Sunday, January 20

Bend It

Director: Jules Nurrish

(United Kingdom, 2007, 3 min., color, Sony HD Cam)

Toying with the visual signifiers of gender, two androgynous individuals with chests bound by black tape dance on gallery podiums, in director Jules Nurrish's homage to the living sculptures of cheeky art-world icons Gilbert and George.

Shown as part of Shorts Program I

Holiday Village Cinema III, Park City

Sunshine Cleaning

Director: Christine Jeffs

Screenwriter: Megan Holley

Cast: Emily Blunt, Amy Adams, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Steve Zahn, Alan Arkin

(USA, 2007, 102 min., color, Sony HD Cam)

In an effort to turn their lives around, two sisters start a crime scene cleaning business and quickly learn that the job requires more than just elbow grease. Things get even more complicated when sister Norah becomes sexually obsessed with a blood bank technician named Lynn.

Eccles Theatre, Park City

Edward II

Director: Derek Jarman

Screenwriters: Stephen McBride, Ken Butler, Derek Jarman

Cast: Steven Waddington, Tilda Swinton, Andrew Tiernan

(UK, 1991, 90 min., color, 16mm)

Late director Derek Jarman's take on Christopher Marlowe's classic play tells the tragic story of King Edward II whose readiness to sacrifice his power and standing to be with his lover Gaveston would ultimately prove the couple's undoing. This highly stylized cinematic adaptation brings the homoerotic subtext of the original source material visibly to the forefront.

Holiday Village Cinema II, Park City

Phoebe In Wonderland

Director/Screenwriter: Daniel Barnz

Cast: Felicity Huffman, Patricia Clarkson, Elle Fanning

(USA, 2007, 96 min., color, 35mm)

The different psychological realities of children and adults are explored in writer/director Daniel Barnzs' tale of a frustrated academic struggling to raise her daughter, Phoebe, a gifted child prone to escapist fantasies, who wants to take part in a school production of Alice in Wonderland.

Racquet Club, Park City

Xanadu

Director: Robert Boyd

(USA, 2007, Installation)

As part of the free exhibitions at the New Frontier space on Main Street, Robert Boyd's installation Xanadu will be shown every day in a single channel presentation. In rapid fire, music style montages, Boyd throws a disco track over images of doomsday cults, political figures, and fundamentalist rage against feminism and gay rights.

Screening with The Linguists

New Frontier, Park City

Otto; Or, Up With Dead People

Director/Screenwriter: Bruce LaBruce

Cast: Jey Crisfar, Katharina Klewinghaus, Marcel Schlutt, Christophe Chemin

(Germany/Canada, 2007, 95 min., color & b/w, 35 mm)

Director Bruce LaBruce has never been one for modesty or self-censorship, and his latest tale following a gay zombie is no exception. Poor Otto is a rather confused zombie. He struggles to figure out who he is and what he was before, while an aspiring filmmaker decides he's the perfect star for her cinematic revolt against our consumerist society.

Egyptian Theatre, Park City

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (Dramatic Competition)

Director/Screenwriter: Rawson Marshall Thurber

Cast: Jon Foster, Peter Sarsgaard, Sienna Miller, Mena Suvari, Nick Nolte

(USA, 2007, 95 min., color, 35 mm)

This adaptation of Michael Chabon's celebrated novel follows aimless mobster's son Art Bechstein in the summer that he meets Jane and Cleveland, a couple with whom he soon finds himself in a bisexual love triangle and increasingly risky situations.

Racquet Club, Park City

Lloyd Neck

Director: Benedict Campbell

(USA, 2007, 16 min., color, Sony HD Cam)

A young girl with a crush on her brother's best friend notices that Jesse's feelings for her brother may be more than platonic. In one of the last days of summer, the three spend the day taking pictures in a Long Island state park before college inevitably separates the boys.

Shown as part of Shorts Program V

Prospector Square Theatre, Park City

Sunlit Shadows

Director: Benjamin M. Piety

(USA, 2007, 14 min., color, Sony HD Cam)

A "visual mix-tape" that combines music with beautifully lit cinematography to evoke the conflicting emotions in letting go of a lost love.

Shown as part of Shorts Program V

Prospector Square Theatre, Park City

An American Soldier

Director/Screenwriter: Edet Belzberg

Cast: Teresa Palmer, Joel Mackenzie, Frank Sweet

(USA, 2007, 86 min., color, Sony HD Cam)

Sergeant First Class Clay Usie is one of the most successful army recruiters in the country; he also acts as a mentor to high-school students training to become soldiers, many of whom will eventually be deployed to Iraq. One of the soldiers he recruits, and whom this film follows closely over a period of nine months, is revealed to be a lesbian.

Broadway Centre Cinemas, Park City

Pretty Bird (Dramatic Competition)

Director/Screenwriter: Paul Schneider

Cast: Billy Crudup, Paul Giamatti, Kristen Wiig, Denis O'Hare

(USA, 2008, 120 min., color, 35mm)

The spirit of invention is alive and well in Curtis Prentiss, a driven man intent on creating a rocket-powered belt, who finds unexpected success when he teams with an out of work aerospace engineer and a friend with the funds to underwrite the project. At least one of the film's characters will come out of the closet by the film's end as well.

Racquet Club, Park City

Savage Grace

Director: Tom Kalin

Screenwriter: Howard A. Rodman

Cast: Julianne Moore, Eddie Redmayne, Stephen Dillane

(USA, 2007, 96 min., color, 35 mm)

Based on true events, this film tells the story of unabashed social climber Barbara Daly, who, after watching her marriage to a wealthy man crumble, later attempts to "cure" her son's homosexuality with tragic results. Savage Grace marks director Tom Kalin's return to Sundance 16 years after his first feature, Swoon, helped define "New Queer Cinema."

Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, Park City

Pariah

Director: Dee Rees

(USA, 2007, 27 min., color, Sony HD Cam)

A lesbian teen living in the Bronx must juggle multiple identities to maintain peace between her personal and familial lives, but as the pressures of her double life mount, the wall between her personas begins to crumble.

Shown as part of Shorts Program IV

Broadway Centre Cinemas V, Park City

Bigger, Stronger, Faster

Director: Christopher Bell

Screenwriters: Christopher Bell, Alexander Buono, Tamsin Rawady

(USA, 2007, 105 min., color, Sony HD Cam)

After his two brothers found themselves caught up in the dangerous subculture of performance-enhancing drugs and steroids, director Christopher Bell decided to turn his camera on the social pressures that lead some to take drastic steps in pursuit of physical perfection. Among those interviewed is an HIV-positive man and proponent of steroid therapy.

Broadway Centre Cinemas VI, Park City

Diva

Director: Josephine Mackerras

(France, 8 min.)

Having been rejected by the town he grew up in, a drag queen moves to Paris in the hopes of living a better life, only to find new difficulties.

Screening with Shorts Block 4

Treasure Mountain Inn, Park City

Heiko

Director: David Bonneville

(Portugal, 13 min.)

A fetishistic relationship between a young man named Heiko and his seventy-year-old lover is suddenly taken to extremes in a sci-fi twist.

Screening Times

Screening with Shorts Block 4

Treasure Mountain Inn, Park City

I Think We're Alone Now

Director/Screenwriter: Sean Donnelly

(USA, 2008, 70 min., color)

Called stalkers by the media, the two individuals profiled in this film would probably describe their shared obsession with 80's pop star Tiffany in far more benign terms. One of the film's subjects, Denver native Kelly McCormick, is intersex.

Treasure Mountain Inn, Park City

Woman in Burka

Director: Jonathan Lisecki

(USA, 20 min.)

An actress named Sarita hopes to land a role as the ghost of an Iraqi rape victim, but no one seems to know anything about the film. Director Lisecki also shows up as Sarita's "uber-gay" agent.

Screening with Shorts Block 6

Treasure Mountain Inn, Park City

24 Frames Per Day

Director: Sonali Gulati

(USA, 2007, 7 min.)

Director Sonali Gulati creates an intriguing filmic investigation of identity by combining audio pulled from news stories and Gulati's awkward interrogation by a cab-driver, with a time-lapse montage built with 9 month's worth of daily photographs of her home's doorway.

Screening with Shorts Block 6

Treasure Mountain Inn, Park City

Mariquita Con Perro (Fag With Dog) (Screening with Shorts Block 3)

Director: Vicente Villanueva

(Spain, 15 min.)

A narrative short following an animated Spanish talk show host named Pablo, and the little dog that accompanies him.

Treasure Mountain Inn, Park City

Sync or Swim

Director/Screenwriter: Cheryl Furjanic

(USA, 2008, 100 min., color)

Synchronized swimming doesn't spring to many people's minds when they think of the toughest Olympic competitions, but this documentary seeks to show just how much grueling training actually goes on behind the scenes.

Treasure Mountain Inn, Park City