The Revelation International Film Festival started as an underground event in the basement of the Greenwich Jazz Club in Perth in 1997. Now more than 500 independent films are submitted for selection from local and international filmmakers; cutting-edge films that challenge and surprise. Running from 14-24 July at the Astor Cinema, this year’s festival has 113 films from 16 countries, with two world premieres and 24 Australian premieres to challenge audiences.
The opening night party looks huge and is just one of 12 special events. As well as 20 feature films and 19 documentaries, Revelation will be screening an animation showcase, short films, a super-8 mini film festival, a multi-projector treat, drive-in nightmares and a free secret screening for RevRevelations members. As the festival showcases no budget and low budget films, the conference side of the festival (RevCon) has sessions on guerrilla filmmaking, scriptwriting and adaptation, plunderphonics and the state of independent film.
Bear Nation
Directed by Malcolm Ingram
The camera is rolling and a woman asks if the gathering outside the hotel is a truckers’ convention. Then a guy is spotted wearing a t-shirt which says ‘sorry boys, I only date BEARS’. Filmed in America and London, this documentary looks at the phenomenon of the subculture within the gay community known as Bears. Sometimes classified as being masculine gay men who often have beards and body hair.
Malcolm Ingram infiltrates the Bear scene and records Bear Runs and Bear Pride celebrations. He becomes quite friendly with some of the Bears and manages to get some entertaining as well as intimate footage. He interviews several Bears about having to come out twice – once as being gay and then coming out as a Bear. He finds that being a Bear is as much a state of mind as being furry and cuddly and there are still prejudices that they have to overcome. Most of all, the film celebrates the support, friendship and love that the group, which is a world-wide phenomenon, provides for many men.
The Ballad of Genesis
and Lady Jaye
Directed by Marie Losier
Performance artist Genesis P-Orridge has been a key figure of the underground music scene for over thirty years. Moving from the UK to America in the late 1980s, Genesis met and married Lady Jaye (nee Jacqueline Breyer). Both of them have outrageous personalities and both were keen to challenge gender and sexual boundaries. Over a period of time, they challenged traditional notions of gender by transforming their bodies through cosmetic surgery. They called their pandrogyny project ‘artistic, cultural and philosophical ‘mistress’-work’.
French filmmaker Marie Losier was initially invited to go on tour with their band Psychic TV and ended up filming the pair for the next seven years. She had unprecedented access to the lives of Genesis and Lady Jaye as they transformed their bodies through their collaborative artistic experiment. Losier does the camera, the sound and the editing for this fascinating documentary, while Genesis narrates the love story that ended up creating a third gender.
William S Burroughs:
A Man Within
Directed by Yony Leyser
William Burroughs (1914-1997) really became famous when his novel, The Naked Lunch, was one of the last books to be banned by the US government just over fifty years ago. There have been quite a lot of documentaries about William Burroughs, but none have had the personal insights that 25 year old independent filmmaker Yony Leyser has managed. He has unearthed previously unseen archival footage of the legendary Beat Generation author, including home movies of his conversations with Andy Warhol and Allen Ginsberg. Famous for being one of the first to include references to queer and drug cultures in his frank writings during the 1950s, he says that he wouldn’t have become a writer if he hadn’t accidentally shot his wife in a drunken prank in Mexico.
Burroughs’ influence has been far-reaching and Leyser interviews Burroughs’ closest friends, lovers and collaborators including Patti Smith, Gus Van Sant, John Waters, David Cronenberg, Iggy Pop, Genesis P-Orridge and Laurie Anderson.
www.revelationfilmfestival.org
Lezly Herbert
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