Vote on LGBT films that changed your life
We all have gay films that have impacted our lives, right? "Making Love" might seem a little cheesy today but when I saw it as a high school student, it was major for me to see a man (Michael Ontkean) decide to not live a lie. He leaves his wife (Kate Jackson) and ends up happily ever after with a guy. I hadn't even thought this possible. I honestly believed that you just had to marry a woman and just live that lie.
Thankfully, I learned otherwise! It's tragic that Heath Ledger's character in "Brokeback Mountain" couldn't believe that. I think that magnificant film had such a strong message about love and succeeded in showing audiences of any orientation that love, is love.
Anyway, I take this trip down memory lane as a way of letting you know about the Outfest survey that began Dec. 15 and runs through Feb. 15. Visitors fo Outfest.com are invited to nameup to five LGBT films that have changed their lives and why. Outfest will announce the top 25 films and showcase selections at Outfest 2007 and year-round at the Outfest Wednesdays Screening Series.
They have compiled a list of 120 feature films. If you’d like to name films that are not on this list there is space at the bottom of the survey. The top 25 films will be selected based on ratings and on the stories that people tell.
Among the titles on the list: Adventures of Felix, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the desert, Another Country, Beautiful Thing, Before Night Falls, Better Than Chocolate , The Birdcage, Boys Don’t Cry, The Boys in the Band, Brokeback Mountain, But I'm a Cheerleader, Capote, Chasing Amy , Chuck & Buck, Come Undone, D.E.B.S.
Desert Hearts, Edge of Seventeen, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Far From Heaven, Get Real (pictured above), Go Fish, Gods and Monsters, Happy Together, Hedwig and the angry inch, High Art,. The Hours, In & Out, The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love, Jeffrey, Kissing Jessica Stein, La Cage aux Folles, Latter Days, The Living End, Longtime Companion, Love and Death on Long Island, Love! Valour! Compassion!, Making Love, Maurice, My Beautiful Laundrette, My Own Private Idaho, Nico and Dani, The Opposite of Sex, Parting Glances, Personal Best, Philadelphia, Prick Up Your Ears, Querelle, Threesome, The Times of Harvey Milk, Torch Song Trilogy, Totally F***ed Up, Urbania, Velvet Goldmine, The Wedding Banquet, Yossi and Jagger.
To vote, click onto Outfest.com
Greg Hernandez has covered the entertainment industry for the Daily
News since 2001. He's considered a bit odd by some for his obsession
with box office numbers, has been known to camp out near the kitchen
at premieres for first crack at the hors d'oeurves, and Greg's never
seen a red carpet he didn't want to stroll down.
Comments
Here is how I responded to Outfest's survey for a film that really shaped me as filmmaker:
My Beautiful Laundrette really stands. It said we can have a great movie that happened to have gay lead characters. In a way, it didn't matter that they were gay, and yet it did matter because it made me feel good to know we could create this level of beauty. Simple, unaffected, and playing by no one else's rules.
I have no idea if that makes any sense. This is mostly late night thinking, but that movie was one of the reasons that I recently decided to become a filmmaker.
I've enjoyed a lot of other movies above, and had a hard time making my choices, but this movie did something that has rarely been repeated- tell a story that has three dimensional gay lead characters who feel like you or me going through things that doesn't revolve around them being gay.
It was like the gay characters in V for Vendetta. In that movie, we were heros who cared about stopping tyranny, and we were the inspiration for the lead characters eventual desire to be free. We represented freedom, and the basic desire of humans to love even under tyranny. How beatiful and universal is that? The same feelings of unversality- that we are all in this muck together- permeate throughout My Beautiful Laundrette.
Posted by: craig | December 27, 2006 10:44 PM