Palin for President? OMG!

There wouldn't be much point in spotlighting women in the media if a few moments weren't spent on Sarah Palin, much as I dislike having to do it. The woman N.O.W will not endorse, the woman that is a Vice Presidential candidate to a Presidential candidate that will slash all federal spending except to veterans and troops overseas. The woman who said " bet they're sorry now" to the Democrats for NOT choosing a woman, i.e. Hillary Clinton.
This election was so clearly Hillary Clintons' but maybe the goofuses in the Republican party headquarters who couldn't read the signals correctly put just any woman on the ticket. Hillary Clinton was often the brunt of jokes about her gender, and Sarah Palin is no different. But while the arguments leveled by Clinton had foresight, Palin seems to be winging it alone, hit or miss, mostly miss on a variety of topics that makes it clear that any old woman isn't the same as someone who knows what she is doing. A Christian right candidate with a ready made constituency that opposes Roe Wade, evolution and stem cell research is the last thing we need. And if the senior McCain were to pass on, "bet we'll be sorry now".

These positions were expressed by Palin in speeches during the past few years:

• Rejected sympathy for Down's Syndrome son, as gift from God. (Aug 2008)
• Opposes embryonic stem cell research. (Aug 2008)
• Only exception for abortion is if mother's life would end. (Jul 2006)
• Opposes explicit sex-education programs. (Jul 2006
• $7 billion savings plan for education & transportation. (Dec 2007)
• Marriage only be between and man and a woman. (Nov 2006)
• No spousal benefits for same-sex couples. (Jul 2006)
• Teach creationism alongside evolution in schools. (Aug 2008)
• Pledge of Allegiance with 'Under God' is good enough. (Jul 2006)
• Global warming affects Alaska, but is not man-made. (Aug 2008)
• Hunts as much as she can; freezer-full of wild game. (Aug 2008)
• Health care must be market-and business-driven. (Jan 2008)
• Visiting injured soldiers in Germany was trip of a lifetime. (Sep 2008)
• Energy is a foundation of national security. (Sep 2008)
• Miss Congeniality in statewide beauty pageant in 1984. (Aug 2008)

By far the biggest blunder is illustrated in the latest edition of The New Yorker: since Russia is within a bird's eye view of Alaska Palin feels she has qualified foreign policy experience. This may only amount to cooperating on trading missions across the border - such as exchanging wild game or whatever but the claim will land her in the Idiot Hall of Fame. Too bad she is a woman. It makes it worse. It may be true that dumb politicians resonate with voters such as George Bush Jr, and maybe its just a ploy to play dumb. But stupid is as stupid does.
Let's not forget George Jr reading a book upside down at a school for young children, or appearing on camera like a deer in highlights when told about the WTC on September 11th.
There is something remarkably similar about the recent utterances of Sarah Palin. Aren't they enough of a red flag? No wonder Obama wants to target funding for early education.
Katie Couric's soon to be legendary scoop with the "executive of" the state of Alaska reveals a riled up often incoherent and bumbling fool at work.
I sincerely feel for Sarah Palin, I truly do because she is doing the best she can, the best she thinks she can, though she could do far better if she were another person altogether, which she isn't.
Fifteen hundred women in Anchorage Alaska aren't particularly happy with the "executive of" and protested her nomination two hours after it was made, an event nowhere in the media. And remember the woman mysteriously escorted out during the nomination?

Truly women don't vote for a woman just because she is a woman. Are we learning yet? At least Sarah Palin should know something more about politics than being a poor Hillary imitation for Vietnam war veteran John McCain.

Tilda Swinton, Isaac Julien and Derek Jarman

On the closing day of San Francisco Pride, a day full of a grand parade through the streets of San Francisco one of the most brilliant films of the Frameline LGBT Film Festival, Derek screened to an audience at the Castro Theater. The artistic director of the festival Michael Lumpkin had wanted to show one of Jarman's films, which were impossible to find in a 35mm print in the USA. That is something to take note of since Derek Jarman and his films reminds us of a time in British filmmaking that no longer exists, a combination of the political, the artistic and, with a focus on gay sexuality in several complex films such as Sebastiane (1976) and Caravaggio (1986). Jarman served as production designer for Ken Russel's fascinating treatise on sexuality and the repressed clergy - The Devils. (1970). And without Jarman, Tilda Swinton said her industry career would never have taken off. She was asked to deliver a lecture on Jarman, a lecture that turned into a documentary film that she produced and wrote and which was beautifully directed by Isaac Julien.
Swinton is featured in the documentary, staring at times straight into the camera as she did in Sally Potter's Orlando. "Here I am, and this is what I believe. So what do you think? Her and Julien's appearance in the film personalizes it and is never out of place. It allows for the material to update, and for the memorial to take place. And when we look at the images, we do miss Derek Jarman.
Jarman was productive at a time before Margaret Thatcher and while the lucrative funding the British Film Institute gave to artists to develop their own voice in cinema was intact. Looking at some of his work it is with melancholy that one notes that this kind of film is not being made, this kind of film is not screened at Frameline, for after all Frameline simply culls from what is out there and is a showcase of the latest in LGBT cinema. Jarman marched in gay parades, just as we did today and when diagnosed with HIV gave a voice to his illness. Recall the years when Pride parades were virtually non existent in the 80's. His last film Blue with a voice over on his illness set to a blue screen was made just before he died in 1994.
Derek is an outstanding collage of the work of Jarman, his films, music videos, and a lengthy interview with Colin McCabe in 1990 at his home Prospect Cottage in Dungeness which serves as a voice over to his images. His artistic sensibility is so incredibly rich and dynamic that it is impossible to not be inspired by his work and appreciate his contributions to cinema, art and set design. Swinton and Julien's homage hits home.

Barbara Hammer is the Reigning Lesbian Filmmaker Par Excellence

You could say that Barbara Hammer has usually been involved in some kind of corporeal cinema, in one way or another. Her early films on lesbians go where no other filmmaker dared to go in exploring sexuality. Not only among the young and beautiful but the aging. She has successfully used found footage in her films, to bring to public attention old films about lesbian sexuality and presented to us closeted lesbian histories. She has used x-ray photography to show us the insides, and now the outsides in her latest film presented for the first audience ever at the Frameline LGBT Film Festival in San Francisco, A Horse is not a Metaphor. Intriguing title. I would actually say that for this film, a horse is a metaphor. But maybe that is an implied intention. Barbara is probably one of the most provocative and youthful directors anywhere. The film uses old rodeo footage, with young cowgirls wrestling with the cattle, as she so clearly seems to do when presented with her diagnosis of uterine cancer. There is also lots of footage of Barbara on a horse, and one horse in particular with eye and groin cancer, who after a sturdy diet begins to recover. This film is about Barbara's bout with cancer, which she successfully battled and is in over 18 month's remission. But it is also about reclaiming power, and the images of horses, shiny and sleek, with life running through their magnificent bodies evokes this. It takes courage and conviction to bring a film so personal and intimate to the screen. We see Barbara in the hospital, Barbara with short hair after chemotherapy, Barbara's scar from surgery, Barbara naked walking through the forest. Powerful Barbara Hammer who is not afraid to have us look, empathize and learn. That gives us life on life's terms.

Of all the films at Frameline, an evening with experimental work is a night to remember. From a woman who learned how to make movies at San Francisco State. And when she went to school she saw the films of only one woman: Maya Deren: the filmmaker that chose to make experimental, personal films.
Its time to wash away the made for TV scripts, the lesbian love that is unrequited, and the women who kills themselves because they can not have the one they love. There were several films this year at Frameline. Are we learning yet? Are these retrograde themes harking back to Sandy Dennis being felled by a tree in The Fox or Susannah York being forced to eat Beril Reid's cigar in The Killing of Sister George a metaphor for something that is happening to lesbian identity today? Even if so, Barbara makes us remember that its beautiful to be a lesbian at any age, and that the experimental format is a powerful tool of expression.
Here is a film that uses metaphor, to show an incredible joy for life despite a life threatening experience at the risk of alienating the public. "How has this film been received?", asked someone in the audience. "I don't know, you are the first audience", answered Barbara. As one of the first spectators I can only ask, what would the world be without Barbara Hammer? She has brought to lesbian filmmaking a uniqueness, a passion, a daring challenge to see and experience, sit and squirm , feel uncomfortable and provoked, and afterwards feel that you have gone through an ordeal into visionary and auditory realms that have made you richer for the experience. The choice of music by Meredith Monk, another incredible veteran artist , empowered the film and sent it soaring. "I always wanted to ride a horse", says Barbara, who took to the saddle faced with the acknowledgement that life is precious and can be cut short, so you better darn well enjoy all you can.

4th Queer Women of Color Film Festival in San Francisco

The Queer Women of Color Film Festival is probably one of the most unique festivals for queer women out there. Here we can definitely take note of the new directions of filmmaking each year as each filmmaker comes to terms with the latest in technology for low budget production. Out of a series of scripts and a desire to make movies, several women tell their story with passion, dedication and purpose. The event is free and held at the Brava Theater in the Mission district of San Francisco. Directors Madeline Lim and T Kebo Drew run an excellent venue. In essence, the festival is a training ground for filmmakers, and once the film wraps it becomes part of the festival. In QWOCMAP's training program filmmakers are on a strict schedule to produce an intimate and relevant project to their own lives. They are guided by the award winning filmmaker Lim, and act and serve as crew in each other's films. Community partners include Pink and White Productions, which helped to host the Sunday afternoon "Sexually Subversive" centerpiece screening, and Trikone , a non profit organisation for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people of South Asian descent. Sponsors include Linda Harris of the Harrison Team, a real estate agency which services the LGBT community. Harris is on the board of directors for Frameline.
There is a trained staff of volunteers that usher in the block long length of women, and if you are on time there is no problem with a seat. The tradition of the festival is to serve food, also free, to make everyone feel at home. The feedback that each filmmaker gets from her film is enough to keep the images rolling for a long time, for the crowd is generous and knows what it likes.
To celebrate this event, a representative of Mayor Gavin Newsom spoke about how the festival is appreciated and honored by the City of San Francisco. With the new passage of legalized marriage in California and a conservative backlash already in gear to try to defeat the measure in November, strong community action is underway to get people out to vote. According to the representative, "let's get the measure passed, then worry about deconstructing the institution of marriage". Right on. Activism is a key component to the Queer Women of Color Festival (QWOCMAP), with leaflets in the vestibule for signatures to Mayor Newsom, "I support having a city owned Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center in San Francisco", and to Governor Schwarzenegger, " I recently attended the QWOCMAP Film Festival that was part of the Unisted States of Asian America Festival and National Queer Arts Festival". In California, public support of the arts is 3 cents per person, whereas the national average is one dollar.

This year Pratibha Parmar was the special invited guest to the festival, a British Indian who was born in Kenya and grew up in London in a working class neighborhood. She never went to film school but has made several films, one of which won the public prize for the best film at the Créteil International Women's Film Festival - Khush, a film about gay and lesbians in South Asia, and those interviewed came out for the first time . "Khush" means "ecstatic pleasure" in Urdu.

Parmar was interviewed by the award-winning journalist Helen Zia, author of Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People. Two other films were shown in a retrospective of Parmar's work: Bhangra Jig and Wavelengths. The films are archived by Women Make Movies in New York, an organization that rents films to schools and universities. Parmar noted the quality of the films on video and is planning on a DVD release of her work in the near future. Of particular interest is Parmar's latest film Nina's Heavenly Delight which has won several top awards at festivals in Fresno, Tampa and the Cineffable Lesbian Film Festival in Paris. Parmar plans to spend more time in the Bay Area with her partner of 16 years.

Programs were divided into three themes this year in addition to the special Sunday screening "Sexually Subversive": "Kindred Spirits", films about family relations, and "Delectably Yours", a pageant of films on food.
Highlights of some of the films this year include: Labels Are Forever (Jinky de Rivera, 2008).The opening titles reads like the introduction to Star Wars in this humorous saga about 007 Secret Agent J. Wong. Wong is sent by her boss to investigate how labels are used by a group of women only to discover that the assignment is bogus.

Luna Han takes a look at The Cock: Lesbian Owned & Operated (2008).

Han was also the better half in One in a Million by Monifa Porter (2008) a playful journey into the twists and turns of a lesbian fertility rite. If you click here you can see the festival's secret agent on duty.

Renacimiento de una bruja (Zemaya, 2008) is a spiritual oddyssey by a woman with the earth and her ancestors.

Queering My Mother (Lourdes Rivas, 2007) tells the story of mother that polices her daughter too much especially when she has met that special woman. As the title suggests, the evolution of awareness by the filmmaker's mother is at stake, and she does it in style.
Jagadamba, Mother of the Universe (Amber Field, 2008) is about a young South Korean woman comes to terms with her adoption in the USA while also questioning celebrities such as Madonna and Angelina Jolie who have adopted children from developing nations to give them better lives. The evolution of the young woman is traced as she comes to terms with being a lesbian and also a martial artist.

In Too Much Plain (Caroline Le, 2008) A young woman tries to figure out what's wrong with all her girlfriends with her best friend, only to discover that its because she wants to be more than best friends with her confidant.

A handful of the films were also shown at the Frameline32 LGBT Film Festival June 19-29 in a section called "Magical Promise", which is precisely what you can say about so many gifted directors at QWOCMAP.

61st Cannes Film Festival

The 61st Cannes Film Festival ended on May 25 after a 10 day run, the festival which is one of the most prestigious and which is known for screening artistic world class films. What was really refreshing about this years Cannes was the choice of the jury president, Mr. Sean Pean, a man who has worked hard for films with social issues and who has really come into his own. Other jury members included Natalie Portman and Alfonso Cuaron.

The Palme d'Or this year when to The Class by Laurent Cantet and was presented by Robert De Niro. This is the first time a French film won the top prize in 21 years. The film is about a teacher who tries to prepare a junior high school class in a rough neighborhood in Paris for the future, though the students challenge the way that he goes about it. The story is autobiographical and the teacher, François Bégaudeau, plays himself. The jury chose this film unanimously and Sean Penn said it is the young people of today who have the responsibility for the future of the planet.

Two veterans received the special Prize of the 61st Festival de Cannes the so-called ex-aequo awards.

Catherine Deneuve for A Christmas Tale by Arnaud DESPLECHIN also starring the French-Italian actress Chiara Mastroianni, the daughter of Deneuve and Marcello Mastroianni.

And Clint EASTWOOD won for The Changeling, the story of a mother played by Angela Jolie whose kidnapped son is returned but who knows it is not her son.

The Award for the Best Director went to Nuri Bilge CEYLAN for Three Monkeys, a film that like its title deals with corruption in a family that doesn’t want to see hear or speak the truth.

At the press conference for the jury it was noted that the two acting awards went to films with social relevance:

Benicio Del Toro was awarded for his performance in Che, by Steven SODERBERGH, the story of Che Guevara, the Argentinean doctor that sailed to Cuba to help bring about the downfall of Batista together with Fidel Castro. Soderbergh understands that the length all of 267 minutes, may scare off the average audience and his hope is that it can be shown in installments.

Sandra Corveloni won the other award for her role in LINHA DE PASSE by Walter SALLES, a film about the hopeless conditions for four brothers in Sao Paolo who struggle to avoid falling into a life of crime. Corveloni plays their mother the housemaid Clueza,

Other veterans who have been awarded at Cannes previously were Jean-Pierre et Luc DARDENNE who won the Best Screenplay award for Lorna’s Silence the story of an Albanian woman who acquires Belgian citizenship by marrying a Russian Mafioso.

The feeling this year was that there was a lot of good films, and not enough prizes to reward all of the good work. This was not a year when a film like The Brown Bunny, by Bad Boy Vincent GALLO stood among the talent. And Sean Penn brought a quality to the festival that will make the 61^st edition stand out for a while, with a French film at the top.

Broadcast on Movie Magazine International, San Francisco, May 26, 2008.

Hollywood, A Country for Old Men and Foreigners

Postscript: Oscars Numero 80
The anticipation is always higher than what the Oscars can deliver. I think Jon Stewart's opening line says it all: "No Country for Old Men, Let There Be Blood, Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber?
Does Hollywood need a hug? Thank god for teenage pregnancy."
Maybe Hollywood does and maybe it doesn't. But the Oscars might need an audience, and the 80th edition had one of the lowest turnouts ever.
Word is out that at least in the USA viewing was low because not enough Americans were nominated! Looking at the actor categories its pretty awesome to note that the winners are all from outside the JUESSAY. Both Tilda and Marion gave kudos to the men that make them rock: Olivier Dahan and George Clooney and then Javier Bardem thanked his mother and Daniel Day Lewis his girfriend.
Joel Cohen revealed that what they do in No Country for Old Men is no different from their first film, Henry Kissinger on the Move, shot in Super 8. I hope that my Super 8 film on The Underwater Real Estate Twins and a human ashtray will catapult me to Oscar glory. It is really the same, yes it is. Time will tell.
The Oscars could be significantly shortened by taking out the music numbers and stop mentioning "Jack" all the time. As a role model it is unfortunate that he is the leading veteran in the house. Could we say his appearance with Boris Karloff in The Terror (1963) is actually no different from his appearance at the Oscars?
Indeed, Hollywood seems to really be a country for old men, and the men who make the women rock. And the men who decided to put them all in one arm dresses this year.
One refreshing addition to this Oscars was the thank you speech by Cynthia Wade, winner of the best short. She directed Freeheld, the true story of the terminally ill Lieutenant Laurel Hester who wanted to leave her pension benefits to her life partner - Stacie.
(PS 35,000 viewers from Sweden watched the ceremony on TV9- 45,000 average in the Red Carpet - acknowledged during the pre-event for sending email- and up from 20,000 viewers last year. Population of Sweden, 9 million.

Oscar-itis, Numero 80

The 80th edition of the Oscars are on TV9 in Stockholm this year and you have to wait until the end of the month to add cable channels. Hello? Timing?
When it comes to services, the bureaucrats of (Sweden) are fashionably late, albeit retro... not a politically incorrect statement; backwards, intentional refusal to update the world ; insistence in living in a cubicle of stubbornness. SO, I MADE the bureaucrats ADD TV9 before March 1! The "cable people". I wonder if they are really the "TV people" from Poltergeist living inside the set behind the war of the ants! Whew! This was hard, but persistence is rewarded, and this approach works! Disarm the bureaucrats before they can say no. Drive close up to their bumper and then ram! But the tailpipe may backfire: "we can't do it because everyone will want it then", or "that is not the way we do things". True customer (dis)service. Just a teenie little cultural idiosyncracy, enough to drive you to drink.

SEEING the Oscars is the name of the game! First hurdle every year, at least in Sweden. The media conglomerates keep channel switching the coverage to different hosts; only IF a Swedish film is nominated will the national channels pony up the money. OK the show is expensive, more expensive then Dallas reruns anyway. (According to Svenska Dagbladet 2008-02-27, 58% of the TV shows in Sweden are from USA, because they are cheaper). The condensed Reader's Digest version of the Oscars is broadcast two days later (subtitles included, and great to understand what Javier Bardem said about his mother!) With a speedy version of the technical and artistic achievement categories. This is really really sad.

I'll never forget the year I saw the Oscars in Paris on Canal + and the commentators talked on top of everyone the entire time, turned down the volume on the speakers so you couldn't even tune them out. Like a football game. But at least in Sweden they DON'T, and when they cut to commercials there is some pretty good analysis by some pretty good film critics. This year it was fashion expert Ellen Kling ( who left after 30 minutes into the show), program leader Pontus Gårdinger AND the popular film critic with the wirey hair, Hans Wiklund.

Best cinematography is a wonderful category at the Oscars that is awarded, the use of the camera and lighting in a film. I think the cinematography in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is excellent, bright light and soft focus, radiant outdoor shots and just incredible visual style. Hope it wins best cinematography. Director Julien Schnabel did Before Night Falls with Javier Bardem. (According to Maria Schneider, arthouse diva from Last Tango in Paris, Schnabel is one of the few arthouse directors out there). Its the six degrees of Javier this year! Javier Bardem for best supporting actor!--he is a real icon like Hannibal Lector as far as (serial ) murderers go in No Country for Old Men. How else could you describe him? That hairdo just is over the top! We will never forget him! Especially if he wins. I can bet you someone wears a Sugar Wig tonite!
I hope Atonement doesn't win anything! Actually I don't really care how a film compares to a book. It shouldn't even be considered. A film is a film, and a book is a book. Please just keep it separate. Usually book ideas don't make great films because film is not literary, its visual, so if people are SO disappointed go back and read the book. Film owes you nothing. Just your story for inspiration, that is all.

Haven't seen Juno, yet, or There Will be Blood, or Michael Clayton. But I would not be unhappy if No Country for Old Men won best picture, supporting actor and director. (and it did!)
Thought Viggo Mortensen was great in Eastern Promises, I loved that film! The great auteur David Cronenberg made it! What can that guy NOT do, and how versatile!
I am partial to Johnny Depp in Sweeney Todd as best actor , a real ST fan I am! We have the advantage of the musical tradition in the USA which Sweden does not. Hard to sell this film perhaps because it is such a great musical, and well, then a musical is a musical, and a film is a film.

Torn between Julie Christie for Away From Her, a compassionate and moving film directed by Sarah Polley , a young director with such a sensitivity for the elderly, and Marion Cotillard as Edith Piaf for La Môme - for best actress. Love them both. Olivier Dahan, the director of La Môme, was invited for the San Francisco International Film Festival, closing film 2007- and was a bit obnoxious, but I think he had stage fright. That is a real oxymoron.

TORN between Persepolis and Ratatouile for best animated film. Tight race! Both are brilliant. Ratatouille will probably win, its so Americano/Francophilo.
Have not seen I'm Not There yet oj oj oj but hear Cate Blanchett is good as Bob Dylan (she is currently in overuse syndrome), and Heath Ledger (really sorry to see you go) but NOT Richard Gere. Oh Please!
Phillip Seymour Hoffman is a great actor but like Cate is overused in almost everything. I loved him in Capote. He could have retired after that one.

I will attempt to be glued to the set tonite, but will probably fall asleep unfortunately and wake up when the credits roll and the war of the ants begins. Its on here at 2.30am. No way around that. "Aphrodite, crowned in gold, please let this piece of luck of mine".
After the writers strike everyone will be out in droves. Hair, makeup, and tacky American ball room dresses. (Red Carpet on TV9 at midnite) I can't wait till Cannes for some real designs. Have to look at the tuxes then, usually a lot better. Alas, not sure if its a great Oscar year. But then don't we say that every year?
And what about that writer's strike? Seems like missing the Red Carpet at the Golden Globes was a fate worse than death. What Solidaritet! Could have missed the Oscars actually. Still haven't wrapped my head around the issues that need to be clarified once and for all.

As for Sicko half good, half bad. That is BEFORE Michael Moore makes his patronizing Disneyland switch to document health care in Cuba and Europe. It really fell apart after the USA report, which was great- intelligent, with the hard cold facts. Ironically, in Sweden health care is starting to become privatized!

Happy Oscars to you! Drop me a line during the show if you can any of you cinephiles!

This movie never won an Oscar, but like Ghostbusters, you can see it over and over and over and never get sick of it.
Hint: it was inspired by The Birds.

Diana Rigg at the Old Vic

Is there anything Diana Rigg can't do? From James Bond's wife to a veteran stage actor in love with a lesbian drug addict, this actor has proven her versatility and extraordinary acting craft time after time. At the London Old Vic through November 24th, All About My Mother is a dramatic rendition of Pedro Almodóvar's cult film about a mother who loses her son in an accident, fathered by the transsexual Lola.
And just to prove that the attempt to dramatize the film on stage was approved, Aldmodóvar was on hand at the opening nite in London with Penelope Cruz and Cecilia Roth on September 4th, along with quite a few queer folks. Listen to upcoming review of play on October 24th for Movie Magazine International, San Francisco.

Jeanne Moreau in Stockholm

Jeanne Moreau was guest at the Swedish Film Institute on October 6th to honor Ingmar Bergman. She revealed a story about letters to Bergman sent after an unhappy love affair with Louis Malle. They planned on making a film called Monstrous Love, but when Bergman was arrested for a tax violation the film never came to be. Upcoming review of Long Live Bergman Weekend in Stockholm and interview with Jeanne Moreau on Movie Magazine International, San Francisco on October 17.

Farewell Rita Chan!

September 21, 2007

Dear Sister!

There is no one that I have met that so much embodies the North American spirit than you: fun-loving and compassionate, generous and hard-working, courageous and outrageous. You had all these wonderful qualities in spades. And your light never went out. You were a constant fountain of vitality giving to Sweden your gifts, and wherever you went in the world. As you became more and more Swedish, you gave the culture a polish and shine that we will all miss. A wonderful and enchanting light has gone out, but your radiance will always be here in this country.

I am so honored to have you as a friend since the 1980’s and to keep in touch with you through the years on our journeys. I know we missed our roots in the States but we both loved Sweden and Swedish women and that is pretty close to heaven, I think we both agreed. We made this wonderful journey to Stockholm at almost the same time and stuck together through the years. You made it a point to remember my birthday and were there for many of my important life rituals.

So sister countrywoman from Sweden, I salute you, and will always. Thanks for all your networking and brainstorming and support through the years. Thanks for promoting lesbian culture, bringing Holly Near to Sweden, and all your activism for immigrant women in Sweden and the LGBT world. Our film made ten years ago is a living testimony of your humor, your vitality, and your compassion for women. I have it waiting to show you, as you requested last time we met.
You will be deeply missed Rainy. I am so grateful for our time together and in light years, I am moments behind you.

Moira, San Francisco, CALIFORNIA

My thoughts and prayers to Rita’s family: Petra and family, Kicki and Mette and Yvonne.
Tribute to Rita "Rainy" Creighton, September 21, 2007 at Nalen, Stockholm, SWEDEN.

Jodie Foster is Back!

The Brave One directed by Neil Jordan stars Jodie Foster and its her best performance since Silence of the Lambs, 15 years ago. Truly this film puts her out there again, conjuring up memories of the tough girl in Taxi Driver who walks the streets of New York as a precocious preteen. Only this time she is cleaning up the streets of New York, instead of Robert De Niro's "You talking to me?"- Well she doesn’t say that exactly. But when a pimp calls her a Super -"Expletive", she lets him know that he has just met his own private hell.

Erika Bain and her boyfriend Naveen Andrews played by David Kirmani --- take their dog for a walk in the park at night. What’s the harm? There are people sitting on park benches. Well, three street thugs decide to take their dog, brutally assaulting Erika and beating her boyfriend to death. As they assault the young couple the men film the attack. Erika wakes up in intensive care after spending weeks in a coma, thereby missing the funeral of her boyfriend. She works as a radio correspondent and she does a “different” kind of show—socially relevant programs. Her special reports bring her to the attention of Detective Mercer (Terence Howard) who remembers her assault and who is investigating a parallel murder. Erika suffers post-traumatic stress disorder and takes pills for her nerves. But one day she decides she can’t live in fear. And she decides she can’t wait 30 days to get a handgun. She needs it now and badly and in a serious of random crimes she personally observes, she is let into an existence as a vigilante.

The Brave One is a female revenge vehicle and no one is more qualified than Foster. She been pimped out in Taxi Driver, sexually assaulted in The Accused , set up to weasel out information from Hannibal Lector in Silence of the Lambs and go mano e mano with a serial murderer. But after all that, it all gets kind of tame for Foster in pictures. She’s in a western with Richard Geer and a period piece in Siam, but starts up her own production company.

Then the engines seem to roar again with the kind of visceral raw toughness that Foster has in spades. One project is with Mathieu Kassovitz to present La Haine (Hatred) about gang violence in the Parisian suburbs with yet another reference to Travis Bickle and Taxi Driver; she’s locked in a safe house in Panic Room; her daughter is abducted in Flight Plan. The woman has had it all happen to her. It’s all about defending her integrity and her right to be safe. The message of this film comes from post 9/11 New York, and it’s a grim tale about payback and justice. Erika manages to elude the police and everything thinks she’s a guy, but soon the picture starts to flesh itself out.

Death comes unexpectedly and leaves a hole in her heart. Erika needs to reinvent herself she has become another person shaken by senseless violence. Her vengeance becomes a way out and the message is not pretty.

Neil Jordan has directed The Crying Game and Interview with a Vampire. He is fascinated with American violence, as many Europeans who live in relatively safe ethnically homogenous cultures with social welfare programs seem to be. It’s a fascinating subject for the movies, and New York violence is easy to sell. The style for The Brave One is over the top: Both the camerawork and editing convey the confusion and disorder of chaos. Sarah McLaughlin is not a good choice to deliver the film theme, but the song does make it into a love story and tempers the violence. Ironically the Dixie Chicks come up in the film as being too tame for this city. But certainly not Jodie Foster.

Go to "Listening Room" started September 22, 2007 at Movie Magazine International for a broadcast based on this review.

Rita Chan Creighton

Rita (Rainy) Chan Creighton, 1951- 2007
Dual national USA/SWEDEN, LGBT ACTIVIST, FRIEND

Thanks for the energy, the activism, the support, the friendship through so many years in Stockholm , Rainy. We were the few dual nationals in Stockholm since the 70's and it was always fun to meet you. Thanks for the Holly Near concert, and bringing women's culture to Sweden through the years. Thanks for your motorcycle - your travels in Japan and Europe were truly inspirational.
You touched so many people's lives. Thanks for being active with immigrant women's issues and the first Feminist Party in Sweden F! You caught the flowers at my wedding and were blessed in love many times over all over the world. You were humble and never held a grudge and stood by me all through the years. You will be sorely missed.

"Is That You Hortense?", our film from 1997, will forever immortalize your humor and joy for life.

Jamie Babbit Closes Frameline; Andrea Sperling Receives Frameline 2007 Award

Frameline went out in grand queer cinema style after eleven days of screenings and at the end of San Francisco Pride. Andrea Sperling received the Frameline 2007 Award, citing her influences including Maya Deren. Sperling has produced several award winning gay and lesbian films such as But She's a Cheerleader, and works with Power Up, a LA lesbian entertainment film organization for writers, directors, and producers. Her partner Jamie Babbit closed the festival with her new feature Itty Bitty Titty Committee, also produced by Sperling and aptly named for a young radical feminist group that spray paints institutions and billboards to get women to resist the media campaigns for silicon implants. And a few other things. Like demonstrating against gay marriage - because "marriage is fundamentally a patriarchal institution", earmarking historic town statues that celebrate racists or to create new statues of women who changed the world, like Angela Davis. On hand were the actors of the film and crew such as screenwriter Abigail Shafran. Babbitt referred to the character of Sadie - one of the leads - as a troublemaker, but actress Nicole Vicius countered with good humor, "she's not a troublemaker, she's got holes". The film premiered at the Berlin Film Festival and was nominated for a Teddy Award. Vicius remarked that someone from that festival audience made a similar remark and just hadn't read the character right. I do agree. The film has an LA aura of Born in Flames, though certainly not as radical as its predecessor. There is great possibility in the script however though the director doesn't claim to live according to the radical ideals of her film, the ones which made the audience roar . Babbitt underlined that she is "not a radical feminist". The festival closed with a party at the Swedish American Hall bearing a dark rustic country wholesomeness. I have never seen a building like this ever in Sweden. In attendance was Babbit, Sperling, Vicius and Go Fish and L Word writer and actor Guinivere Turner, who wanted a bigger part in Babbit's world, but "had to settle with a minor role she said since she is no longer in her 20's". Also on hand was French filmmaker Catherine Corringer who presented her film This is the Girl, and the programmer from the Paris Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Florence Fradelizi, who starred in the film and made a hit with the San Francisco public.

Frameline All Told

Frameline has earned its reputation as a vital festival for queer film. In recent years the agenda has grown to incorporate not only lesbian, gay and bisexual films but transgender subjects. Still the strongest and most economically viable venues are for gays and lesbian, the films that are most heavily attended. Its a huge population out there, and films like Starrbooty (Mike Ruiz) starring Ru Paul, and Nina's Heavenly Delight (Pratibha Parmar , UK) were some of the the biggest heavy hitters at the festival. Ruiz wacky blaxploitation film puts supermodel Starrbooty (Ru Paul) on the trail of an evil woman selling body parts. Parmar who has turned towards features after a successful oeuvre of documentaries tells the story of love between a woman from Glasgow who becomes an Indian restauranteer and one of the staff.
Programmers from festivals all over the world such as Sweden (Göteborg), France (Cineffable and Paris Gay and Lesbian Film Festival and Brazil (Mix Brasil Fest), attend to bring the films to international communities. The festival features 250 films in 11 days with about 200 filmmakers in attendance.

Pride in San Francisco

Its the largest parade of its kind in the world, and over a million spectators and participants lined the streets of San Francisco.The previous day Pride event was no minor event with over 20,000 women in the annual Dyke March walking through the Mission up to the Castro district. The theme of the march was "Health Care for All". Pre-march entertainment was held at Delores Park including the outstanding vocalist Vickie Randle as special guest. In the evening the Castro became a huge block party. Mayor Gavin Newsom was at the head of the June 24th Pride parade, following of course about 400 dykes on bikes, the parade's official starting event. The three and half hour event heralded lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders in all walks of live: teachers, parents, police, firemen and the IT industry and parents and friends of gays and lesbians PFLAG.
Happy PRIDE DAY San Francisco!

Born in Flames Revival at Frameline

Lizzie Borden's Born in Flames from 1983 was shown at Frameline LBGT Festival. Special guest, Hillary Hurst who plays the first captain of the women's army in the film appeared at the screening and spoke about the making of this cult classic. Considered radical already for its time, Born in Flames evokes the spirit of 70's feminism, because it actually began production in 1976, according to Hurst and was seven years in the making. (When more funds became available shooting continued with a second captain - Honey ). The film is set in the future after the socialist revolution in the USA! The socialist party is ineffective however and still unable to provide jobs or stop violence against women. So a women's army is formed, a grass roots movement that patrols on bicycles and intervenes when women are being sexually assaulted or harassed on the subway (Dana Johnson) . The film weaves the connections between of racism, sexism and classicism into a powerful futuristic story that received appreciable recognition by the Frameline public. The film tackles the role of the media, working hand in the hand with the government, in the perpetuation of injustice and an eerie ending which definitely proves to have foreshadowed the future takes place. Eventually the army takes over a TV station to interrupt a Presidential broadcast advocating "wages for housewives". A film is forced under gunpoint with the message that women are in far greater need of equal opportunities in the job market than housework.

See film review of "Born in Flames", by Moira Jean Sullivan

Susan Stryker Said...

Susan Stryker is a well known transsexual activist in San Francisco and is one of the most vocal on the Frameline decision. Stryker has both supported the Frameline decision to pull The Gendercator , that Frameline was not an appropriate venue , and also believed it was important to screen it. This letter appeared in Left in San Francisco.

1. Susan Stryker Says:
   
   

   "I obtained a copy of the film, viewed it, and corresponded with Catherine Crouch before making any comment.

   I decided to support this petition because Frameline, as an LGBT inclusive organization, is not the appropriate venue for this sort of work. The film expresses a long-familiar anti-transgender polemic: the idea that transsexuals are anti-gay, anti-feminist political reactionaries who collude with repressive social and cultural power; furthermore, that transsexuals are complicit in the non-consensual bodily violation of women.

   The ideas in the film echo the rhetoric of Janice Raymond’s Transsexual Empire (1979), which goes so far as to claim that Nazis invented transsexual surgery, that transsexuals are agents of a patriarchal conspiracy to replace biologically female women, to accuse all transsexuals of being rapists (because they represent an “unwanted penetration” of women’s space), and to argue in a eugenic fashion that transsexuals should be “morally mandated out of existence.”

   Raymond’s book, and the film, engage in the paranoid fantasy that what transsexuals do to their own bodies is somehow a threat to the bodies of nontranssexual women, that the very existence of transsexuals will somehow “force” a nontranssexual woman to have her body violated through some sort of compulsory and unwanted transformation–it’s the same structure of fantasy that imagines that all black men want to rape white women, that gays are predatory pedophiles, that communists are secretly infiltrating our government, that terrorists are swarming across our borders, that drug pushers are constantly trying to hook our kids, and so on ad nauseum. The film projects fear onto an “alien other” and then condemns that other for reflecting back that fear to the person who has projected it there in the first place.

   The director’s comments on the website betray a profound ignorance of the on-going, sophisticated conversations among feminist, queer, and trans activists and scholars about medicalization, pathologization, body modification, and other related issues–and frankly, for that matter, about misogyny and sexism within transgender communities and discourse. Her remarks suggest that she assumes she’s knows what best for other people, and that people who have made different choices than her, or felt different needs, or found other ways to be happy, self-fulfilled, productive members of society, are “distorted.” Sadly, that’s a move that liberal feminism has made many times, and it has only and always served to reinforce the privilege of the most advantaged populations of women, and to extend the repressive apparatus of sovereign power to the detriment of those on the margins. I have no qualms about working as actively as possible against such forms of feminism, and refuse to let such forms of feminism claim to represent feminism in its totality.

   But to return to the matter at hand, I personally think that sponsoring a “special screening” of Gendercator in San Francisco, perhaps sponsored by Frameline as part of its public process for dealing with the controversy, contextualized by a moderated panel discussion and presentations on the history of the issues involved, would provide an excellent opportunity to advance discussion on this matter. I guarantee, however, that any discussion in San Francisco would not be the one the filmmaker seems to think she would instigate. She would not be bringing the truth to poor confused transsexuals who would suddenly say, “Gee, it never dawned on me that I was embodying a distorted cultural norm.” She would be further mobilizing an already highly articulate, politically engaged, progressive community of queer/trans people to hold a homocentric GLB(T) to higher standards of accountability on trans issues, and to further isolate an increasingly isolated strand of anti-transsexual lesbian feminism.

   For that reason, while I support Frameline’s decision to pull the film as inappropriate for their mission, I truly regret that the film will not be shown. I hope it finds another venue where it will be subjected to the rigorous critique it so richly deserves.

   Susan Stryker