The Provincetown International Film Festival offers continued off-season programming in a special collaboration with the Coolidge Corner Theatre. Beginning on Valentine’s Day the two organizations will co-present “Queer-O-Rama,” an 11-day series of films and videos highlighting contemporary lesbian and gay content. The opening program on February 14 is a premiere screening of Iris, based on the story of English novelist Dame Iris Murdoch and starring Judy Dench and Kate Winslet. Also represented in the series is a “sneak preview” of Kissing Jessica Stein which screens on Tuesday, February 19 with lead actresses Jennifer Westfeldt and Heather Juergensen in attendance. Rounding out the program is an eclectic selection of cutting-edge work never before screened in the Boston area sprinkled with some recently released favorites. The collaboration will function as a fundraiser for the annual Provincetown film festival (scheduled in June) and the Coolidge. Additionally, it’s an opportunity to introduce Boston moviegoers to the newly formed Provincetown Film Society — an umbrella organization for the film festival committed to year-round film education and appreciation through collaborative programming.
Five Boston area theatrical premieres highlight “Queer-O-Rama” and include Wolves of Kromer from great Britain, Girls Who Like Girls from the U.S., O Fantasma from Portugal, Kali’s Vibe from the U.S., and Boys to Men also from the U.S. Wolves of Kromer was directed by Will Gould with a narration by Boy George and is a fanciful fairytale of two handsome werewolves who meet and fall in love. Girls Who Like Girls was directed by Pauline Edwards and features great lesbian lovemaking scenes from the 1960’s and ’70s including clips from landmark erotic films. O Fantasma was directed by Joao Pedro Rodrigues and is an explicit exploration of male sexuality told through a young man’s increasingly intense odyssey of random sexual encounters. That film will be shown with the short Doors Cut Down, another area premiere. Kali’s Vibe was directed by Shari Carpenter and is a bold bi-sexual coming-out story from an African-American point of view. Boys to Men is an outstanding quartet of films – from gay coming-of-age through aging and death.
Back to Boston by popular demand are 10 other feature films, many of which had limited area engagements. Chop Suey is Bruce Weber’s stylized portrait of the transformation of a model from pretty young boy into homoerotic icon. Big Eden stars Arye Gross as a lonely young artist who returns to his Montana hometown to discover he still has feelings for an old high school buddy. Come Undone is the sexually charged tale of two French teens on the beaches of Southern France. Keep the River on Your Right is a bizarre documentary about a mild-mannered New Yorker whose adventure to the Amazon jungle plants him in the midst of cannibalistic rituals.
The line-up continues with Live Nude Girls Unite an expose of the unfair employment practices in the stripper industry and the fight to unionize. Madchen in Uniform is a German all-girl boarding school classic from 1939 and one of the earliest narrative films to explicitly portray homosexuality. Monkey’s Mask is an erotic lesbian murder mystery from Australia, starring Susie Porter and Kelly McGillis. Show Me Love is a daring story of adolescent lesbian love from Swedish director Lukas Moodysson, whose recent release “Together” has brought him to the international spotlight. I’m the One That I Want is a screen adaptation of stand-up comic Margaret Cho’s renowned one-woman show. Finally, “Queer-O-Rama” concludes with one of last year’s queerest films, David Lynch’s critically acclaimed Mulholland Drive — a dreamlike odyssey into the bizarre world of LA LA Land.
Screenings take place at The Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard St., Brookline, MA 02446. Get more info by e-mailing Clinton McClung or call the Coolidge Corner Theatre at 617-734-2500. Get the complete schedule of screenings by visiting the web site for the Coolidge Corner Theatre.
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