The tenth Revelation Film Festival runs from 12-22 July. The feast includes 29 features, 27 documentaries, and 3 international short film showcases that will bring 20 shorts from 12 countries. There’s even a line-up of 100% made in WA short films. A specially curated Indigenous Showcase will feature West Australian communities, and Meet the Filmmaker screenings will bring you up close and personal with filmmakers. There’s also a kids program and a retrospective on anime director Osamu Tezuka. With opening and closing parties, late night screenings, art exhibitions and a DIY filmmaking book launch, it’s time to get out your diaries, log on to www.revelationfilmfest.org and secure a Gold or Mini Pass.
A highlight of the festival is Red Without Blue, a documentary about identical twin boys who took diverging paths as adults. When they were young Mark was dressed in red and Alex in blue so people could tell them apart. The family photos show two happy blond-haired boys, but as teenagers their unspoken difficulties led them to drug abuse and an unsuccessful suicide attempt, following which they were separated. Thus, the two grew to sexual maturity apart from each other, and the twins speak honestly about the difficulties of finding out their sexualities didn’t fit with their family’s Christian Science values. One of the twins discovers that his body didn’t match his gender. Both twins reinvent their themselves and change their names – to Oliver and Claire.
Also on the must-see list is Darling, a documentary about satirist and gay activist Pieter-Dirk Uys who is working to fight the spread of AIDS in Africa. Film maker Julian Shaw was just 15 when he met the cross-dressing activist in Australia, and one year later, at age 16, Shaw approached Pieter to make the documentary. Over the next four years, Shaw travelled to South Africa several times to capture Pieter’s story. Pieter actively opposed apartheid with his political satire, and he is convinced that now AIDS will succeed where apartheid didn’t in destroying his country. In South Africa today more people die in their twenties than in their seventies. Pieter actually lives in the titular town of Darling, which is also the place of abode for the South African Minister for Health who believes that garlic and olive oil is as good as any HIV medication. Pieter speaks to school children about the topic that nobody else will broach, and he confronts the young people’s fears with humour in his AIDS awareness entertainment.
Super Amigos is another great documentary about real life super heroes – a group of men walking around the streets of Mexico City wearing wrestling costumes and masks. They might not look as fit as comic book heroes or their Hollywood recreations, but they are in hot pursuit of social justice. The exception is taut and trim Super Gay who in his pink costume, has turned to fighting homophobia after his partner was bashed to death. Director Arturo Perez Torres follows around this motley group of modern-day crime fighters as they take on mean landlords, bullfighting, poverty, discrimination and environmental issues. Yes, these issues are far too large for a few overweight do-gooders to overthrow, but you will be inspired and somewhat shamed by their tenacity.
The documentary Jesus Camp is a modern day horror story that records how some evangelical Christians are taking over the minds of children. Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady (who made Boys of Baraka) follow Levi, Rachel and Tory as they participate in the ‘Kids on Fire’ summer camp where children as young as 6 years old are taught how to be soldiers in God’s army. The next generation is in training to ‘take back America for Christ,’ as they mix fun activities such as water balloon tossing with anti-abortion and homophobic indoctrination.
In Viva, independent filmmaker Anna Biller takes us back to 1972 as a couple of suburban housewives explore the Playboy-era sexual revolution. Biller must have wondered what gave women the idea that acting like porn stars was sexually liberating. Her vintage B-grade sexploitation film highlights the promises that women were offered and the antics they allowed themselves to be involved with. Her film is meant to be a spoof, but I couldn’t stop wondering if the times were really as bad as she depicts.
Arts devotees will want to catch up with the documentary Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis about Jack Smith, a sixties performance artist who raged against the rest of the world and influenced Warhol and Fellini with his experimental underground filmmaking. Opinion on the worth of his avant-garde films was divided, and when he died of an AIDS related illness, he was in poverty and relatively unknown. Jack trod that fine line between genius and lunacy. He was dedicated to creating art from the beauty he saw in life’s trash, and although he fought the institutionalisation of art, he influenced volumes of contemporary artists whose work now fills the world’s most renowned art institutions.
