Visiting the JCC’s 2nd Annual Faigele Film Festival
Lover Other / Dir. Barbara Hammer / Barbara Hammer, 2006
Adam and Steve / Dir. Craig Chester / Funny Boy Films, 2005
Tied Hands / Dir. Dan Wolman / Dan Wolman Productions, 2006
On July 30th and 31st, the Jewish Community Center of Manhattan hosted their second annual Faigele Film Festival, a series of screenings and events celebrating Jewish queer cinema. The festival presented a variety of queer films, including some that are simply a reappropriation of popular mainstream films with gay characters and others that are more transgressive in their attempt to illustrate some aspect of queer culture.
I arrived just before 7:30 for the first film, Barbara Hammer’s Lover Other, an atypical documentary that combines traditional documentary filmmaking with art cinema. Much of queer cinema has been criticized for featuring gay characters but being otherwise unsubversive. Lover Other is a different kind of film, focusing on the rich subject matter of Claude Cahun (born Lucy Schwob) and Marcel Moore (born Suzanne Malherbe). Cahun and Moore were step-sisters, surrealist artists, and lovers living on the Isle of Jersey during WWII. Much of the film focuses on their struggle to maintain their homosexual lifestyle amidst Nazi occupation, a lifestyle they did little to conceal, taking male names and cross-dressing. They rebelled against occupation, encouraging Nazi soldiers to murder their superiors and choose anarchy over fascism. They also never stopped collaborating on erotic photography and installation art, and were eventually sent to jail, their blatant resistance bordering on insanity.
Unfortunately, the film’s attempt to mimic the surrealist style of the artists often obfuscates the compelling subject matter and leaves the viewer confused. Hammer’s attempt at surrealism is often executed through the use of cheap visual effects whose awkward presentation often belies the poignancy of the subject matter. It is a valiant attempt at merging art-cinema with traditional documentary filmmaking, but ultimately it would have proved more successful if it had remained exclusively the latter.
Adam and Steve, written and directed by Craig Chester, starring well-known independent film stars Parker Posey, Malcolm Gets, and Chris Kattan, serves as a stark contrast to Lover Other. It is a romantic comedy about, you guessed it, two gay lovers named Adam and Steve, with Kattan and Posey as their respective straight best friends. The plot hinges on Adam and Steve realizing a year into their relationship that they had had a disastrous hook up twenty years earlier, which makes Adam run for the hills in shame. Of course, with the help of their friends they get back together, and this formulaic arc is easily the weakest part of the film. However, Gets and Chester and Posey and Kattan enjoy some moments of fine chemistry and humor that redeem the film’s predictable plot.
Chester arrived for a brief Q&A following the film in which he explained that he was motivated to make Adam and Steve because “€œno one makes movies like this” – romantic comedies that profile the struggles of homosexual couples in the same way that mainstream films focus on heterosexual couples. Although queer romantic comedies are no less traditional and full of stereotype than their heterosexual counter-parts, audience members seemed generally pleased with Adam and Steve. The film, which was shot on a shoe-string budget in less than a month, could have done with fewer love montages and jokes about anal sex, but was nonetheless a sweet film about getting what you want and wanting what you get.
For the past two years, the JCC’s Faigele Film Festival has been organized by JCC Manhattan staffers Isaac Zablocki and Sarah Kaye. Zablocki is the Assistant Director of Arts and Culture and Kaye is the Director of GLBTQ Programming, and the Faigele Film Festival is cohesive synthesis of their interests. Kaye and Zablocki are interested in films with “€œauthentic voices that represent the diversity of our constituents,”€\xc2\x9d said Kaye in a phone interview. She describes the films as “€œfor us, by us,”€\xc2\x9d and it is this ethic that makes the festival work.
One of the final films of the festival, Tied Hands, a film by critically acclaimed Israeli director Dan Wolman, offered audience members a darker tale than Adam and Steve that was far more accessible than Lover Other. Tied Hands was easily the best film in the festival. It seamlessly integrated a queer-centric plot line, compelling performances, and experimentation with traditional cinematic structure by incorporating gorgeously choreographed interludes by the film’s star, Ido Tadmor.
The Faigele Film Festival provided audience members with an opportunity to explore the different aspects of queer cinema, some clichéd and borderline mainstream, some more transgressive and obscure, in an atmosphere full of warmth and comfort.
