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(1) Thanks to G.B. Jones' fab newsletter BITCH NATION (P.O. Box 55, Stn. E, Toronto, ON, M6H 4E1), I recently learned of and acquired a video by Anonymous Boy (an American cartoonist who does erotic queer punk drawings).
Basically, it's an animated love story (the characters are moved against drawn backgrounds, giving it a pleasing DIY effect) about some queer punks who meet at a show, leading to erotic adventures. The star is Green Eugene (all his hair is green), who takes one character home after a series of squabbles and slam dances.
Set to a variety of music (including 'Tell the Boys' by Sandie Shaw), the encounter is tender and sexy.
In Canada, you can get the video for $25 from Ms. Jones at the above address. In the U.S., you can reach Anonymous Boy (aka Tony Arena) at 321 W. 16th Street, Apt. 2W, NYC, NY, 10011 USA - but I don't know the price there.
GB Jones rules (so to speak - there should be no rulers except the working class - but it's a figure of speech, so lighten up...). For those who do not know her, she is a member of Toronto queergrrrl band Fifth Column, a contributor to 'zines JDs and Double Bill and a film-maker/artist/actress.
This is just one of her works (but the only one I've seen). When shown at a queer film festival, some complained that it was homophobic because it showed girls fighting and beating up a gay man (who gets that treatment for not helping when it is needed).
The plot is simple. It's about rival grrl gangs and their various conflicts. There are songs, boy-boy and girl-girl sex scenes and punk divas, such as Leslie from Tribe 8 and Donna Dresch.
Yes, it's violent - but so's the world!
For film students, it would be a nightmare, since the audio is dubbed on afterwards without lip-synching and the picture quality is not conventional - but it's a document of a scene and a mind, so relax, folks, and take it for what it's worth - a lot.
I'd rather watch this than "Jeffery" any day - it rocks!
(1) ZERO PATIENCE - Great songs. Hard-edged AIDS politics. An
absurd plot. Fun, fun, fun.
(2) BEING AT HOME WITH CLAUDE - Queer hustler with dangerous romantic ideas kills a trick he has fallen in love with, thanks to Romantic concepts about how love can only go downhill which he has picked up somewhere. It doesn't sound it, but it's very romantic and touching.
(3) LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN - Working-class characters; whores; drag queens; union politics; explosions; revelations of the ugly, sordid nature of family life. A three-hanky picture with its soul in the right place...
(4) FEMALE TROUBLE - A John Waters/Divine classic. Essential for Aunt Ida's rant on how 'queers are just better'.
(5) POISON - Todd Haynes' multi-part work, featuring a prison 'love story' based on Jean Genet's "Miracle of the Rose".
(6) THE LIVING END - Murderous, HIV+ fags. What's not to adore?
(7) EDWARD II - Derek Jarman's work, loosely based on the life of a queer King of England. Absurd, surreal, anachronistic and beautiful.
(8) ORLANDO - Based on Virginia Woolf's novel. A cross-gender, cross-time tale. Worth it for Quentin Crisp as Elizabeth I and Jimmy Somerville as a choirboy/angel.
(9) A TASTE OF HONEY - For 1960 England, a remarkable story about alienation which, while it focuses on a girl who is pregnant by a black sailor and unmarried, also features a queer male who is sympathetic and fairly strong. Based on the play by Shelagh Delaney. (In order to get released in North America, a short film on the causes and cure of homosexuality had to be shown by theatres beforehand.)
(10) THE NAKED CIVIL SERVANT - Based on the autobiography of Quentin Crisp, a man who was openly queer and effeminate at a time that both could mean being beaten to death or imprisoned. John Hurt is amazing as the persistent, single-minded, sweet pioneer.
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