All posts tagged queer

Submissions: Aust Shorts for Bangalore Queer Film Festival

Posted: January 6, 2012 · Comments: 0

Randy Freaked-Out Psychedelic Homosexy Koalas

There’s been an explosion of queer film in recent years, with festivals and web shows popping up all over the place. Gaymazing!
But as queer films have expanded the niche, have they lost their radical edge? I don’t think so, help me prove it.

I’m currently putting together another program of Australian queer short film, documentary and video art for the Bangalore Queer Film Festival 2012, like this one from 2009. Like last time, I’m open to anything about any aspect of queer life, sex or gender, that exists beyond the edges of mainstream gay culture – funny, wacky, serious, challenging, thought-provoking, moving or just plain weird.

I’ll be including some amazing films from a program I put together a few months ago entitled “Randy Freaked Out Psychedelic Homosexy Koalas” – from slutty musicals, to arty fantasies about hot babes in the lockup referencing the 90s explosion in gay indy filmmaking, to a gentle comedy about cute girls having an awkward per-zine style literary romance, to digital stories by sex workers.

Get in contact asap and let me know if you’ll be submitting your film, submissions close 20th January 2012.

Contact me here.

Please send a link to a digital version if possible, or you can post a DVD to:

Anna Helme, 191a Smith St, Fitzroy, VIC, 3065

Rabid Tripped-Out Psychedelic Lesbian Koalas

Posted: February 1, 2010 · Comments: 3

The session Kelli Jean and I have been curating for the Bangalore Queer Film Festival 2010 is finally finished! The festival in on this weekend, wish I could be there in India to see it… maybe next year! Here is a blurb and list of the great films which made it into the program. Hopefully we’ll be able to announce screenings for Melbourne and Sydney soon.

This program is a survey of recent radical gender/queer and trans video from Australia, curated by Anna Helme and Kelli Jean Drinkwater. “Galactic Sex Wars” rockets us into a futuristic sci-fi world where homos and heteros face off across time and space. “Jorey Corson”, “Ultimate! Dance! Video!” and “Drag Acts” address the performativity of gender, featuring queer and transgender bodies in motion, in masks and moustaches, camping it up in the streets of Berlin, tumbling across an empty sports field at night, inhabiting both the intimate and theatrical. “M.C. G.F.C.” addresses the global fashion crisis, evoking Ru Paul’s “we’re born naked, and the rest is drag”. “With Him of All People” takes a relationship drama into parallel universes of alternate gender. “Procession” is a slice of reality, albeit from a bent perspective, from the Camp Betty weekend of radical sex and politics in 2007, featuring a performative “protest”, aiming to dislocate commonplace demonstration cliches, and generally disrupt the suburbs of Melbourne.

  • Galactic Sex Wars (13:54) – Robbie McEwan
  • Jorey Corson (4:10) – Corey coda & Jackson monsternighttimepower
  • M.C. G.F.C. (4:21) – Anna Helme
  • Procession (6:51)- Anna Helme
  • Ultimate! Dance! Video! (3:31)- Sarakaka and Holly Fluxx
  • With Him of All People (6:24)- Kt spit and Cyd Nova
  • Flipbook (0:10)- Robbie McEwan & Anna Helme
  • Drag Acts (13:32)- Frances Barrett, Kate Blackmore & Anastasia Zaravinos
Still from "Galactic Sex Wars" - Robbie McEwan

"Galactic Sex Wars" - Robbie McEwan

Jorey Corson - Corey & Jackson

"Jorey Corson" - Corey & Jackson

Still from "Procession" by Anna Helme

"Procession" - Anna Helme

Still from "With Him of All People" by Kt Spit & Cyd Nova

"With Him of All People" - Kt Spit & Cyd Nova

"Ultimate! Dance! Video!" by Sara Kaka Harro & Holly Fluxx

"Ultimate! Dance! Video!" - Sara Kaka Harro & Holly Fluxx

Drag Acts - Frances Barrett, Kate Blackmore & Anastasia Zaravinos

"Drag Acts" - Frances Barrett, Kate Blackmore & Anastasia Zaravinos

"M.C. G.F.C." - Anna Helme

"M.C. G.F.C." - Anna Helme

Flipbook - Robbie McEwan & Anna Helme

"Flipbook" - Robbie McEwan & Anna Helme

Bangalore Queer Film Festival Callout for Australian Shorts

Posted: December 19, 2009 · Comments: 2
Rabid Tripped-Out Psychedelic Lesbian Koalas

Rabid Tripped-Out Psychedelic Lesbian Koalas

I’m currently putting together a package of queer films from Australia for the Bangalore Queer Film Festival in February 2010. My friend Namita (who I met through the Transmission Asia-Pacific network of online video activists) is involved, so it’s bound to be intelligent, provocative and fun fun fun (read some of her thoughts on Queering Bollywood here or perspectives on porn from the global south here). You can find last year’s program here along with more info on the organisers. It’s a D.I.Y. event, so there isn’t much in the way of screening fees, just the joy of reaching queer Indian audiences with your work!

In terms of the kind of films the festival is looking for – the crazier / more flipped out the better. Suits me! Camp, rude, trashy, experimental.. anything goes, and any kinda queer you like. So with this in mind, the working title for this program will be “Rabid Tripped Out Psychedelic Lesbian Koalas” ;) First prize goes to somebody who actually makes and submits that as a B-movie! Shorts in particular, but features considered also. Any digital format should be fine.

Fervid Flipbook

Posted: March 17, 2008 · Comments: Comments Off

Fervid Flipbook (10sec, 2008) pokes fun at the stereotypical imagery and predictable body-fascism found in a pile of old gay porn magazines of the 80s. Pornography is often somewhat lacking in humour itself, though there’s plenty of humour to be found.

A 10-second video produced/directed by me and Robbie MacEwan for a project run by the Tape Projects artist run initiative in 2008. Videos by various video artists are printed out as flipbooks to go with a 12″ record of locked grooves created by various sound artists.

Sound is by DJ Rainbow Ejaculation (Rank Sinatra / Victime de Mode / 7U? etc.) – “Carpet Cleaning Professionals”.

The Lock Groove Flip Book set was exhibited at the This Is Not Art festival in Sept/Oct 2008. Read a review by Dan MacKinlay of this amongst other shows, over at RealTime.

Lock Groove Flip Book Exhibition (Tape Projects) photo by Torunn Higgins
Lock Groove Flip Book Exhibition at TINA. Photo by Torunn Higgins

This screened recently as part of the excellent Esky video program in the Schmigloo at the Nextwave 2008 festival.

Cheap

Posted: August 27, 2007 · Comments: 0


CHEAP (6 mins, 1995) is an off-kilter short about consumerism and desire. Two teens on a sugar-rush and a hormone-high, ache for each other across aisles of groceries, in a strange supermarket which is a hotbed of queers and shoplifters. They wanna know what love is – is romance real, or just a fantasy of manufactured appetites?

I was an avid videomaker in high school, from age 13 when my folks got a Handycam. This isn’t my first production (that would be too embarrassing) but I made it when I was 17 (1995) for final year art class. It was selected for ArtExpress and screened at the Gallery of NSW before touring regional galleries. In some ways its still my favourite piece, made before I thunk too much ;)

“Sex Wars: The Musical” workshop at Camp Betty

Posted: June 12, 2007 · Comments: 0
Sex Wars the Musical Workshop at Camp Betty

Sex Wars the Musical Workshop at Camp Betty

Sex Wars: The Musical or… Which Side Story (work-in-progress performance/ rehearsal/ audition/ history lesson) In the 1980s and 90s, lesbian communities grappled with a whole heap of arguments around sex and power. What is feminist sex? Does pornography cause rape? And what about consensual violence, where did that fit in? As sex-positive lesbians faced off against radical feminists and anti-pornography activists things got vicious and new lines were drawn: which side are you on? The Lesbian Sex Mafia! Dastardly alliances with Christians! Daggy leather vests! Now what better material could you have for a musical? Drawing on writings from those involved in the sex wars in the US, England and Australia the writers want to bring to life those heady days and investigate the legacies of the time – in song!

At the “Sex Wars – The Musical” workshop at Cloud City in Melbourne for Camp Betty (a weekend of radical sex and politics) Tanya and Esther introduced key debates of the time and the major players. We were given an exclusive sneak preview of the musical – this is a clip of Sammy singing “Nancy” her composition and impromptu performance.

Vagina Dentata

Posted: June 12, 2007 · Comments: 0

Poster for Camp Betty

Poster for Camp Betty

Sister Mary Clancy Of The Overflow Does Vagina Dentata (6mins 37sec, 2007) is a performance by Gaylourdes, evoking the film-theory spectre of the Vagina Dentata, at the Camp Betty Cinema in Melbourne, 2007. This clip formed the first footage for a new collaborative film project exploring the themes of the double, the film within the film, the contamination of reality by dreams and the voyage in time…

Queer film is not just about re-interpreting straight storylines to accommodate ‘gay’ characters – it’s an excuse to play with more than gender and sexuality… super 8, chroma key, sci-fi storylines about aliens and androgynous bisexual nymphomaniac fashion models and remaking Soviet propaganda into a transgender revolution were all examples in the Camp Betty Cinema film programme of how queer film can play with you, and cinema too.

Camp Betty (a weekend of radical sex and politics in June 2007) crowds came along for queer shorts, a performance by Gaylourdes invoking the film theory spectre of vagina dentata in song and dance, 2 minutes of infamy for queer film makers and a screening of the cult 80s sci-fi movie Liquid Sky.

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