Television

SUNDANCE CHANNEL, compiled by Blase DiStefano

GAY PRIDE ON SUNDANCE

During Gay Pride Month, Sundance Channel goes gay every day

Once again, Sundance Channel will be gay every day for its annual Gay Pride celebration of GLBT cinema. This year’s FilmFest features two weekly destination blocks: “Gay Love Under Fire,” airing as four Saturday-night double features, and “Are You Musical?” a Friday-night fantasia of camp pleasures.

Out Loud: Gay Love Under Fire

This special Out Loud collection showcases stories about GLBT people facing a hostile and sometimes life-threatening cultural climate. Included are five critically acclaimed films in their U.S. television premieres:

• Trembling Before G-D is built around intimately-told personal stories of Hasidic and Orthodox Jews who are gay and lesbian. Sandi Simcha DuBowski’s moving film portrays a group of people who face a profound dilemma—how to reconcile their passionate love of the Divine and Judaism with the drastic biblical prohibitions that forbid homosexuality. The film recently received the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Documentary. Airs June 7 (9 p.m.), 11th (10 a.m. & 6:30 p.m.), 23rd (11 a.m. & 9:15 p.m.), and 29th (12:30 p.m. & 8 p.m.).

• Lan Yu is Stanley Kwan’s chronicle of gay love lost and found in Tiananmen Square–era China. The film was shot illegally and banned in China. Lan Yu screened at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival. Airs June 14 (9 p.m.), 18th (10 p.m.), 23rd (12:30 a.m.), and 29th (11:30 p.m.).

• Princesa is Henrique Goldman’s Cinderella story set against the real-life backdrop of Milan’s seedy red-light district. Fernanda is a 19-year-old transvestite who dreams of becoming a woman and meeting a prince. Princesa screened at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival. Airs one night only, Saturday, June 28, 9 p.m.

• Fire is about middle-class Indian sisters-in-law who find love with each other under their husbands’ noses. Deepa Mehta’s superb film was an international hit and a scandal upon its Indian release. Airs June 21 (9 p.m.), 25th (10 p.m.), and 29th (1 a.m.).

• Herr Schmidt and Herr Friedrich is Ulrike Franke and Michael Loeken’s documentary about two men who fall in love, commit themselves to each other, and have a longstanding, loving relationship. It is also the story of the divided Germany where, when they first met and fell in love, they were separated by the Berlin Wall—Kurt Schmidt lived in the West, Wilfried Friedrich lived in the East. Airs June 23 (8 p.m.) and 28th (7:45 p.m.).

Other films included in Gay Love Under Fire are Aimée and Jaguar, The Brandon Teena Story, and East Palace, West Palace.

More TV Premieres on Sundance

• Big Eden is a feature film by Thomas Bezucha. Gay architect (Arye Gross) returns to his Montana hometown to start anew and falls in love. Airs June 6 (8 p.m.), 12th (4 p.m.), 13th (4:35 a.m.), 17th (10:30 a.m. & 6 p.m.), 25th (5:30 a.m. & 4 p.m.), 28th (noon), and 29th (4:30 a.m.).

• É Minha Cara (That’s My Face) is a thoughtful personal documentary tracing gay filmmaker Thomas Allen Harris’s lifelong attempts to reconcile his African-American and African heritages, along the way exploring the very personal intersection of politics and spirituality. Airs June 9 (8 p.m.), 14th (9 a.m.), 17th (12:30 p.m.), and 30th (11:30 a.m.).

• The Devil in the Holy Water is a documentary by Joe Balass. Two major events collide in Rome: when Roman Catholics converge for the Jubilee, the most important church pilgrimage in modern times, thousands of gays and lesbians from around the world gather for the first international World Pride Celebration. Airs June 16 (8 p.m.), 24th (11:05 a.m.), and 28th (2 p.m.).

• American Fabulous is a documentary by Reno Dakota. Part Spaulding Gray–type monologue, part cinéma vérité Americana, Jeffrey Strouth takes an autobiographical look at his life from the back seat of a car—his bottomless well of lurid, often hilarious experiences constitute a kind of gay Jack Kerouac odyssey. It was originally released posthumously after his death of AIDS in 1992. Airs one night only, Monday, June 30, 8 p.m.

Out Loud: Are You Musical?

Give your inner diva a treat as Sundance Channel presents four films that tickle your musical fancy. The series kicks off with Edouard Molinaro’s La Cage aux Folles, the irresistible 1977 French farce about a drag club impresario and his lover, who put on some kind of performance when the impresario’s son gets engaged. Director Ken Russell brings his unique brand of cinematic excess to his biopic of Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky, The Music Lovers, starring Richard Chamberlain and Glenda Jackson. The “let’s put on a show” spirit meets Age of Aquarius irreverence in The Cockettes, Bill Weber and David Weissman’s award-winning 2002 documentary about the legendary San Francisco hippie drag troupe that flourished in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Closing out the series is Elliot Nugent’s 1944 musical comedy Up in Arms (airs one night only, Friday, June 27, 10 p.m.), starring Danny Kaye as a nervous hypochondriac who becomes a man in uniform when he is drafted into the Army. Viewed today, this entertaining fluff offers up a mother lode for subtext prospectors; watch for the bus scene in which Kaye and Dana Andrews’s sweet talk to their girlfriends mistakenly arouses the ire of some homophobic fellow passengers.

Other highlights of Out Loud 2003 include a rare screening of the 1970 cult classic The Christine Jorgensen Story, a biopic of the world’s first transsexual; The Sum of Us, starring Russell Crowe as a gay man living with his doting father; and Wilde, starring Stephen Fry as the brilliant Irish writer and Jude Law as his bratty inamorata, Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas.

Need more reasons to tune in to Sundance Channel’s annual Gay Pride celebration of GLBT films? How about these:

The Adventures of Sebastian Cole

Basquiat

Bedrooms and Hallways

Billy’s Hollywood Screen Kiss

Burnt Money

By Hook or by Crook

Chutney Popcorn

Criminal Lovers

Dear Jesse

The Delta

Desert Hearts

The Fluffer

Get Real

Gods and Monsters

The Hanging Garden

Hit and Runway

L.I.E.

Our Lady of the Assassins

Paul Monette: The Brink of Summer’s End

Priest

See the Sea

Silverlake Life: The View from Here

Water Drops on Burning Rocks

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