The sexual label - gay, lesbian, bi, straight - has become a political tool which can either empower or dispossess its user. This film examines the complex tensions associated with these issues. It sets out to map the valid principles of empowerment underlying the use of sexual labels both past and present and charts the shifting relationship between the mainstream and non-straight communities.
Corky, a tough female ex-convict working on an apartment renovation in a Chicago building, meets a couple living next door, Caesar, a paranoid mobster, and Violet, his seductive girlfriend, who is immediately attracted to her.
BEAUTIFUL FUNERALS is a hand-painted double-step-printed film composed of 1) dense blackness variously punctuated by brilliantly colored jewel/flower-like shapes AND 2) interruptive white sections which are fuzzily dotted with blurred whites and criss-crossed by black "brushstrokes" and hard-edge straight black and white lines.
The dynamic PR-agent Hannah is starting up her dream-job in the Hochstedt Company producing toys and soon falls in love with her firm's junior executive director, Wolfgang.
Alain Moreau's investigation into the death of his identical twin brother leads him from the beauty of the south of France to the mean streets of New York City and into the arms of his brother's beautiful girlfriend.
Director Mohsen Makhmalbaf claims to have never seen a movie before making his first film. Doubtful as it sounds, this boast matches perfectly with the controversial artist's personae.
When Ashtray moves to South Central L.A. to live with his father (who appears to be the same age he is) and grandmother (who likes to talk tough and smoke reefer), he falls in with his gang-banging cousin Loc Dog, who along with the requisite pistols and Uzi carries a thermo-nuclear warhead for self-defense.
Comments
Have you watched Sexing the Label - Love and Gender in a Queer World yet? What did you think about it?
