Vancouver International Film Festival 2009: LGBT–interest films

If you didn't get quite enough of the Vancouver Queer Film Festival, there are enough LGBT-related films at the Vancouver International Film Festival that's there's a hidden festival within a festival.

Also, a while back, there was a reader named Lori asking when Xavier Dolan's J'ai tué ma mere would be playing in Vancouver.

Lori, you're in luck. It'll be playing, until the English language title I Killed My Mother, at VIFF (see details below).

There's also a short film by local filmmaker Jamie Travis.

Here's a rundown of LGBT films that'll be playing  at VIFF 2009.

SHORT FILMS

The Armoire (22 mins)
Country: Canada
Director: Jamie Travis
Wed, Oct 14th 9:15pm Pacific Cinémathéque
Thu, Oct 15th 4:00pm Pacific Cinémathéque
In this dark and melodramatic short, memories of strange events in a young boy’s life are unravelled after his best friend mysteriously disappears.

Island, The (6 mins)
Country: Canada
Director: Trevor Anderson
Sun, Oct 11th 9:15pm Pacific Cinémathéque
Mon, Oct 12th 3:30pm Pacific Cinémathéque
The filmmaker considers, with the help of animation, a piece of fan/hate mail he received.

New Beijing, New Marriage (20 mins)
Country: China
Director: Fan Popo, David Zheng
Wed, Oct 7th 4:00pm Pacific Cinémathéque
Fri, Oct 9th 9:15pm Pacific Cinémathéque
A short film that hilariously and pointedly documents Valentines Day 2009 at Qianmen Gate, just south of Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. The filmmakers capture gay actors posing as two queer couples taking formal same-sex marriage photos to the consternation of passersby.

FEATURES

Adrift (Choi Voi)
Country: Vietnam
Director: Bui Thac Chuyen
Mon, Oct 5th 9:30pm Vancity Theatre
Tue, Oct 6th 3:30pm Vancity Theatre
Bui Thac Chuyen’s remarkable movie is like a Vietnamese take on Les liaisons dangereuses: baffled by her husband’s low libido, newlywed bride Duyen is pushed by a cruel woman friend into an affair with a macho heartbreaker. Elegantly poised between social realism and moral chaos. Dragons & Tigers Award nominee.

Assume Nothing
Country: New Zealand
Director: Kirsty MacDonald
Sat, Oct 10th 9:30pm Pacific Cinémathéque
Mon, Oct 12th 10:45am Pacific Cinémathéque
Focusing on the art, photography and performances of four "alternative" gender artists of Maori, Samoan-Japanese, and Pakeha descent, Kirsty MacDonald poses the questions: 'What if "male" and "female" are not the only options? How do other genders express themselves through art?

Cats
Country: South Korea
Director: Kim Ji-Hyun
Wed, Oct 7th 7:00pm Vancity Theatre
Thu, Oct 8th 1:15pm Vancity Theatre
The most refreshingly frank and uncomplicated account of the complications of lesbian lives since Go Fish, Kim Ji-Hyun’s breezy movie is another left-field delight from the indie sector of Korean film culture. Dragons & Tigers Award nominee. With a full supporting program of shorts.

Eyes Wide Open
Country: Israel
Director: Haim Tabakman
Mon, Oct 12th 9:00pm Empire Granville 7 Th 4
Tue, Oct 13th Noon Empire Granville 7 Th 3
Wed, Oct 14th 4:00pm Ridge Theatre
When a handsome young man takes a job with an Orthodox Jewish butcher, sexual passion does battle with religious conviction. Director Haim Tabakman (in his debut feature) demonstrates an uncanny eye for telling detail, whether it’s purity posters on the wall, or the growing level of malevolence and community censure.

Face
Country: France, Taiwan
Director: Tsai Ming-liang
Fri, Oct 2nd 3:00pm Empire Granville 7 Th 4
Sun, Oct 4th 9:15pm Visa Screening Room @ Empire Granville Th7
Tsai Ming-liang’s hallucinatory, spectacular, intriguing, sexy, musical masterpiece is set almost entirely inside (and underneath) the Louvre Museum in Paris. A Taiwanese director comes to Paris to film a surreal version of Salome with supermodel Laetitia Casta, but becomes enmeshed in a web of spectacularly photographed fantasy.

I Killed My Mother (J'ai tué ma mere)
Country: Canada
Director: Xavier Dolan
Sun, Oct 11th 6:45pm Visa Screening Room @ Empire Granville Th7
Thu, Oct 15th 1:00pm Visa Screening Room @ Empire Granville Th7
Seventeen-year-old Hubert’s contempt for his mother consumes him. She inhabits a tenebrous world of guilt and manipulation that blinds her to the person he is becoming. This semi-autobiographical film by young director Xavier Dolan—winner of three prizes at Cannes—navigates a painfully realistic, paradoxical relationship.

It Came from Kuchar
Country: USA/Canada
Director: Jennifer M. Kroot
Thu, Oct 1st 10:45am Pacific Cinémathéque
Thu, Oct 8th 9:15pm Pacific Cinémathéque
Jennifer Kroot's film gleefully piles on everything anyone could want in a documentary on the fabulous Kuchar brothers, whose deliriously campy zero-budget melodramas enlivened many otherwise sombre evenings of 60s underground cinema. A celebrated cast of auteurs (Guy Maddin to John Waters to Atom Egoyan) pay homage.

Johnny Weir: Pop Star on Ice
Country: USA
Director: David Barba, James Pellerito
Fri, Oct 2nd 6:00pm Empire Granville 7 Th 5
Sun, Oct 11th 10:30am Empire Granville 7 Th 5
Fri, Oct 16th 11:00am Vancity Theatre
When he isn't inserting his foot (with skate attached) into his mouth, Johnny Weir is reinventing the world of figure skating. Weir may have been the inspiration for the flamboyant ice-dancer in Will Ferrell's comic opus Blades of Glory, but satire is not even a sequined patch on Weir's real life.

My Dog Tulip
Country: USA
Director: Paul Fierlinger, Sandra Fierlinger
Sun, Oct 11th 4:00pm Visa Screening Room @ Empire Granville Th7
Mon, Oct 12th 6:40pm Empire Granville 7 Th 2
British author J.R Ackerley's beloved story about a man and his dog comes beautifully to life in Paul and Sandra Fierlinger's animated ode to canine love. An exquisite, wonderful film. Christopher Plummer, Lynn Redgrave, and Isabella Rossellini star.

Queer China, 'COMRADE' CHINA
Country: China
Director: Cui Zi'en
Wed, Oct 7th 4:00pm Pacific Cinémathéque
Fri, Oct 9th 9:15pm Pacific Cinémathéque
Chinese gay activist and radical filmmaker Cui Zi’en has made an authoritative documentary--both history and celebration--on queer culture in China. Testimony from theorists, activists and artists outlines the modern origins of Chinese homosexuality through its attempted suppression to its breakthroughs in the last decade.

To Die Like a Man (Morrer como um homem)
Country: Portugal
Director: Joí£o Pedro Rodrigues
Tue, Oct 6th 8:45pm Empire Granville 7 Th 4
Wed, Oct 7th 2:30pm Empire Granville 7 Th 3
Joí£o Pedro Rodrigues' touching, finely etched portrait follows Tonia, a veteran Lisbon drag performer. With humour and pathos, the transgressive Rodrigues shows Tonia confronting younger competition and seeking reconciliation with her estranged son by devolving her body back into a male form.

Trash Humpers
Country: USA
Director: Harmony Korine
Sat, Oct 10th 10:45pm Empire Granville 7 Th 4
Tue, Oct 13th 2:30pm Empire Granville 7 Th 3
Wed, Oct 14th 12:15pm Empire Granville 7 Th 6
Harmony Korine (Gummo, Julien Donkey-Boy) returns to his deeply idiosyncratic take on rancid Americana with this non-narrative underground video that details the misadventures of a loser-gang cult-freak collective who do unseemly things to garbage cans, complete with musical numbers. Beyond words.

Yang Yang
Country: Taiwan
Director: Cheng Yu-chieh
Fri, Oct 2nd 6:15pm Empire Granville 7 Th 3
Tue, Oct 6th 1:30pm Visa Screening Room @ Empire Granville Th7
This vibrantly alive coming-of-age story of a young Eurasian woman in Taipei follows glamorous Yang Yang from high-school athlete to aspiring actress. Director Cheng Yu-chieh’s intimate camera captures the precise articulation, via sex, scandal and heartbreak, between adolescence and adulthood.

ZMD: Zombies of Mass Destruction
Country: USA
Director: Kevin Hamedani
Sat, Oct 3rd 11:30pm Empire Granville 7 Th 2
Sun, Oct 4th 4:30pm Empire Granville 7 Th 2
When the Puget Sound community of Port Gamble is beset by a terrorist virus, a diverse band of survivors, including a young Iranian-American woman and a not-completely-out gay couple, must band together to fend off flesh-eating ghouls. Kevin Hamedani's splatter-filled comedy is an hilarious allegory of post-9/11 paranoia.