Two nights in Academy Awards history gave the gay community great recognition for winning multiple Oscars. Four years ago, “Brokeback Mountain” won best screenplay, director and original score, and this year “Milk” won best actor and original screenplay. The films in this year’s Queer Film Festival may be next to gain recognition for their bold messages and heartbreaking stories.
The two-week long festival runs from Feb. 25 to March 6 and shows six international films that, while they may not win Oscars, undergraduate Kirista Trask hopes will “represent something different from mainstream media and that not everyone has access to.”
“What ‘Brokeback’ and ‘Milk’ did was show that there are interesting stories in the queer community. People wanted to see Heath Ledger; he was an activist for gay people and was great in the movie,” Trask, the festival’s coordinator, said. “Sean Penn was phenomenal as Harvey Milk and the story was something to be said. They both nailed it.”
Sponsored by the University’s Cultural Forum, the 17th annual Queer Film Festival was one of the first gay film festivals in the Northwest.
Trask said the festival’s content is unknown to most viewers. “Most people went to see exactly what it was, and we’ve had good turnouts since then. It was a shock factor to viewers because there was no accessibility of these films. You couldn’t watch these movies on Netflix or in theaters; the Bijou Theatre didn’t even show films like this.”
Four of the six films showcased in the festival involve real life situations and people, and Trask said they are documentaries and films that “bring something different and independent that no one has access to or knows about.”
Subjects in the featured films endure prejudice from their families, community members and the media or explore the stories of homosexuals in the past and present. The films cover themes from the true and brutal story of Sakia Gunn, an unknown black teen murdered in New Jersey, to a documentary about a Portland-based drag troupe. Two of the films have foreign settings and characters. In “The World Unseen,” directed by Shamim Sarif, two women in South Africa struggle with issues of race, gender and desire in a restrictive 1950s era.
All films are shown at 7 p.m. in 115 Lawrence Hall and are free to viewers.
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