Part of Spring 1992
A special presentation within the Toronto Lesbian & Gay Film & Video Festival.
As a special part of this year’s Toronto Lesbian & Gay Film & Video Festival, Pleasure Dome has selected an evening devoted expressly to films from the domains of art and underground which rework lesbian and gay representation in popular culture. Current queer practice is looking to television, home movies, educational films and classic Hollywood with an eye to undermining their normative heterosexual readings. Images like Dietrich in drag kissing a woman from Morocco and the cross-dressing in Some Like it Hot have proven irresistible to young lesbian and gay filmmakers. The techniques they employ vary from exposing gay ‘subtexts’ to creating new sexual tensions through selective editing and appropriating historical footage as a jump off point to look at women’s sexuality. The means are varied but the result is similar, an exhilarating reinvention of how things could have been or should have been.
Thanksgiving Prayer Gus Van Sant, 3 min, 1991.
We start off the evening with a prayer. William Burroughs reading his Thanksgiving Prayer: “Thanks for the K.K.K., for Kill a Queer for Christ, for Prohibition and the War Against Drugs, thanks for a nation of finks…”
Home Movie Jan Oxenberg, 12 min, 1972.
Oxenberg takes what have been bland home movie footage of herself as a child and hilariously revisions her past in a lesbian context. “The thing I liked best about being a cheer-leader was being with the other cheer-leaders…the football match was just an excuse for the cheer-leaders to get together and do our thing”.
Encounter of Two Queens Cecilia Barriga, 12 min, 1988.
Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo never appeared in the same production…until now.
Remembrance Jerry Tartaglia, 5 min, 1990
Using clips from All About Eve, gay male porn and the filmmaker’s childhood home movies, Tartaglia talks of his life and his identification with strong female characters like Margo Channing, while Judy Garland sings Somewhere Over the Rainbow.
The Match That Started My Fire Cathy Cook, 19 min, 1991.
This film humourously explores women’s sexual discoveries through a collection of candid stories told by women recalling early childhood experiences. The inspiration for this film stemmed from the found void of sexual information and discussion of pleasure in 1950’s and 60’s sex education films.
Meet Bradley Harrison Picklesimer Heather McAdams, 33 min, 1988.
Through a mixture of 50’s footage and current material we are introduced to Bradley Harrison Picklesimer, drag queen extraordinaire. Bradley performs in his Kentucky bar, complete with Elvis busts and ceramic poodles, while he washes the dishes and gives us his thoughts on life.
