MQFF Day Nine

Saturday 11th March

Today got off to a great start with a 12pm screening of the US doco Gay Republicans, a fascinating and illuminating exploration of the world of gay and lesbian conservatives. You can watch the trailer here and learn more about the film here - plus watch a couple of key scenes.

The film focuses on the gay Republican group Log Cabin, during the lead-up to the 2004 US Presidential Election, when they were forced to chose whether or not to endorse George W Bush as candidate due to his divisive comments over gay marriage. As one particularly reactionary subject of the film says, "Are we Republicans who happen to be gay, or gays who happen to be Republican?"

It documents a time when this question became the central issue for Log Cabin members, with dramatic - often hillarious - results. It's so nice to laugh at, rather than with people, sometimes... Instead of overtly manipulating the footage that he took, director Wash Westmoreland allows the subjects to speak for themselves - sometimes to hang themselves, at other times to present themselves as sane and rational, albeit conservative human beings. The only thing that could have made this film better was a forum afterwards with gay and lesbian members of the Australian Liberal Party, so that we could see if they are as concerned about their party's drift to the far right as the Log Cabin people are...

This doco screened with Positively Naked, another short doco about a Spencer Tunick photo-shoot for the 10th anniversaty of the HIV+ person's magazine Poz, which was personal, insightful and moving, and which for me brought back great memories of freezing my arse of as I took part in Tunick's installation for Melbourne Fringe back in 2001 (read about someone else's experience of the photo-shoot here).

Next up for the day, at 2pm, was the documentary Do I Look Fat?, which addressed the important issue of gay male body image, but seemed much more focussed on the issue of eating disorders amongst gay men - to my mind a related, but seperate topic. I would have preferred to see the film tackle issues around capitalism, consumuption and body image: 'Unhappy with the body you have? Buy a new one!' That's just me, though. I also felt the film tried to cram too much into the space of 58 minutes, which meant it tended to skate across some issues rather than explore them in depth. Given that the director, Travis Mathews, shaped the film in response to the issues his interview subjects raised, rather than around a set vision or set of goals, these flaws that I've raised are partially unavoidable...adressing them would have required a very different film-making process.

I skipped the 4pm session so that I could take a break, and returned to the festival for the 6pm screening of the Australian Shorts package, and the announcement of the City of Melbourne Emerging Film-Makers Award, a $2000 cash prize. The average standard of films this year was considerably poorer than in recent years, I felt, with several under-developed or simplistic films included in the program - I shudder to think how bad the films were that were excluded from competition! They were also almost universally dark - perhaps a response to the times we live in, when our community has been under attack from the religious right and the political left and right re the marriage act etc. The winner was The Bridge, a film dealing with issues around immigration and citizenship, a timely film in light of the Howard government's appalling record on asylum seekers, but also an underdeveloped film, I felt.

After the screening drinks with the film-makers and sponsors were held downstairs, and I socialised happily, before heading out for dinner - where I ended up teaching a group of German tourists in town for the ComGames how to eat their Vietnamese soup properly...

After a few drinks with friends in the festival club, the last session for the day was Cocktales, another collection of boys' short films, which were of a much better standard than either the OzShorts or Short and Burly.

Highlights included:

• The Mexican film David, directed by Roberto Fiesco, a simple, beautiful exploration of the wordless nature of desire.

• Adam Salky's US drama Dare, staring Michael Cassidy and Adam Fleming (below) a fresh take on the coming out film, which effectively communicates that fraught moment when you first put your desire on the line...

• Spaceboy, a simple, silly and sweet film by UK director Keith Dando, in which a horny teenager encounters a NASA astronaut whose spaceship has crashed in the woods...

• And finally, the magnificent, luminously visual Boy by New Zealand filmmaker Welby Ings, which employed an arresting mix of still footage, animation and live action to explore the poisonous atmosphere of a small country town.