUST 3.30 pm

VISIBILITY + panel discussion with Clare Unsworth (Director of Shhh!), Leah Thorn (Spoken Word Poet whose poem is featured in Shhh!), Victoria Bridges (Program Director – Global Girl Media), Monique Washington (co-director of Brexit Unveiled), Aisha Clarke (co-director of Brexit Unveiled), Holly Bourdillon (co-director of 1 in 5) and Hannah McMeeking (co-director of 1 in 5). Chaired by Jacquelyn Guderley (Founder of Salomé and co-founder of Stemmettes).

“This session of short films explores ways of navigating (in)visibility.”

One in Five
Directors: Holly Bourdillon and Hannah McMeeking / 2007 / UK / Rating: PG / 12 mins

“Two feminist film students research the lack of women in the film industry to find out what is stopping women from succeeding.”

Brexit Unveiled
Directors: Aliyah Bensouda, Aisha Clarke, Ruth Egagha, Violet Marcenkova, Jorja Oladiran, Poppy Sharples, Lily Barnett, and Monique Washington / 2016 / UK / Rating: PG / 4 mins

“Examining the increased levels of violence that Muslim women have faced since the Brexit vote.”

Shhh!
Director: Clare Unsworth / 2016 / UK / Rating: PG / 4 mins

“A lyrical, physical expression of a powerful poem by Leah Thorn about the systematic silencing of women – and about resistance to that silencing.”

Cycologic UK PREMIERE
Directors: Emilia Stålhammar, Veronica Pålsson, and Elsa Löwdin / 2016 / Sweden / Rating: U / 15 mins

“The traffic in Kampala, Uganda can be chaotic and dangerous. This multi-award-winning short follows urban planner Amanda Ngabirano’s campaign for a cycling lane in her city, plus other women cyclists who negotiate the restrictions imposed on women by society.”

Mrs Somerville’s Monument
Directors: Rebecca Hurwitz and Liz Liste / 2017 / UK / Rating: PG / 7 mins

“This animated short asks why so few women have been awarded a science Nobel Prize.”

Women Speak Out! Mena
Director: Women’s Resource Centre / 2016 / UK / Rating: PG / 5 mins

“Mena speaks about her experiences of racism.”

More Dangerous Than a Thousand Rioters
Director: Kelly Gallagher / 2016 / USA / Rating: U / 6 mins

“A shimmering, poetic ode to the activist Lucy Parsons. Animation illuminates Lucy’s fierce battles against injustice, from her birth on a Texas plantation, to Chicago and beyond.”

SATURDAY, 19 AUGUST | 8.30 pm | @ BFI Southbank

40th ANNIVERSARY SCREENING FEMINIST CLASSIC: The Sealed Soil + Skype Q&A with director Marva Nabili, hosted by BAFTA-nominated film producer Elhum Shakerifar.

Khake Sar Beh Morh (The Sealed Soil)

Director: Marva Nabili / 1977 / Iran / Rating: PG / 90 mins / Persian with subtitles

“Eighteen-year-old Rooy-Bekheir rejects suitor after suitor as she struggles for independence and identity in her southern Iranian village. The Sealed Soil, the first independent feature by an Iranian woman director, was shot clandestinely before being smuggled out of pre-revolution Iran for post-production. It achieved international success, including winning Most Outstanding Film of the Year at the 1977 London Film Festival, but has never been shown in Iran. The beautifully shot film has been compared stylistically to Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman. This is a rare chance to see a feminist classic on the director’s own 16mm print.”

SUNDAY 20 AUGUST | 1:30 pm

VAWG: RESISTANCE & SURVIVAL + panel discussion with Katja Berls (director, Outside Peace, Inside War), Dorett Jones (director, Nothing About Us Without Us), & others tbc, chaired by Camille Kumar (Women & Girls Network).

“This session will explore and celebrate women’s global resistance to violence against women and girls (VAWG) through 3 films that challenge the notions that there is one right way to respond to VAWG and that there is one kind of survivor.”

Nesaa Alhoria (Women of Freedom) EUROPEAN PREMIERE
Director: Abeer Zeibak Haddad / 2017 / Palestine and Israel / Rating: 15 / 58 mins / Arabic and Hebrew with subtitles

“This film tells the stories of women murdered in the name of ‘honour’ within Arab and Palestinian communities in Palestine and Israel, focusing on the social and political contexts in which the women were killed. The director travels through Palestine and Israel collecting testimonies from survivors and perpetrators, and giving voice to murdered women, while drawing on her own experiences. Women of Freedom encourages discussion, reflection and action on an issue that is not limited to one community, religion or country.”

[Trigger warning: images of violence.]

Außen Frieden, Innen Krieg (Outside Peace, Inside War) WORLD PREMIERE
Director: Katja Berls / 2017 / Germany / Rating: 15 / 29 mins / German with subtitles

“More than 70 years after the end of WW2, Hilde and her surviving sister speak about their experiences of sexual and physical violence perpetrated against them and their sisters by soldiers during the war. This film speaks about and to the violence and trauma perpetrated against women and girls in war and crisis zones around the world, both past and present, and its impact on women’s lives.”

[Trigger warning: discussions of violence.]

Nothing About Us Without Us
Director: Dorett Jones / 2016 / UK / Rating: PG / 12 mins / English and Urdu with subtitles

“This short film captures black women’s resistance to government cuts that threaten vital VAWG services for and by black and minoritised women. It follows women from Apna Haq, a black women’s organisation from Rotherham, who travel to London to march with other women and hand in a petition to Downing Street to protest against the continued closure of black women’s organisations, which threatens women’s lives.”

SUNDAY 20 AUGUST | 4:00 pm

ASPIRE / INSPIRE + panel discussion with Terry Wragg (Leeds Animation Workshop), Chi Onwurah MP (Women’s Engineering Society), & others tbc.

“Inspirational women forging a way in male-dominated professions.”

Did I Say Hairdressing? I Meant Astrophysics
Director: Leeds Animation Workshop (a women’s collective) / 1998 / UK / Rating: U / 14 mins

“A modernised fairytale animation, investigating why women are under-represented in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM). The film uses humour to counter the subtle and not-so-subtle gender typecasting that often prevails, from babyhood right up to professional level.”

Ouaga Girls
Director: Theresa Traore Dahlberg / 2017 / Sweden, France, Burkina Faso and Qatar / Rating: 12 / 83 mins / French and Moré with subtitles

“We follow a group of young women who are training to be car mechanics in Burkina Faso’s capital, Ouagadougou, in this highly enjoyable film about life choices, sisterhood and the endeavour to find your own way. The young women are at a crucial point in life when their hopes, dreams and courage are confronted against society’s expectations of what a woman should be. Dahlberg’s short Taxi Sister was a big hit at LFFF2012, and it’s great to welcome her back to LFFF with her debut feature film. This is a coming-of-age story with much warmth, laughs, heartbreak and depth.”

To purchase tickets and for more information, please visit London Feminist Film Festival’s website. All screenings are at the Rio Cinema in Dalston, except for LFFF’s Feminist Classic screening of The Sealed Soil, which is at BFI Southbank on 19 August. All film and panel descriptions are courtesy of London Feminist Film Festival.

‘The Girl Down Loch Änzi’ and Our Slippery Relationship with Ghosts

‘The Girl Down Loch Änzi,’ which had its North American premiere at the 2017 Hot Docs film festival, is a ghost story. Laura lives on a Swiss farm that borders the fabled Änziloch – a deep ravine that, legend has it, is home to the ghost of a woman cast out from the village several centuries before, and either left to die or imprisoned below. …An unusually stylish documentary, with beautifully-composed shots and scenes that play out with a feature film’s attention to blocking…

Written by Katherine Murray.

The Girl Down Loch Änzi, which had its North American premiere at the 2017 Hot Docs film festival, is a ghost story. The film’s central character, Laura, lives on a Swiss farm that borders the fabled Änziloch – a deep ravine that, legend has it, is home to the ghost of a woman cast out from the village several centuries before, and either left to die or imprisoned below. As the film goes on though, there is a gathering sense that its real subject is the women who disappear, or leave, or are cast out in general for reasons that can’t be spoken.

Most of the film’s action focuses on a summer that Laura spends on the farm and one week in particular that she spends with a village boy, Thom. Their conversation often turns to the ghost of the Änziloch; they speculate about what this woman did to deserve being trapped in the ravine. In the version of the legend Laura is familiar with, the woman got into a fight with her father and accidentally killed him, at which point she either jumped, or was thrown by a storm or by God, into the ravine. Some of the neighbors speculate that the woman was pregnant as well but, as Laura says, everyone has their own version of the story, and it’s hard to say what is the truth.

The farm itself is a site of conflicting narratives, some of which are unsettling. The buildings have fallen into disrepair and the animals live in what used to be Laura’s family home, meaning that, when she takes Thom on a tour, they walk down a hallway and open what looks like a bedroom door to a room full of birds who are viciously trying to mate with each other. The flapping and screeching that follows is either funny or disquieting or, maybe more accurately, both. Similarly, there’s a very long sequence near the start of the film – gruesome enough that Hot Docs posted a warning for incoming viewers – where one of the rabbits that lives on the farm, whom Laura was petting a few minutes before, is killed and butchered in front of her. Her request to keep the rabbit’s fur begins a very conflicted subplot about the small pleasures she’s able to find and protect for herself.

That’s not to say that Laura seems unhappy on the farm – just that the overall depiction of farm-life isn’t especially light-hearted. There is a darkness to the lens writer/director Alice Schmid turns on this story that often hovers around the edges, unspoken and just out of sight.

The same oblique sense of darkness came out in the Q&A after the screening I attended, in which Schmid explained that another character in the film, an elderly nun who was rumored to have gone into the Änziloch before joining the convent, wouldn’t say on camera why she’d left. In a similar vein, Schmid, who left Switzerland as a young woman and didn’t return until she was an accomplished filmmaker in her 60s, described her homecoming by saying, “I was surprised. Everyone was glad to see me. No one asked why I left. You don’t talk about these things.”

There is a persistent sense in The Girl Down Loch Änzi that the ghost of the Änziloch is made of these very same things.

The other interesting tension in the film, which also came up during the Q&A, is its complex relationship with factuality. Every documentary has to make some kind of peace with the idea that it isn’t possible to show the world exactly as it is. By filming a thing, by observing it, by cutting the footage together to tell a story, you’re always imposing a perspective on the events and, usually, you influence what happens. The filmmakers working on The Girl Down Loch Änzi influenced events a lot.

One of the most important details is that Thom, the boy who comes to work on the farm for a week, has come mostly in response to a casting call. As Schmid – who readily and openly describes the film as partly fiction – explained during the Q&A, she was looking for a character who could serve as a surrogate for the audience, as an outsider, and also offer up a worldview that was different from Laura’s, so that Laura would have someone interesting to talk to. Although there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that approach, it’s worth noting that the film, by itself, makes it appear that Thom is there just by coincidence. It also develops a narrative that’s slightly unflattering to Thom, in which he and Laura have a budding romance that he then abandons. It’s hard to know whether he or Laura would have been interested in each other at all if they weren’t making a movie.

Similarly, it’s hard to know whether Laura’s parents would have let her trek into the Änziloch alone – which she eventually does – if she hadn’t had a film crew watching over her.

The Girl Down Loch Änzi is an unusually stylish documentary, with beautifully-composed shots and scenes that play out with a feature film’s attention to blocking and, as soon as you start to reverse-engineer how it was made, you realize that it involves a lot of staging. That’s not good or bad, but it does mean that, on the spectrum between objective observation and straight-up fiction that all documentaries occupy, the film occupies a space close to reality TV shows. It’s not fake, and there’s certainly some element of truth that gives us insight into human behavior – but it’s also not a reflection of how the characters would have behaved if there wasn’t a camera crew following them.

It might be best to view the film as a collaboration between Schmid and Laura – who became friends after filming a previous documentary together – in which they craft a story that’s meaningful to both of them, but isn’t what literally happened. Kind of like the legend of the ghost.

Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies, TV and video games on her blog.

Women-Directed Films at the Asian American Showcase

The lineup included The Tiger Hunter, (directed by Lena Khan)… Light (directed by Lenora Lee and Tatsu Aoki), and Finding Kukan (directed by Robin Lung). … Depictions of stories that are absent from an experience that is generally thought to be collective is definitely the point of film festivals like the Asian American Showcase. The film offerings this year illuminated the immigrant experience as an American one. At the same time, the breadth of the experiences represented, while hardly a cohesive or even complete picture, offered nuanced views of stories never heard in textbook discussions…

This guest post written by Josephine Maria Yanasak-Leszczynski appears as part of our theme week on Women Directors.

The Asian American Showcase is a series of films by Asian Americans or about the Asian American experience alongside an art exhibition. It features a wide variety of films from many viewpoints. Sponsored by the Foundation for Asian American Independent Media (FAAIM), this year’s Showcase, which took place March 31st to April 12th in Chicago, featured mostly women-directed films, plus the Sundance Film Festival audience favorite, Gook, and the timely documentary on Japanese internment camps in the U.S., Resistance at Tule Lake. The lineup included The Tiger Hunter, (directed by Lena Khan), Motherland (directed by Ramona S. Diaz), Wexford Plaza (directed by Joyce Wong), Light (directed by Lenora Lee and Tatsu Aoki), and Finding Kukan (directed by Robin Lung).

Light is an artistic interpretation of the beginning of immigrant Bessie M. Lee’s life in America. It melds dance interpretations, poetry, re-enactments, and historical documentation against the backdrop of Aoki’s innovative sound and musical design. While laboring under her master’s oppressive demands, Bessie is told girls like her are a “dime a dozen.” It was an insult that rang true; something too many women have been told, especially while labor was being extorted from them. In this case, an immigrant seemingly without connections in a new country, Bessie, like so many women before her, was working hard while being told she was worthless, as if she should be grateful for her abusive circumstances.

Lenora Lee has created several works about Chinese migrant women and their lives after coming to the United States. In other films, she uses choreography, filmography, and setting to explore the stories of women who were trafficked from China and other women’s lives. Through a combination of projection, fully produced cinema, and live dance performance that references Tai Chi, she expresses narrative emotions as well as historical occurrences. Ultimately, her work elevates and personalizes stories that in a textbook may be a footnote meant to represent the experience of a larger population of people.

Depictions of stories that are absent from an experience that is generally thought to be collective is definitely the point of film festivals like the Asian American Showcase. The film offerings this year illuminated the immigrant experience as an American one. At the same time, the breadth of the experiences represented, while hardly a cohesive or even complete picture, offered nuanced views of stories never heard in textbook discussions of the American experience.

Robin Lung chases in the footsteps of erased Hollywood innovator Li Ling-Ai in Finding Kukan. In 1941, during a war that still in many ways defines the U.S. today, a film produced and funded by an Asian American woman won an Academy Award. Li never received credit for the documentary Kukan, but Lung attempts to discover a copy of the missing story and the full extent of her involvement with the film. Along the way, Lung also attempts to revive interest in the film after a heavily damaged copy is discovered in a basement.

There are several road bumps along the way, and some brick walls. Lung expresses discontent at being unable to prove her theories throughout the documentary. The film becomes as much about her perceptions of what makes a woman a hero, as what made Li a hero. To Lung, she wants to bring to life an active, fearless woman who traveled to China during a war to bravely capture what no one else was showing. At one point, Lung expresses her desire to see Li doing the work alongside the men as an “American” perspective. Yet the film Li has produced shows the women in China supporting the country alongside the men in the way Lung longed for. Adversely, Li lives a cosmopolitan life in New York, tirelessly supporting the film at social events and garnering connections and possible supporters in any way that she can. By the end of the film, Li has taken on the role of a more traditional American producer giving life to a project more meaningful than most in Hollywood could hope for.

Lung is ultimately unsuccessful in garnering American interest in a recovered Kukan. However, after discovering a letter of frustration Li authored to one of her best friends about what would become her book on the lives of her parents, she is reinvigorated and tries a new tact. Traveling to China, Lung brings a videotape of Kukan for a special viewing to a group of historians.

This American film that once inspired interest in a horrifying conflict across the world from the U.S., takes on new importance in the People’s Republic of China. While it depicts a Nationalist China, the film contains views of attacks made by Japan from the ground, something these historians had never before seen. Ultimately, while it seems it will be years before Li receives her full due in American cinematic history, her work has taken on new importance in an unexpected way.

Stories told about the general perception of the American Dream all include some tie to our collective immigrant past (aside from Indigenous peoples). Rarely does a film tell that story while holding onto that past as part of the protagonist’s future. While it struggles with straddling at least two comedic audiences, The Tiger Hunter successfully presents a story about coming to the U.S. without distancing itself from its characters’ cultural background.

After years of chasing the fantasy of his father’s hyper-masculinized role in the lives of his village, Sami (Danny Pudi) attempts to impress the father of Ruby (Karen David), his childhood sweetheart. The intimidating General Iqbal (Iqbal Theba) has decided he will only arrange his daughter in marriage to someone who has become successful in the U.S. Director/co-writer Lena Khan presents a classic romantic comedy with Indian American and Indian Canadian leads. It is a hilarious look at the lengths a man will go to marry the woman of his dreams.

While the film focuses on earning the right to marry a woman, she is conspicuously absent from most of the film. At first this appears to be an oversight, or playing into so many classically male-centered heterosexual romance narratives. Pleasingly, Khan eventually turns this on its head.

After forming farcical friendships with other outcasts who fail at being “professional Americans,” Sami sets up a fake home in his boss’ abode to impress Iqbal, and by extension his daughter, who travels with him. It is when the truth comes to light (due to Sami’s inability to keep up the lie for moral reasons) that the object of his desire hits the audience with the element they may or may not have noticed was missing. “It is me you have to marry,” Ruby points out, in light of the many lies he has told to impress her father. While her father has final say, ultimately Sami and Ruby have to share a marital trust that would last them a lifetime. In the end, it is her opinion that truly matters.

The film leaves a lot of questions about the arrangement unanswered, and while the end of the film is endearing, its ambiguity leaves a lot to be desired as far as clear moral heading. Yet it is undeniable that the final confrontation between Sami and Ruby becomes a twist for the role of women in this particular narrative, whether intentional by its creators or not.

There are many more tales to be told and heard by audiences that are sorely in need of them, whether they’re aware of it or not. This year’s Asian American Showcase offered many impressive narratives told and directed by women.

Josephine Maria Yanasak-Leszczynski is a museum educator by day (and often night), and a freelance writer every other time she manages to make a deadline. She can be found on Twitter @JMYaLes.

‘Pencils Down!’ Chronicles the 2007 WGA Strike and Raises Questions about Corporations in America

‘Pencils Down!’ chronicles the 2007-2008 Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike that largely brought television production to a standstill, through a combination of footage shot at the time, and reflective interviews shot in 2014-15. … In exploring the WGA strike, and the economics of how TV writers are compensated for their work, ‘Pencils Down!’ circles back to the same core issues of fairness and greed.

Written by Katherine Murray.

Sometimes, I get fooled into believing that film sets are happy, magical places where artists immerse themselves in the joys of their craft and feel nothing but a deep sense of satisfaction at doing the work they love. Then, I watch a documentary like Pencils Down! The 100 Days of the Writers Guild Strike and remember that, for most people, this is a workplace like any other.

Pencils Down! chronicles the 2007-2008 Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike that largely brought television production to a standstill, through a combination of footage shot at the time, and reflective interviews shot in 2014-15. In his director’s note, Brian S. Kalata – a member of the WGA – explains that he originally envisioned this content as part of a larger project about labor unions in the U.S., and it’s clear that the seeds of that idea are still here. Pencils Down! is most invested in explaining why Americans need unions to protect their interests at the bargaining table (which they do), and somewhat less invested in what the WGA strike, specifically, accomplished (which is, arguably, not much).

The early parts of the documentary explain what the WGA strike was about – officially, residuals for work distributed over the internet; unofficially, residuals for work distributed on home video and DVD. Like every strike, though, the motivating factor is a sense of unfairness – of being exploited, cheated, and taken advantage of. It’s weird to see middle-class writers on strike, but whether you’re in a blue or white collar job doesn’t matter – even monkeys stop working if they find out they’re making less than everyone else. There’s something about being cheated that insults our basic sense of dignity.

When the Sony hack in 2014 last year revealed the gender wage discrepancies between the actors on American Hustle, Bradley Cooper went on record as saying that what Amy Adams was paid for her work was “almost embarrassing” and that he hoped she would speak up. It’s that sense of embarrassment that underlies many disputes over pay. What happened to Amy Adams (and to many other actresses, particularly women of color) is familiar to women in many workplaces – the sickening moment you realize that, the entire time you thought you were doing just fine, you were really sitting at the bottom of the pay bracket while all your male coworkers got more. Right now, it’s fashionable to blame women for that – negotiate more, try harder, do a power pose in front of the mirror, be more like a dude – but the problem isn’t people who are too humble. The problem between studios and screenwriters is people who are too greedy and snatch up all the profit they can, as if they had earned it alone.

In exploring the WGA strike, and the economics of how TV writers are compensated for their work, Pencils Down! circles back to the same core issues of fairness and greed. In a nutshell, many people felt that the writers union had been tricked into accepting a bad deal on home video residuals and, even though that wasn’t on the table during the 2007 strike, their sense of justice wouldn’t allow them to be forced into accepting a similar deal on online distribution. It’s not a question of whether they’re being paid middle-class wages – it’s a question of whether the studio’s offer was insulting within the larger context of the industry. Not working in that industry, I don’t have an opinion about whether or not that was the case. But Pencils Down! is a reminder that, for people who do work in the entertainment industry, it’s a business like any other business and a workplace like any other workplace – the struggles that play out in office buildings and factories also play out in production studios, and the fundamental tensions between employers and employees are the same.

One interesting facet of the writer’s strike explored in the documentary is that the WGA was striking against corporations that owned the mainstream media outlets. Several people argue that that skewed coverage of the strike made it more difficult for the union to explain what was happening to outsiders. I don’t know whether or not that’s true, but it does seem like a conflict of interest.

Another interesting aspect of the strike is that, as the documentary draws to a close, the success of the strike seems unclear. No one is emphatically sure that the stress and lost wages were worth it, and no one is overjoyed with the contract the union eventually signed. In some ways, the most important questions raised by Pencils Down! are whether it’s worth it to strike if you ultimately lose the negotiation – or whether American workers can strike in an effective way anymore, when the toll on them is so much higher than the toll on corporations. Those aren’t questions Pencils Down! ultimately engages with – instead, the triumphant mood of the film’s first three quarters is followed by an uncertain finale as Kalata’s interviewees take an “it could be worse” perspective.

In his director’s note, Kalata also explains that, while he began with a list of over 100 potential interview subjects, almost no one was willing to talk to him on record. Of those who do appear in the film, actor Alan Rosenberg explains that, while he was very outspoken in support of the strike, it may have hurt his career, and he now regrets some of his words.

Workers’ rights, including the right to receive a fair share of the profits from one’s work, are an issue that’s, paradoxically, both public and private. Many people would rather not know if they’re being paid less than their coworkers or less than they’re worth, because they’d either have to live with a feeling of shame or risk the long term discomfort and possible job loss that follows from confrontation. In some ways, the most important part of Pencils Down! is Kalata’s unseen list of hundreds of interview subjects who declined to appear – the story of why it’s so gauche to talk about payment and how many people fear reprisal for speaking out.

Pencils Down! The 100 Days of the Writers Guild Strike is currently available on iTunes and other streaming services.

Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies, TV and video games on her blog.

‘Kumu Hina’: Documentary on a Native Hawaiian Māhū (Transgender) Woman and Teaching the True Meaning of Aloha

‘Kumu Hina’ is a portrait of one activist working to preserve Native rights, culture, and dignity in a time when Native Sovereignty is being made more visible by events like the efforts of Water Protectors to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline. Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu draws a direct and explicit link between honoring her māhū identity and helping her people preserve their culture. Like the māhū of generations past, Wong-Kalu has taken on the responsibility of sharing sacred knowledge with the next generation. She wants to share with her students the true meaning of aloha which, to her, means giving them unconditional acceptance and respect.

This guest post written by Gabrielle Amato-Bailey appears as part of our theme week on Indigenous Women.

Kumu Hina is a 2014 documentary directed by Dean Hamer and Joe Wilson, which follows Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu, a māhū (transgender) Native Hawaiian school teacher, through a year in her life. The documentary begins by introducing Halau Lokahi, the public charter school where Wong-Kalu teaches hula. This school is “dedicated to native Hawaiian culture, language, and history… subjects long prohibited in Hawai’i’s Americanized education system.” This is followed by a brief animated introduction during which Wong-Kalu, through voiceover, introduces viewers to the Hawaiian concept of māhū: “those born ‘in the middle’” “who embrace both feminine and masculine traits that are embodied within each and every one of us.”

Wong-Kalu explains that in pre-colonial Hawai’i, māhū people held honored positions in society as healers, keepers of sacred wisdom, and teachers. It is clear that Wong-Kalu sees honoring her own māhū identity and preserving Hawaiian culture as deeply intertwined. In her introduction, she clearly ties respect for māhū to the body of Hawaiian traditions. Western missionaries condemned māhū individuals at the same time they forbade hula and other cultural expressions. This queer identity is part of traditional Hawaiian culture; the identity cannot be claimed without connecting with the Hawaiian heritage, and that heritage cannot be fully honored without respecting the gender identity. Wong-Kalu recalls that in her youth she was often made fun of for being too feminine, but found refuge in her cultural identity. The strength that she drew from connecting with her heritage led her to her purpose to “spread the true meaning of aloha.” Connecting with her Hawaiian heritage gave her the strength to be true to her gender identity, and being true to her gender identity seems to have led her to the traditional role of a māhū as a teacher. The documentary really illustrates this close connection by weaving together stories of Wong-Kalu’s personal and professional life. We follow her as she prepares her students for their end of year hula recital, and as she begins married life with her husband, Hema Kalu.

Wong-Kalu is the hula teacher at Halau Lokahi, and it is she who teaches students of all ages the traditional songs and dances of Hawai’i. The documentary focuses particularly on her high school age boys as they struggle to fully commit to their performance. Early on, we see Wong-Kalu demonstrate the chant to her students and how they imitate her very timidly, seemingly afraid to look silly. She demonstrates again, first telling them, “There’s nothing wahine about my voice.” Although Wong-Kalu later discusses her concerns about how her identity may impact her social life, she uses her māhū identity and gender fluidity to serve her students.

There is another reason that the documentary focuses on this particular group of students. A middle school student, Ho’onani Kamai, who is also a māhū person, has asked if she can be part of the high school boy’s performance. Wong-Kalu is originally hesitant to allow it because of possible backlash from parents, but considers it her job to nurture her students, not force them into gender identities or gender roles. Her presence ends up being to the benefit of the male students because Kamai is fully committed to the performance. Wong-Kalu describes her to the other students as someone who embodies Ku, or male energy. Wong-Kalu even plays to adolescent male pride, asking her male students if they’ll let themselves be outdone by a younger female student. In an interview, Kamai suggests that the high school boys struggle partly because they’re afraid to look foolish and partly because they think they don’t have to try very hard.

Kamai’s dedication and commitment pay off when, at the end of year recital, she is the one to lead the high school boys’ chant. Towards the end of the documentary, we see this group of students meeting again after their performance, and the boys all praise and thank Kamai for being a leader and teacher.

Throughout Wong-Kalu and Kamai’s journey together working on this performance piece, the documentary reveals to us how these two māhū individuals are received by their community. Other students at Halau Lokahi are quite comfortable with the māhū identity. Kamai is accepted by her peers and has friends, and the documentary even shows some of her classmates explaining what it means when someone is māhū. This broad acceptance from the students is obviously the result of the environment of respect and cultural pride that the school staff fosters in their students. During morning assembly, Principal Laara Allbrett reminds the students the importance of respecting their teachers by giving their full effort to their lessons, especially because her generation and those before were prevented from learning about their heritage as a colonized people. This sentiment is echoed by Kamai’s mother, for whom it is very important to see her children get the type of education she could not have, and she is comfortable with Kamai expressing her māhū identity. It is evident that Wong-Kalu’s philosophy that respecting the māhū identity is part of respecting and expressing traditional Hawaiian culture is shared by her community.

The final word on Wong-Kalu’s mentorship of Kamai comes before the end of year recital. Wong-Kalu takes her student aside and lets her know that as long as she’s in this supportive environment, she can express her māhū identity freely, but that this might not be the case everywhere. Wong-Kalu cautions Kamai that as a child she may have to go along with other’s expectations. She explains that, as an adult and someone who is confident in her identity, she doesn’t move for anyone at this point in her life, and that Kamai will also reach that point in her own life.

Running parallel to this story of the mentoring relationship is the story of Wong-Kalu’s relationship with her husband, Hema Kalu. Kalu is a Tongan man from Fiji, and the documentary picks up when his visa has finally come through and he can move to the U.S. Wong-Kalu describes her husband as a “full-on bush man,” and Kalu says of his life in Fiji that he was “poor but free.” In contrast to Wong-Kalu’s experience of Hawaiian tradition being supportive of the māhū identiy, Kalu describes Fiji as more conservative. He admits that at first he was hesitant to get involved with a māhū person because he was afraid of how his friends would perceive him. Wong-Kalu also expresses anxieties about “passing” (a controversial and problematic term to many trans women as it implies that there is a specific way women should look and behave, although for many trans people it is “rooted in a desire for safety“) for Kalu’s friends. They are both very protective of one another in the face of possible discrimination.

Conflict arises in the relationship between Wong-Kalu and Kalu for the same reasons as in any other relationship: expectations. On the one hand, Kalu seems to still have fairly traditional gender expectations for his marriage. He is extremely jealous and doesn’t want his wife to have any male friends. On the other hand, he struggles to adapt to more urbanized life in Hawai’i, and Wong-Kalu becomes extremely frustrated with him because of the time it takes him to adjust. Part of the conflict also seems to come from their age difference. Kalu is in his early 20s, while Wong-Kalu reaches her 40th birthday during the filming of the documentary. Some of Kalu’s behavior comes off as deeply immature and selfish. When Wong-Kalu invites him to attend her students’ mid-year concert, he takes a call on his cell during the performance and then rushes to leave to spend time with his friends. He also calls and interrupts Wong-Kalu several times during one of her classes. Kalu doesn’t seem to understand how important his wife’s work is to her.

Wong-Kalu discusses her concerns about being in a relationship at all, and whether she as a māhū person is maybe willing to put up with more conflict or disrespect in order to not be alone. At the same time, there is an obvious affection between her and Kalu. Towards the end of the documentary, he presents her with a birthday cake and gifts, singing “Happy Birthday.” Wong-Kalu expresses that, however things might turn out for her marriage, she is grateful to live in a place that allows her to be herself and love who she loves.

Kumu Hina is a portrait of one activist working to preserve Native rights, culture, and dignity in a time when Native Sovereignty is being made more visible by events like the efforts of Water Protectors to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline. Wong-Kalu is a cultural advocate, a teacher, and the chairperson of the Oahu Burial Council. She draws a direct and explicit link between honoring her māhū identity and helping her people preserve their culture. Like the māhū of generations past, Wong-Kalu has taken on the responsibility of sharing sacred knowledge with the next generation. She wants to share with her students the true meaning of aloha which, to her, means giving them unconditional acceptance and respect.

Gabrielle Amato-Bailey is just starting out as a freelance writer. In between paying gigs she writes about feminism, pop culture, and social justice.

The Women Men Rescue (or Choose Not To): ‘The Witness’ and ‘Disorder’

Saving a beautiful woman from danger is such a pervasive male fantasy that right now, no matter where you are you could probably see an example of this trope by randomly flipping through channels or wandering into a multiplex. But what if the man was never able to save the woman? Or what if he has problems of his own that keep him from being a stereotypical hero?

Written by Ren Jender.

[Trigger Warning: discussion of explicit, fatal violence against women and rape]

You’d never know from watching movies that statistically men are much more likely to harm women than rescue them. Saving a beautiful woman from danger is such a pervasive male fantasy that right now, no matter where you are, you could probably see an example of this trope by randomly flipping through channels or wandering into a multiplex. But what if the man was never able to save the woman? Or what if he has problems of his own that keep him from being a stereotypical hero? Two new films, respectively James D. Solomon’s documentary The Witness and Alice Winocour’s French thriller Disorder, attempt to answer these questions.

The Witness tracks Bill Genovese, a Vietnam veteran and a person with an amputation who uses a wheelchair, as he tries to find out 40 to 50 years later (the film took a decade to make) what really happened the night his older sister, Kitty Genovese, was stabbed to death (and although it’s not included in the film also raped by her murderer) in front of her own Queens apartment building in 1964. Kitty Genovese’s killing became the stuff of front page headlines and sociology classes when an apocryphal story in The New York Times stated that 37 (the number was later amended to 38) of her neighbors, awakened by her screams, saw her being stabbed from their bedroom windows but none called the police or offered any other help which might have saved her life.

The truth, uncovered in more recent articles is: although neighbors heard her screams, nearly none of them knew what was going on (some thought she and her killer were a drunk married couple having an argument) especially since the scene was quiet and Kitty was out of sight for some time between her murderer’s initial attack (interrupted when a neighbor shouted at him through the window to get away from her) and when he fatally wounded her (after which a woman neighbor and friend of Kitty’s held her in her arms as she was dying).

The original news story was a manipulation of facts that made a compelling resume builder: Abe Rosenthal, who later became the long-reigning executive editor at The New York Times wrote a sensationalistic book based on the fabricated story. When Bill interviews Rosenthal, he still insists the original account was the correct one. Some other journalists who covered the story when it was still new, like the late Mike Wallace, are more philosophical. “It was a fascinating story,” he says, one that was apparently too good to let the facts get in the way.

What actually happened is more complex. One surviving neighbor Bill interviews on camera says, “I heard someone yelling, ‘Help, help,’ and I called the police,” though no records of her call are on police logs. As Bill explains to us in his narration, we don’t know if the station neglected to write down the call or if the woman is telling this story to make herself feel better about her own actions (or inaction) that night.

We also see, unlike in most narrative films, how uninterested some people are in the truth. Kitty’s killer, Winston Moseley (he has since died) who raped and killed at least one other woman and later, in an escape from prison, raped another and held hostages at gunpoint, refuses to meet with Bill and instead offers in a letter an obviously fictitious story about being framed. Moseley’s son, who was 7 at the time of the murder, is a minister who wears a shiny cross, but seems to believe another of his father’s stories (that contradicts everything we know about the case): that Kitty called him a racial slur and he snapped. The son also seems unwilling to accept that his father was responsible for the other murder (which, like Kitty’s, he confessed to after he was arrested for stealing a television) in which he set fire to his victim while she was still alive. Instead, the son states that, for years, he and the rest of family had believed that Kitty was related to the infamous New York Mafia Genoveses (she was not).

Because most of the memories of Kitty and the analysis of her death come from men, we feel a little removed from her. When one man talks about how his mother (the woman who held Kitty in her arms as she died in the hallway) often had coffee with Kitty and would “talk about whatever women talk about,” it’s as emblematic of the film’s distanced viewpoint, as the blurry, nearly faceless image we see of Kitty in clips from an old home movie which are interspersed throughout the film.

Bill is in nearly every frame of the film’s live action — most of the recreated scenes are rendered in the delicate, evocative animation of The Moth Collective. Even as we see him moving in and out of his wheelchair, wearing gloves to pull himself up the stairs to an otherwise inaccessible apartment and narrating the film, he remains something of a mystery. Why does he wait to find out the real story until 40 years after his sister died? By the time he tracks down the witnesses who testified at the trial, most are long dead. One of the only insights into his mindset comes from his wife: “The choices that he made in his life were all related to the fact that no one helped his sister.”

Bill also has a willful obtuseness when he wonders why Kitty, whom he was close to, never came out to him at a time (she died five years before Stonewall) when people who told their families they were queer were disowned. Kitty being a fairly out queer person (in a highlight, after her partner, Mary Ann Zielonko, tells Bill that the patrons at the bar where she worked didn’t know Kitty was queer, two of them tell Bill everyone at the bar knew and considered her “one of the boys”) makes me wonder if Karl Ross, one of the only witnesses who did see what was happening and was close enough to halt the murder, failed to do so because of homophobia — or a fear of police since he too may have been gay. Mary Ann says of Ross, “He knew us.” He owned the pet shop where Kitty bought a poodle for Mary Ann as an apology after an argument.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4irXjYt_LM”]

In Disorder, co-written and directed by Alice Winocour (the co-writer of Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s Oscar-nominated Mustang), the woman in peril is Jessie (Diane Kruger), the wife of a shady and very wealthy businessman, and her protector is a paid bodyguard, Vincent (Matthias Schoenaerts) back from a stint in Afghanistan and suffering from PTSD (as well as some hearing loss, the doctor at the beginning tells him — and us).

We see Vincent try to do work as he deals with the sounds (all the electronic beeps and boops of modern life) and sights that trigger him. Wariness is actually part of his job description, but at first we’re unsure if Vincent’s has more to do with his internal struggles than it does with anything going on around him. Silly us: this film is a thriller. Of course the main guy’s paranoia is justified.

The film manages to squeeze a surprising amount of tension out of a not-terribly-original situation before its first violent incident (which is punctuated, stunningly, by a cracked windshield and a brief blackout) but falls apart soon afterward. The film has lots of overheard conversations and pieces of information that never really come together in coherent form, which might reflect what a paid protector would overhear and understand but doesn’t really engage the audience. The violent aggressors are the opposite of a menace in their cute, black, ninja outfits and masks. No matter what Vincent’s skills as a fighter (never impaired by psychological problems so obvious that Jessie asks his coworker directly, “What’s wrong with him?”) always flatten them, so the action becomes monotonous.

Winocour’s film was apparently influenced by her suffering PTSD from a traumatic childbirth experience (she and her daughter are fine now), a phenomenon women I’ve known have also experienced, but something I have never seen captured on film. I desperately wished Disorder was about women’s trauma instead of the tired cliché of a male soldier’s suffering. The film also doesn’t give us any insight into Jessie’s point of view. She looks great in the backless floral evening dress she wears to a party early in the film, but in every scene she is so much an object she might as well be tied in pink ribbon. This lack of attention to the character is especially shocking and disappointing because Winocour co-wrote Mustang, an instant feminist classic that is flawlessly attuned to its girl protagonists.

Additionally the husband and his cohorts are all from the Middle East: the only person of Middle-Eastern descent who doesn’t seem sinister is Ali, Jessie’s Keane-eyed, curly-haired, young son. France’s traditional anti-Arab sentiment and more recent anti-Muslim policies (on the same beaches where Jessie and Ali frolic) make the ethnicity of the bad guys seem not strictly coincidental and more than a little racist. Skip this film and see Mustang (again) instead.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMThvaCTAm0″]

Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing. besides appearing on Bitch Flicks, has also been published in The Toast, RH Reality Check, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender.

‘Glitter Tribe’ Reminds Us That Burlesque Is Far More Than Just a Peep Show

‘Glitter Tribe’ (directed by Jon Manning) lays out the argument that neo-burlesque should be considered a bona fide art form within itself and the ensuing 75 minutes certainly make a compelling case. The beating heart of the documentary is evident in the profiles of several Portland-based dancers, who each derive a different meaning and perspective from their performances.

Written by Erin Tatum.

I’ve always been attracted to the alternative and wonderfully wacky ways of expressing identity, so naturally I jumped at the chance to review Burlesque: Heart of the Glitter Tribe. Despite going to college in the Bay Area, my concept of burlesque was still admittedly arcane – I think of borderline cartoonish scenes ripped from Mad Men where hordes of anonymous businessmen in gray flannel suits ogle topless Marilyn Monroe look-alikes in a smoke-filled room (somewhat like this). It goes without saying that burlesque has evolved far beyond merely capturing the attention and lust of emotionally constipated men. Glitter Tribe (directed by Jon Manning) lays out the argument that neo-burlesque should be considered a bona fide art form within itself and the ensuing 75 minutes certainly make a compelling case.

The beating heart of the documentary is evident in the profiles of several Portland-based dancers, who each derive a different meaning and perspective from their performances. Zora Von Pavonine describes sleepless nights of laboring over costumes, fueled by her passion for fashion and rhinestones; Angelique DeVil discusses how her persona is her “megaphone” and an amplified fusion of all her past selves; Babs Jamboree chuckles over the juxtaposition of her no-frills day job and ultra feminine nightlife; Isaiah Esquire recalls that performing helped him overcome severe body image issues. No matter their individual motivations for dancing, one fact quickly becomes clear – obvious connotations notwithstanding, burlesque emphasizes cleverness and humor above all else.

Of course, the standard erotic fare is omnipresent. (Most delightfully, this film has opened my eyes to the existence of “assels” or ass tassels, which are exactly what they sound like.) However, the dancers pride themselves on seeking intellectual engagement with the audience and care about making them laugh more than making them horny. They acknowledge that while sexuality is the cornerstone of their routines, comedy plays a much larger role in their performance. Particularly for the unusual all-male group, the Stage Door Johnnies, personality is key. They poke fun at the fact that they’re men doing something usually dominated by women, but they’re also careful to nuance their humor beyond gawking at the objectification of the masculine.

In some cases, the dancers aren’t afraid to move their art into the realm of the abstract or complete absurdity. Babs Jamboree constructs an entire routine around the concept of a seductive burrito, featuring, you guessed it, herself as a giant personified burrito. She grins alluringly as she slips out of her tortilla coat (amazing) to reveal herself as a sexy jalapeño. Her tongue-in-cheek innovation continues when she spoofs the ridiculous male conundrum of worrying about the mechanics of hypothetical mermaid sex by transforming herself into a reverse mermaid, a decidedly off-putting fish head who has a human woman’s legs for days. I’m pretty sure I have a crush on Babs Jamboree, you guys. Other dancers court overt controversy. I have to say that watching Ivizia Dakini mime fellatio and later direct cunnilingus with a Jesus puppet was… unexpected to say the least, although she rightfully points out that pearl clutching about religion during a burlesque show is kind of hypocritical. Regardless, the performers pour their heart and soul into their routines, from fleshing out their creative visions to spending hours bedazzling shoes and bustiers. Each performance is a manifestation of love, community, and commitment. Ironically, the show becomes less about titillating the audience with physical bodies and more about stimulating their minds with artistic expression.

The performers also address the common criticism that they can’t be feminist because they’re “objectifying themselves.” They assert that performing is their choice and that burlesque provides the opportunity for such complex characters that it’s impossible to objectify their bodies because you can’t take the characters out of their persona or routine. I am of the personal belief that accusing a woman of being anti-feminist because of her personal choices she makes about her own body is an inherently contradictory concept, but I enjoy that they came up with a rebuttal that further emphasizes their love of the art. Angelique DeVil looks crestfallen as she relates how her mother flat-out told her that she was a source of embarrassment for her family (it probably doesn’t help that she was apparently an alternative teen growing up in North Dakota). The editors then decide to pour salt in the wound by immediately following this heartbreaking account of rejection with a cheery montage of basically everyone else talking about how much their parents enjoy the show. These folks are much braver than I, because as much as I love my parents and as liberal as they are, I don’t know if I would want them staring directly at my bejeweled anus. There’s a first time for everything, I suppose!

Above all else, what the performers treasure most across-the-board is the strong sense of empowerment and community that they have found through burlesque. Dancing provides a safe haven and a coping mechanism, helping the dancers overcome everything from alcoholism and drug addiction to processing the scars of childhood sexual abuse. As Isaiah Esquire will tell you, taking ownership of your sexuality through dance is its own kind of agency and power. It’s not about being universally perceived as sexy; it’s about the confidence of knowing your affect on each audience member. With a single motion or glance, you can make someone feel something. That ability to impart an emotion on someone else appears to be far and away the most rewarding experience that the dancers can have. They also become a tight-knit family – just as Angelique DeVil views burlesque as her true home in the wake of familial ostracism, Isaiah Esquire witnesses the generosity of his co-performers firsthand after they band together to raise money for an expensive knee surgery that would have left him unemployed and broke. The love that the performers feel for one another is palpable, and not just because they often canoodle onstage. It’s evident that they genuinely care about and support each other, sharing a deep understanding and commitment that people outside the world of burlesque just don’t have.

Sure, burlesque isn’t always glamorous. The performers are the first to admit that it’s neither a cash cow nor a respected career. Sleepless nights are a regular occurrence; costumes are a labor of love but frequent money pits; romantic relationships often suffer because partners feel that burlesque takes center stage before they do. At the end of the day, however, burlesque transcends being a simple hobby or fodder for a naughty night out. It’s an electricity, a spontaneous bond, a bold personal statement of individuality. All the sacrifice becomes worth it the moment the music starts to play.

Erin Tatum is a Bitch Flicks staff writer. She is a social media marketer and writer. She lives in Pennsylvania with her numerous dogs and birds. Her passions include animals, intersectional feminism, and baking. She is a diehard foodie with a weakness for bad reality TV.

‘Mission Blue’: “No Ocean, No Us”

Audiences have to look to documentaries like ‘Particle Fever,’ about the discovery of the Higgs boson, to see women scientists in prominent roles on film. The Netflix documentary ‘Mission Blue’ focuses on one woman scientist, Sylvia Earle, a former chief at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and pioneering oceanographer and marine biologist who is on a quest to save the world’s oceans from dying.

This (slightly edited) repost by staff writer Ren Jender appears as part of our theme week on Women Scientists.

When characters on TV shows or in feature films encounter “a scientist,” that person is usually a man. The rare times when actresses play scientists in mainstream films (besides the obvious recent example of Ghostbusters) they’re more likely to be a punchline than a real character, like Denise Richards in the James Bond film The World Is Not Enough. Audiences have to look to documentaries like Particle Fever, about the discovery of the Higgs boson, to see women scientists in prominent roles on film. The Netflix documentary Mission Blue focuses on one woman scientist, Sylvia Earle, a former chief at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and pioneering oceanographer and marine biologist who is on a quest to save the world’s oceans from dying.

If that last sentence seems like an exaggeration, you should probably see this film. Earle, (now 80, but 79 when the film was released nearly two years ago) has been scuba diving as part of her research for the past 60 years (where she got her undergrad degree was one of the first places to adopt this “new” technology) and has seen firsthand the destruction that pollution and overfishing have wrought — even in areas “in the middle of nowhere” we (and she) think might be unaffected. She points out plastic bags and bottles she encounters on the ocean floor along with long stretches of dead coral and hardly any fish in places where both previously flourished.

She asks, “How can we use the ocean and not use it up?” She’s not afraid to take on the fishing industry, describing her stint at NOAA: “I went to one meeting of the fisheries council. And I was never allowed to go again.” When she warned of the (still) impending extermination of bluefin tuna (because of overfishing) she earned the nickname, “The Sturgeon General.” She resigned from her government position so she could further ocean conservation without being tethered by politics.

The film isn’t all doom and gloom. We also see, in some stunning underwater cinematography (both reminiscent of the Jacques Cousteau documentaries and surpassing them) places where ocean life is plentiful: huge schools of fish that seem like shimmering silver walls along with harmless whale sharks and sea turtles touchingly unwary of divers. Earle is a great advocate of everyone exploring the ocean in this way, theorizing that people care more about wildlife and its environment if they can see it: if wildflowers, birds, trees and deer were hidden away from us we might not have many protections for them either. Earle points out that even though she’s not “big and muscly,” she’s been diving her entire adult life and was able to convince her own mother, at 81, to give it a try. She loved it.

The film shows us the deep sea animals that Earle first encountered over 30 years ago in a special atmospheric diving suit she, along with her third husband, helped design. The natural flashing luminescence of fish and other sea creature at these depths look like city neon signs and gaudy Christmas displays all at once.

We also hear of Earle’s own journey first as a child allowed to explore, alone and for hours at a time, the wild places around her home (as few children now get the chance to do) and later her career as a scientist. She is careful to include herself when she says repeatedly that no one foresaw the depletion of a resource — the ocean and its inhabitants — that seemed too vast for human beings to impact. But now Earle says, “No ocean, no life. No ocean, no us.”

Earle became a scientist before second-wave feminism, when hardly any women entered that profession and we see in the media coverage of her accomplishments (when she was often the first or only woman but usually called a “girl”), the sexism of the era, which she undoubtedly encountered on the job as well. But the film’s co-director and interviewer Fisher Stevens (yes, the same one who acted in films like Short Circuit — but more recently was a producer for The Cove) doesn’t ask about these instances, only gushes about how “beautiful” she was. Earle is polite to him, but, at 79, she might be wondering when she will finally be excused from the unofficial beauty pageant all women are subjected to.

This film could use more women. We barely see Earle interacting with other women scientists or divers in Blue (except very briefly in Australia and in vintage footage of her time as part of an all-woman team of researchers) though many more women are in the field now than when she started her career. Not enough women are behind the scenes either: the film was directed and written by men. When we consider Earle is not just a scientific pioneer, but also writes books about ocean conservation for the general public (including one released to coincide with this documentary — as well as children’s books) and is an effective enough speaker for lay audiences that she won a substantial monetary award as part of TED Talks, the omission of her from the film’s writing team is baffling. If her own writing had been included, some elements, like a casual mention of the acidification of the ocean (thanks to carbon dioxide emissions) might have been better explained.

I also would have appreciated more of Earle’s take on her personal life. She was married three times and had three children (with the addition, for about a decade, of stepchildren too) but as her daughter (who now runs the deep sea equipment company Earle founded) tells us she “wasn’t June Cleaver.” Earle was taking part in underwater expeditions halfway across the world from her family at a time when wives and mothers were expected to make their homes and their husbands (and their husbands’ careers) their first priority. Her marriages suffered because of her absences, even though each of the husbands shared her interests. In this era of Lean In and “having it all,” I’m sure I’m not the only one who would like to hear in more detail about the experience of someone who attempted this balancing act before most of the so-called “experts” were born.

When we see the “Happiness is being in over your head.” sticker (illustrated with a scuba diver) in her office we think Earle may be a lot more interesting than the documentary makes her (an impression that Earle in interviews seems to confirm), but she’s still able to get in some good, informative quotes like, “What we’re doing to the ocean, what we’re doing to the planet as a whole comes back to us in bigger storms, more powerful storms, more frequent storms.”

A better film might have tied in Earle’s past status as an outsider (when she was one of the few women in her field) and rebel (in not conforming to the ’50s and ’60s cultural expectations of what a wife and mother should be) to her current role as an environmentalist. When we see (in graphic footage) gleeful fisherman cutting the fins off living sharks and then dumping their mutilated bodies into the ocean to die, we can’t help thinking that this boys’ club gives its members permission to behave badly — as most boys’ clubs do. Because she’s never been one of the boys, Earle can see their cruelty — and its consequences — more clearly: she even films a fishing boat “vacuuming” up its catch — from the vantage point of the fish.

In spite of its flaws, Blue is well worth seeing — and succeeded in making me want to try scuba diving. Some of the shots in the film seem more magical than the brightly colored, hologram illustrations in my childhood copy of The Little Mermaid. As Stevens accompanies Earle through storybook seascapes I thought, “This is the ‘beauty’ he should be gushing over.”

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1wp2MQCsfQ”]

‘Hooligan Sparrow’ Touches on Topics of Fame and Notoriety in Activism

The documentary, from director Nanfu Wang, follows Chinese activist Ye Haiyan (aka Hooligan Sparrow) as she protests the lack of prosecution in a child sexual abuse case and suffers retaliatory harassment, surveillance, and imprisonment. … ‘Hooligan Sparrow’ is, both intentionally and unintentionally, about the legends that activists build for themselves.

Written by Katherine Murray. | Hooligan Sparrow is screening at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival.

[Trigger warning: discussion of rape and sexual assault]

There’s a lot going on in Hooligan Sparrow. The documentary, from director Nanfu Wang, follows Chinese activist Ye Haiyan (aka Hooligan Sparrow) as she protests the lack of prosecution in a child sexual abuse case and suffers retaliatory harassment, surveillance, and imprisonment. The film is full of scenes where strangers who may be plain-clothes police officers threaten to break Wang’s camera, or where the footage shows her running feet, the ground, or the stairs while people shout threatening things in the background. She breathlessly explains to us that she’s had to go into hiding, that she can’t use any form of travel requiring an ID or credit card and that her friends have warned her that the police are asking questions about her.

The issues that Sparrow and her associates (including lawyer Wang Yu, who has been indefinitely detained as of the film’s release), protest are important and well-explained. Sparrow first came to prominence when she began protesting the criminalization of sex work through a stunt where she publically declared that she would prostitute herself for free. In the film, she protests a high-profile sexual abuse case, in which a school principal allegedly abducted several of his female students and forced them to have sex with government officials. After first denying that any sex took place, the defence begins to argue that the girls accepted money in exchange for sex, which would reduce the charge to child prostitution rather than rape, and carry a much lighter sentence. Sparrow and Yu explain that this is a common tactic in Chinese courts – to cover up rape by claiming it was prostitution instead.

Although their cause is just, Sparrow and Wang, who becomes increasingly involved in the action even as she documents it, also carry a certain cloud of ego and drama into their work. It’s the same cloud of ego and drama that follows many full-time activists all over the world, and there have been very few explorations of what it means. It’s entirely possible to both try to make the world a better place and like being the center of attention, but there’s definitely a tension that plays out between those two things.

For example, there’s a scene late in the film where Wang is finally able to interview the father of one of the sexual abuse victims. He reveals that he avoided engaging with them earlier because the only thing he knew about Sparrow was that she’d done a stunt where she said she’d have sex for free. It seems like he doesn’t know or understand what she was trying protest – the protest didn’t draw his attention to the dangers faced by sex workers due to criminalization; it just drew attention to Sparrow. And it actually made him less interested in seeing her as a potential ally, even though they were on the same side.

As Wang narrates the film, after the fact, she also seems to take a certain amount of pleasure in how people were always trying to shut down her film. I don’t doubt at all that she was scared when she was running from violent mobs, or thought she was about to be arrested and detained by the police. But it’s telling that the story, which is supposedly about the persecution that Sparrow is facing, is framed by an incident where someone wrestled Wang’s camera away from her. Definitely scary. Definitely uncool. Kind of throwing the attention on herself rather than either the sexual abuse trial or the activist she’s been profiling.

Hooligan Sparrow is, both intentionally and unintentionally, about the legends that activists build for themselves. It’s about the notoriety that Sparrow receives, the unfair persecution, the harassment, the shunning – being left on the side of the road with her daughter and all their belongings – an incident that later becomes the subject of an art exhibit from Ai Weiwei. But it’s also about why she’s called Hooligan Sparrow. It’s about fame. It’s about glory. It’s about yelling really loud in front of a bunch of other people, and then congratulating yourself and kind of forgetting about it.

It’s not clear from the film whether Sparrow’s protest actually had much impact on the outcome of the trial – it’s not clear whether it made the victims feel supported; it’s not clear whether it changed anyone’s mind. I think it’s important for activists to publicly demonstrate that there are people who don’t agree with what’s going on, even if it doesn’t change anyone’s mind, but the film isn’t focused on whether Sparrow’s work has any impact on anyone else. It also doesn’t delve into the kind of investigative journalism that would uncover what’s happening in China’s rape and sexual assault trials, how systemic government corruption has become, or how the government (allegedly) tries to silence protesters.

On the flip side, the film also doesn’t fully commit to a narrative about Nanfu Wang’s journey as documentarian, even though she becomes a more and more active participant as the story goes on. There’s no strong sense of how this experience changed her, or what the role of gonzo journalism is in helping to bring freedom of speech and expression to China. There’s an interesting subplot in the film, where one of Sparrow’s followers seems to become interested in journalism after meeting Wang and takes up the mantle of “documenting the atrocities” on camera after she’s gone – it’s a subplot I would have like to have seen explored more.

I also wish the film had delved deeper into the subplot about how technology has made it harder for the government to make people disappear. The protesters in Hooligan Sparrow tape messages whenever they fear they’re about to be arrested, explaining that, if they die in custody it will not be because they killed themselves, imploring people to look for them if they go missing, and explaining how their disappearance may be linked to participation in political protests. It’s the same principle that led Ai Weiwei to tweet a photo of himself being arrested, and a form of action that may hold real promise for political change.

Wang’s adrenaline-fueled attempt to get through the summer without losing her camera makes for an engaging story, but it isn’t always clear that what she’s captured on the camera exposes new information or reveals the path to increased human rights in China.

Sparrow’s fellow activist, Wang Yu was arrested along with several other human rights lawyers in 2015 and, as of the film’s release, had been held without trial since. The filmmakers have set up a page with information on Wang Yu’s detention by Chinese authorities as well as suggestions for how to take action. Yu is also one of the women identified in the US government’s #freethe20 campaign.

Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies, TV and video games on her blog.

‘Ovarian Psycos’ Highlights the Reasons We Still Need to Take Back the Night

The Ovarian Psycos is a cycling club for women of color in East Lost Angeles that’s a lot like Take Back the Night. Its purpose is to build a sense of community between local women, but also to draw attention to the fact that women aren’t safe unless they travel in packs. … [Directed by Kate Trumbull-LaValle and Johanna Sokolowski] the film captures something true and beautiful about the power of grassroots organizing, and the idea that regular people can band together and try to create change.

Written by Katherine Murray. | Ovarian Psycos is screening at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival.

A few years ago, I went to a Take Back the Night rally and experienced the joy of walking down a street after dark without feeling afraid. I’ve come to understand how that sounds weird to some men, but almost every woman I know, including me, has at least one story about trying to walk from point A to point B after sundown and being harassed by a stranger. Even in cases where the stranger didn’t do anything violent, we had no way of knowing whether or not he would. It’s not a good sign when someone starts chasing you and won’t back off when you tell him to leave you alone. It makes you scared, and it makes you angry. It makes you think, “Why don’t I have the right to walk two blocks in peace, without having to worry that you’re going to rape me or kill me?”

The Ovarian Psycos is a cycling club for women of color in East Lost Angeles that’s a lot like Take Back the Night. Its purpose is to build a sense of community between local women, but also to draw attention to the fact that women aren’t safe unless they travel in packs. The club hosts several different events, but the ones that get the most attention are the ones where women meet to ride through LA streets at night.

A new documentary from Kate Trumbull-LaValle and Johanna Sokolowski follows the club during a transition in leadership, when one of the founders, Xela, abruptly drops out. Although focus is split between three club members, Xela is arguably the principle character, and the filmmakers spend time uncovering her back story and motivations for starting the club. We learn that she experienced violence and abuse growing up, and felt alone with no one to confide in except a mother who rejected her feelings. Xela wants her daughter to feel like she’s part of a community, with other women in her life who she can turn to, so she started to Ovas, but it seems like engaging with violence against women on a regular basis stirs up memories that are, at times, overwhelming.

The other two members profiled in the film are Andi, who steps up as leader after Xela drops out, and Evie, a new recruit whose mother disapproves of her joining a bike club. Each of them struggles separately with how to make their families understand why this is important and how to make a difference in the community.

As events play out, it’s interesting to watch the internal dynamics of the club – the meetings where they make decisions about recruitment strategies and events are extremely democratic and sometimes emotionally charged – and the filmmakers do a good job of capturing the hard-to-articulate truth that we need to support and protect each other, and that being able to move freely through the streets is a right that’s been stolen from us.

Ovarian Psycos is structured so that we learn about the purpose and mission of the club before finding out how people on the street react to it, and it’s a little disappointing to learn that the group gets slammed with hateful, ignorant comments on a regular basis. The filmmakers interview a handful of people outside the club, some of whom are completely okay with a bike club for women of color, but they also find one man who works at a bike shop and manages to whitesplain why their club shouldn’t exist (it’s discrimination and not actually in the tradition of the Chicano movement). This is later challenged by a scene where Xela concisely explains intersectionality and how, as a woman of color, it’s hard to find a place in either white feminist or patriarchal Chicano contexts. And, while I’m bummed out that I wouldn’t be able to join this club, I can’t really argue with her logic about why it needs to exist.

What’s frustrating, as ever, is the realization that some people have been able to live their whole lives without realizing that this is a problem. Either because they’ve always been able to walk from point A to point B, or because they’re used to the idea that men attack women like jackals whenever they find us alone. That isn’t a mindset that’s helping anyone – it reduces men to predatory animals and implies that there’s no way to make gender-based violence stop – but it’s the mindset you find whenever someone says, “Why do you need a bike club for women at all?”

Ovarian Psycos answers the question of why you need a bike club for women, and specifically, in East LA, why you need a bike club for women of color. One of the less-explored, but very interesting aspects of the club is that Xela and some of the other members seem to have a desire to reconnect with pre-colonial indigenous Mexican traditions. I’ll confess my own ignorance and say that it never occurred to me that would be an important part of Latinx identity, but it makes complete sense, and I would happily watch another documentary just about that.

All together, the film captures something true and beautiful about the power of grassroots organizing, and the idea that regular people can band together and try to create change. The frustration of being misunderstood and misrepresented in media is part of the package, but there is a real sense that these women have found something meaningful in this club and formed strong connections. They have the opportunity to be leaders, and it’s an opportunity that they created for themselves out of virtually nothing.

There are still people who’ll say, “How is riding your bike at night supposed to do anything for women’s rights?” but it does a lot if it reminds you what it feels like to be free, and how far we have to go before we get there.

Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies, TV and video games on her blog.

‘Inside the Chinese Closet’ Highlights the Need for Social Acceptance of LGBTQ People in China and Globally

Often, when we talk about LGBTQ rights, we focus on legal battles – criminalization, marriage equality, adoption, and civil rights – but Sophia Luvara’s new documentary reminds us that social acceptance and cultural attitudes are just as important. ‘Inside the Chinese Closet’ follows Andy and Cherry, a gay man and a lesbian woman who struggle to reconcile their desire to live truthfully with their families’ expectations of them.

Written by Katherine Murray. | Inside the Chinese Closet is screening at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival.

Editor’s note: We have used LGBTQ to be inclusive but the documentary only addresses the issues facing gay men and lesbian women.

Often, when we talk about LGBTQ rights, we focus on legal battles – criminalization, marriage equality, adoption, and civil rights – but Sophia Luvara’s new documentary reminds us that social acceptance and cultural attitudes are just as important. Inside the Chinese Closet follows Andy and Cherry, a gay man and a lesbian woman who struggle to reconcile their desire to live truthfully with their families’ expectations of them.

Andy spends time trying to arrange a “fake” heterosexual marriage for himself through an LGBTQ dating service designed for that purpose. When asked what he’s looking for in a fake wife, he says that he wants someone who can be a best friend and that, in the long run, they’ll have to have some kind of love between them if they’re going to live together and raise children. During his conversations with potential matches, they have business-like discussions about who will be expected to do what in the relationship, whether they’re willing to adopt or have children through artificial insemination, and what their parents will want from a potential son or daughter-in-law. In between these exchanges, Andy takes phone calls from his father, who urges him to work harder at finding a wife, and to make more demands of potential candidates.

Cherry is in the process of ending her own fake marriage, and feels pressure from her parents to adopt a child. In China, there’s no legal way for her to adopt as a single parent or as a lesbian woman or lesbian couple, and her mother and father propose an outlandish scheme to buy unwanted babies from the hospital. Cherry says that the only time her father beat her was when he found out she was gay, and we learn from her mother that the neighbors make her feel ashamed for having a child-free daughter. They also contemplate the practical problem of who will take care of Cherry when she’s older, if she doesn’t have any children.

While Chinese laws criminalizing same-sex relationships have relaxed in the past 15 years, and Andy and Cherry are each out to at least one of their parents as well as their friend groups, they struggle with pressure to live up to their parents’ expectations, and to lead their lives as they wish. Even though it’s legal to be LGBTQ now, heteronormative cultural expectations still pathologize and stigmatize queer people by creating the sense that they aren’t living up to their adult responsibilities. It feels like Andy and Cherry are treated and viewed as the Chinese equivalent of American adults who live in their parents’ basements playing video games all day, while their parents urge them to find a job. The question of marriage equality or adoption by LGBTQ couples is so far off the table in China that the only way for Andy and Cherry to start a family, as they’re expected to do as adults, is to pretend to be straight.

Inside the Chinese Closet is an uneven film. The subject matter is interesting – and it certainly made me more aware of the nuances of LGBTQ identity in China – but it isn’t always clear why Luvara has chosen to follow these particular individuals. The press materials make it seem as if Andy’s major problem is finding a wife and Cherry’s major problem is finding a child, but it seems like the reverse is really true. As the film goes on, it seems as if Cherry is emotionally isolated, in love with a straight friend who doesn’t love her, and doesn’t actually want to have a child. Her struggle is in getting up the nerve to tell her mother to stop coming up with ridiculous schemes to buy a kid, because she doesn’t want one.

Andy, on the other hand, seems to really want a child. He blames it on his father when he discusses it with potential partners, but, from the way he talks, it sounds like he really would like to be a father. Andy’s biggest problem is that there’s no legal way for a gay man or gay couple to adopt a child in China – his dates with potential wives keep falling through, in part, because he’s afraid that they either won’t agree to have children, or will take the children when they break up with him or move abroad to live with a woman.

Many LGBTQ rights advocates in the U.S. and Canada would agree that the key changes in the last few decades have come not only from legislation but also from a growing acceptance in society of LGBTQ people. Homophobic hate groups have that right – we are promoting the message that it’s okay to be gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, pansexual, asexual, genderqueer, etc.; having more and more people accept that message has allowed many LGBTQ people to live fuller, more authentic lives. Inside the Chinese Closet is a reminder that, without that kind of social change – which comes slowly, and takes a lot of work – having the legal right to exist is only a small step forward. Andy and Cherry are still blocked from participating in the traditions and social structures they want to be a part of – they’re bombarded with messages that they should have families, but excluded from the joy of building families of their own with the people they love.

Compulsory heterosexuality and heteronormativity are still alive and well, and LGBTQ people still face stigmatization, even in countries with marriage equality. But Luvara’s film shines a light on how heteronormativity operates in an era where gay and lesbian people have enough savvy and technology to arrange fake marriages and cross-border adoptions from the comfort of their own apartments. It makes me wonder whether that’s going to speed up the march of LGBTQ rights in China or slow it even more.

Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies, TV and video games on her blog.