Fargo Theatre: LGBT Film Festival

By Joshua A. Boschee
Staff Writer

Raymond Rea
Contributing Writer

A little over a month ago, a handful of Fargo-Moorhead residents sat in a dark classroom in Minnesota State University Moorhead’s Center for The Arts, reviewing submissions for the 2nd Annual Fargo-Moorhead Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Film Festival. LGBT and allied film makers from around the world submitted a diverse collection of films that range from three minutes in length to nearly an hour and a half. Animation, documentaries, comedy shorts and full-length dramas were provided for the selection committee to review and select. After two days of laughter, tears, good food and purposeful discussion, the committee selected 19 films to be screened at the Fargo Theatre on June 11 and 12.

Unique to Fargo

The films and videos that are scheduled to screen in the Fargo-Moorhead LGBT Film Festival are not only about LGBT stories and characters. They are also by LGBT film and video makers. Beginning in the late 1970s, LGBT Film Festivals began to emerge nationwide as venues for innovative work that might have a tough time finding screening options due to content. The festival circuit has boomed since then, becoming not only a nationwide arena for LGBT work but also a stepping-stone into the growing number of LGBT content-based distribution companies. The films screened on the LGBT festival circuit were initially made precisely because of the dearth of images and stories presented by the film industry on LGBT identity. Now, in 2010, the festival circuit, like any festival circuit, works hand in hand with the industry on many levels.

It is important to note that none of these shorts are available in area video stores or through online video rental services. All are authored by LGBT film and video makers. They come from as far away as South Korea and Sweden and as close as Chicago and Minneapolis. With last year’s festival being a first for Fargo-Moorhead, organizers depended mostly on films from one distribution company that focused on LGBT films. This year, submissions were requested through various networks, with most of the selected films being submitted by independent filmmakers looking to be picked up by major distributors, or hobby filmmakers. Although many of these filmmakers are submitting their work to various film festivals, Fargo is one of a handful of locations where their work is viewed by the general public. This is truly an opportunity for F-M LGBT Film Festival attendees to see innovative and creative work.

While these films were created and tell stories from throughout the world, many of the themes and individual stories told parallel the experiences of LGBT people in Fargo-Moorhead and throughout the upper Great Plains. Finding our stories and images on the screen strengthens the LGBT community, as a community that has historically been censored and made invisible. At $3 a person for each of the three screenings, it would be regrettable for F-M area residents and visitors to miss this unique opportunity right in our own backyard.

Not Your Gay Uncle’s Film Festival

Following the success of last year’s LGBT Film Festival, it is important to note that although the content and filmmakers may identify as LGBT, the non-LGBT public is strongly encouraged to attend. Viewing these films through the eyes of LGBT filmmakers provides a different viewpoint on how the story is told. This is a great opportunity for people to learn more about the lived experiences of LGBT people not only in the United States, but also in various cultures and countries.

Whether it is the internal struggle one deals with in coming out to friends and family, the role that faith and spirituality play in healing, the expression of self, or missed opportunity, these stories are authentic and raw in such a way that both men, women, straight, gay, transgender and bisexual audiences will relate to the story in each of these films.

Often, in feature-length films that have same-sex storylines, we find that the filmmaker is simply telling a story we have seen in mainstream cinema, with a boy meets boy or girl meets girl twist. While there are many similarities between same-sex and opposite-sex relationships, individuals exploring same-sex relationships have very unique struggles. This uniqueness will allow audience members to perhaps challenge their assumptions about lesbian and gay relationships and perhaps even straight relationships. The films represent inter-racial relationships, the butch-femme dichotomy within the lesbian community and finding love at any age.

The Screening Committee of the LGBT Film Festival was conscientious in ensuring that transgender and bisexual stories and experiences were reflected in the selected films. Trans and bi people are often invisible in conversations about LGBT experiences. This Film Festival surely won’t disappoint in its ability to include the LGBT community and have audience members walking away with a better understanding of love, desire, self-determination, identity and expression.

A Brief History of LGBT Film

The history of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender representation in film could be said to be a history of censorship and invisibility. The Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) was established in 1922. The MPPDA became known as the Hays Office, after its administrator, a prominent lawyer named Will Hays. (The “Production Office” also later became known by names of other administrators i.e. the Breen Office, the Johnston Office).

From 1930 (enforced starting in 1936) the Hays Code prohibited images of homosexuality as “against nature.” (“The Code” also argued that any portrayal of crime or bad behavior was socially dangerous since every one, not only the elite, had access to the movies, but that’s a different article.) These restrictions didn’t, of course, prevent filmmakers of the time from portraying LGBT characters, but those stories and images had to be coded in such a way that they would pass through the Hays Board into distribution. Effectively, what this meant for LGBT audiences of the time were scenes loaded with insider references that only those “in the family” would get.

The Hays Code was carried forward through different administrations and Production Offices with the stipulation on images of homosexuality intact right up until 1960, when William Wyler (fresh from winning Best Director for Ben Hur) chose to remake his good friend Lillian Hellman’s script, “The Children Hour.” Wyler had first adapted Hellman’s stage script into 1936’s These Three, but altered the love triangle away from the suggestion of lesbianism in Hellman’s writing. Now, as a director who could choose any script, he chose to put the lesbian story back in. The Production Board balked, but Wyler’s power and position in the industry allowed him the freedom to produce the film.

“The Children’s Hour” was released in 1961. In 1962, the code was revised to accept treatments of homosexuality that used “care, discretion, and restraint.” For many years after, homosexual characters began to be seen, but “care, discretion, and restraint” meant that they had to be portrayed negatively, usually either by being punished or by dying.

It is interesting that the Stonewall Riots (1969) and the transformation of the Production Code into the MPPDA’s current rating system (1968 with revisions in 1970) are so chronologically linked. Images of Gay life burst onto the screen in this era, not all overwhelmingly positive, but many (Mart Crowley’s “Boys in the Band” as an example) penned by Gay writers.

There are other important movements in Queer Cinema such as New Queer Cinema in the 1990s and the rise of a Transgender Cinema. And it is important to address why authorship is important in LGBT film and how authorship has related to the LGBT Film Festival circuit.

[ Editor’s Note: Raymond Rea taught LGBT Film History for six years at San Francisco State University and City College San Francisco. He is Assistant Professor in the Film Studies Department at MSUM and is the curator of the Fargo-Moorhead LGBT Film Festival.]

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If You Go:

What: F-M LGBT Film Festival
Where: Fargo Theatre
When: Fri, June 11, 8pm; Sat, June 12, 3 & 8pm
Info: 701.239.8385