Inside Out Highlights (May 20-24)

Inside Out Highlights for Friday May 20:

No Gravity
Directed by Silvia Casalino
Germany 2011 video 60 Min

TBLB Cinema 2 – 5:30pm
Canadian Premiere
Various languages with English subtitles

No Gravity is a documentary essay about the history of women in space and the relationship between gender and technology. Interviews with female astronauts include Claudie Haigneré, the first European woman in space; feminist theorist Donna Haraway; the Mercury 13 women, and the icons of Russian space travel. Director Silvia Casalino investigates women’s struggles in achieving equal opportunities with their male counterparts; what has been achieved in the field of aerospace; and what future prospects are in store. 

The Real Anne Lister
Directed by Matthew Hill
UK 2010 video 60 Min
TBLB Cinema 2 – 7:30pm
Toronto Premiere

The Real Anne Lister is an engrossing and comprehensive companion documentary to last year’s Inside Out Audience Award Winner, The Secret Diaries of Anne Lister. Examining the mysteries revealed in Lister’s remarkable four million-word diary, the Doc paints a compelling portrait of a worldly socialite and land-owning lesbian who, although living in the buttoned-up Victorian era, was one thoroughly modern lady.  The documentary follows British television presenter and comedian, Sue Perkin across Yorkshire countryside where she brings Anne Lister’s diary to life while painting a vivid portrait of a very complex character.

Plays with the following short:
Push On
Directed by Lares Feliciano
USA 2009 video 9 Min
RATED 14A

Gillian is on the road to spread her mothers ashes. Sadie is on the road to anywhere. In Push On these two strangers find their loneliness interrupted when they meet on the open road.

Bloomington
Directed by Fernanda Cardoso
USA 2010 video 83 Min
TBLB Cinema 2 – 9:30pm
Toronto Premiere

Jackie Kirk is a fresh-faced blond starting her freshman year at Bloomington University, but from her first steps on campus it is clear that Jackie is not just any ordinary student. An unexpected call from Hollywood asking Jackie to audition for the feature film version of Neptune 67 turns her reality at Bloomington on its head. Ostracized by her peers, confused about her sexuality, torn between her past and her future selves, Jackie struggles to find her identity and her place in the world.

Inside Out Highlights for Saturday May 21:

Miss Tacuarembó
Directed by Martin Sastre
Uruguay/Argentina 2010 video 94 Min
TBLB Cinema 1 – 2:30pm
Canadian Premiere
Spanish with English subtitles

Natalie (played as an adult by Uruguayan superstar actress and singer Natalia Oreiro) and her best friend Carlos (Diego Reinhold) are bored of living in their hometown of Tacuarembó. They dream of Hollywood…or at least Buenos Aires. The film flits back and forth in time between their 80s-obsessed childhood – where they were tormented by a church lady so scary that even nuns are afraid of her – and their adulthood, where they work at Christ Park, still longing for fame. But the past that Natalie flees might be the way forward.

World’s Best Docs
TBLB Cinema 2 – 2:45pm
Following historical figures, pop culture icons and ordinary people living extraordinary lives, these compelling short documentaries provide insight into queer life around the world.

George and Brad in Bed | Jessica Sanders | USA 2009 video 5 min
Decoding Alan Turing | Christopher Racster | UK 2008 video 107 min

The High Level Bridge | Trevor Anderson | Canada 2010 video 5 mins

William yang – The Art of Seduction | Craig Boreham | Australia 2009 video 20 mins

Close (Pod Bluzka) | Lucia Von Horn Pagano | Poland 2008 video 9 min | Polish with English subtitles

A Farmer’s Desire (En bondes längtan) | Rebecka Rasmusson | Sweden 2010 video 14 min | Swedish with English subtitles

Happily Ever After (Felizes para sempre) | Ricky Mastro | Brazil 2009 video 8 min

A Montreal Girl (La Fille de Montreal)
Directed by Jeanne Crépeau
Canada 2010 video 92 min
Director in Attendance

Jeanne Crépeau’s A Montreal Girl is a post-modern biography that blends creative use of time and space with a true story of Ariane’s uprooting. As Ariane struggles to find a large affordable apartment in Montreal, she sorts through twenty-five tears of accumulated art, love, politics and personal history, and in the process opens up to the possibilities of the future.

Christopher and His Kind
Directed by Geoffrey Sax
UK 2011 video 90 min
TBLB Cinema 1 – 9:30pm
Canadian Premiere

The decadent Berlin cabaret scene is in full swing when a young and wide-eyed Christopher Isherwood (author of The Single Man) arrives in the city to stay with his close friend and occasional lover, poet WH Auden.  Isherwood’s reserved English sensibility, the city’s thriving gay subculture is intoxicating. But Christopher soon finds himself heartbroken after the failure of a hopeless love affair, and sets out on a process of self-discovery, forging an identity and a place for himself amid the chaos and carnality of 1930’s Berlin.  Stars Matt Smith, the young actor capturing much acclaim as the lead in the British TV series, Doctor Who. 

Inside Out Highlights for Monday May 23:

With Love from Lebanon and Palestine
Curated By Vicky Moufawad-Paul
TBLB Cinema 2 – 12:00pm
This program of film and video shorts is from artists living in Lebanon, Palestine and their diasporas. The videos mine the history of queer love in the midst of decades of war, colonial oppression and repression. Funny, Poetic and sexy, these shorts explore agency and intimacy.

Master Class with Samar Habib
Free-of-charge with purchase of ticket to With Love from Lebanon and Palestine
Author and academic Samar Habib comes to Toronto for the first time to deliver a compendium of her various talks on Middle Eastern queer cinema. She has lectured on wide-raging subjects that include Lesbian Representation in Arab Popular Culture and Some like it Lukewarm: A Brief History of the Representation of homosexuality in Egyptian Cinema.

eCupid
Directed by JC Calciao
USA 2011 video 95 min
TBLB Cinema 1 – 2:30pm
Canadian Premiere
Rated 14A
**Director in Attendance**
From the moment Marshall downloads eCupid, the application collects every inch of his online history and instantly turns his life upside down. eCupid provides Marshall with a line-up of sexy, available guys, each promising to fulfill all of his fantasies. But too much of a good thing may not be a good at all. Marshall is quickly overwhelmed with all the attention and is soon left wondering if modern technology can provide the answers he seeks.

L’Amour Fou (L’amour fou)
Directed By Pierre Thoretton
France 2010 35mm 100 min
TBLB Cinema 1 – 4:30pm
Rated 14A
French with English subtitles
Winner of the International Federation of Film Critics and nominated for best Documentary at the César Awards 2011. Yves Saint Laurent is heralded as one of 20th century’s greatest fashion designers. Together with ex-lover and longtime business partner, Pierre Bergé, the Yves Saint Laurent Couture House broke boundaries that shook the world of fashion, forever changing the way women dressed

We Were Here
Directed by David Weissman
USA 2010 video 90 min
TBLB Cinema 1 – 7:00pm
Rated 14A
We Were Here focuses on the stories of five individuals who were at the centre of the AIDS/HIV epidemic in San Francisco during the early 1980’s.  The five subjects, who include HIV-positive artists Daniel Goldstein, nurse Eileen Glutzer, flower stall owner Guy Clarke, and community activists Ed Wolf and Paul Boneberg; recall those early days when paranoia and confusion set the tone. They describe San Francisco when Harvey Milk energized the gay community, and they recall the first warnings of the disease that would change their lives.

Room in Rome (Habitación en Roma)
Directed by Julio Medem
Spain 2010 video 100 min
TBLB Cinema 2 – 9:30pm
English, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Basque with English subtitles
Alba and Natasha, strangers from opposite ends of Europe – Spain and Russia respectively – have chanced upon each other earlier that night in a bar. The audience doesn’t witness the initial encounter, but somehow Alba, who is a lesbian, has persuaded the straight Natasha to return with her to her hotel room.  With only broken English and the language of love to communicate, is this just one night of lust, or could they be connecting on a whole other level?

INSIDE OUT Highlights for Tuesday May 24:

The Lulu Sessions
Directed by S. Casper Wong
USA 2011 video 88 min
TBLB Cinema 3 – 5:15pm
World Premiere
The LuLu Sessions opens with Lulu receiving the phone call that will change her life inalterably. She has aggressive breast cancer, and the doctor schedules a mastectomy immediately.
Over the next 15 months, Lulu and Casper embark on a radical journey together through chemotherapy and hair loss and pain, but also through a joint decision to embrace together the time that remains. They face Lulu’s impending death with eyes wide open and all senses exposed. They travel to all the places they love and to places they have not yet seen; they argue and they disagree. But they have a glorious time together, filming all the way.

Gun Hill Road
Directed by Rashaad Ernesto Green
USA 2011 video 88 min
TBLB Cinema 2 – 7:15 pm
Canadian Premiere
**Director in Attendance**
Still under the watchful eye of his parole officer, Enrique must become the father he needs to be or once again, risk losing his family and freedom. Gun Hill Road is a complex and sensitive debut from director Green that challenges notions of masculinity, identity and family, revealing that it is not who we are on the outside that defines us, but who were are on the inside.

80 Days (80 egunean)
Directed by Jon Garaño and Jose Mari Goenaga
Spain 2010 35mm 105 min
TBLB Cinema 3 – 7:30pm
Basque with English subtitles
Abandoned by her daughter and ignored by her husband, Axun begins visiting her comatose ex-son-in-law in the hospital. Driven by a refined sense of duty, Axun soon encounters the merry, mischievous music teacher Maite, whose brother is also in a coma and shares the same hospital room. Golden girls, Axun and Maite rediscover that they were childhood chums and as memories of a fateful , fugitive kiss resurface. Anux finds herself teetering on a tightrope between late-blooming passion and old-fashioned propriety.

Weekend
Directed by Andrew Haigh
Uk 2011 video 96 min
TBLB Cinema 1 – 9:30pm
Canadian Premiere
**Director in Attendance**
A wistful Friday-to-Sunday romance unfolds in a poignant and emotionally honest drama that chronicles the start of a potential relationship in all its, messy, drunken glory. Russell ( Tom Cullen) heads out to a gay club, alone and on the pull. At last call, drunk and horny, he picks up Glen (Chris New) and brings him home. In bars and bedrooms the two men embark on a complicated and emotional romance that evolves, over three days, from a one night stand to something deeper.

Centrepiece Gala Reception
Urbanspace Gallery – 6:30pm – 8:30pm
Admission with a Centrepiece Gala and Reception ticket
Join us for a drink and rub elbows with Inside Out guests and staff in the historic 401 Richmond building, the heart of Toronto arts and culture