Legacy Project Screening Series

HALLELUJAH! RON ATHEY: A STORY OF DELIVERANCE

Friday | June 22 | 7:30pm

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Filmmaker Catherine Gund’s intimate portrait of performance artist Ron Athey charts his early career from redefining “go-go dancing” at the legendary Club Fuck! in Los Angeles to an international tour featuring his first major ensemble pieces, Martyrs and Saints, Four Scenes in a Harsh Life and Deliverance.  Raised to be a Pentecostal minister, Athey channelled his messianic calling into a ritual artistic practice that mobilizes religious iconography, sadomasochism and extreme piercing into a means of transcendence.  Athey and his deeply personal work have drawn a family of like-minded performers around him.  The bond of trust these outsiders share as they explore and blur the boundaries of desire, sexuality and trauma, emerges as one of the film’s central subjects and an enduring testament to the power of Athey’s life and art.

35mm, color, 90 min.  Producer: Catherine Gund.  Director: Catherine Gund.  Cinematographer: Catherine Gund.  Editor: Aljernon Tunsil.

In-person: Ron Athey, Zackary Drucker, Catherine Gund.

This quarter we launch a new season of Legacy Project screenings programmed by special guest curators who will select works from the Legacy collection that have had a significant influence and impact on their lives and careers.

We are honored to inaugurate this season with guest curator Zackary Drucker.  Drucker is an independent artist, cultural producer and trans woman who has performed and exhibited her work internationally in museums, galleries and film festivals including the Whitney Biennial 2014, MoMA PS1 and Hammer Museum, among others.  Drucker is an Emmy-nominated producer for the docu-series This Is Me, as well as a producer on Golden Globe and Emmy-winning Transparent.

TORCH FIRE TRILOGY – 30th Anniversary

Friday | March 23 | 7:30pm

Tony Award-winning playwright and actor Harvey Fierstein adapts his landmark play to the big screen and reprises his role as Arnold Beckoff, a New York drag performer searching for love and respect from the people closest to him across three significant periods of his life.

35mm, color, 117 min.  Production: New Line Cinema, Howard Gottfried/Ronald K. Fierstein Production.  Distribution: New Line Cinema.  Director: Paul Bogart.  Screenwriter: Harvey Fierstein.  Based on the play by Harvey Fierstein.  Cinematographer: Mikael Salomon.  Editor: Nicholas C. Smith.  Cast: Anne Bancroft, Matthew Broderick, Harvey Fierstein, Brian Kerwin, Karen Young.

EL LUGAR SIN LÍMITES (THE PLACE WITHOUT LIMITS)

Friday | December 15 | 7:30pm

The film revolves around La Manuela (Roberto Cobo), the proprietor of a dilapidated brothel in the destitute Mexican town of El Olivo. Divided over whether to sell the brothel, La Manuela and her daughter also find themselves at odds over their shared attraction and fear of Pancho, a macho truck driver with a history of tormenting La Manuela. The film provides all of the excitement and tragedy expected of a classic Mexican melodrama but subverts the genre through its powerful critique of transphobia and violent heterosexual masculinity. Based on the novel of the same name by noted Chilean author José Donoso and directed one of Mexico’s greatest directors, Arturo Ripstein, the film is a landmark of queer cinema.

35mm, color, in Spanish with English subtitles, 110 min. Producer: Conacite Dos, Francisco del Villar. Director: Arturo Ripstein. Screenwriter: Arturo Ripstein, Manuel Puig, José Emilio Pacheco. Based on a novel by José Donoso. Cinematographer: Miguel Garzón. Editor: Francisco Chiu Amador. Cast: Roberto Cobo, Lucha Villa, Ana Martín, Gonzalo Vega, Julían Pastor.

BENT

Saturday | April 29 | 7:30pm

A rare representation of the brutal persecution of gay men in Nazi Germany, Bent follows promiscuous Max (Owen) from his carefree Berlin lifestyle into the harsh conditions of Dachau concentration camp, where he masquerades as a Jew to avoid homophobic stigma.

35mm, color, 105 min.  Director: Sean Mathias.  Production: Channel Four Films.  Distribution: Park Circus.  Producer: Michael Solinger, Dixie Linder, Martin Sherman.  Screenwriter: Martin Sherman.  Cinematographer: Yorgos Arvanitis.  Composer: Philip Glass.  Editor: Isabelle Lorente.  Cast: Lothaire Bluteau, Clive Owen, Brian Webber, Ian McKellen, Mick Jagger.

DESERT HEARTS

Saturday | February 4 | 7:30pm

Based on Jane Rule’s novel Desert of the Heart (1964), Donna Deitch’s narrative feature debut centers on a burgeoning lesbian romance between libertine casino worker Cay Rivvers (Patricia Charbonneau) and repressed university professor Vivian Bell (Helen Shaver) in Reno, Nevada in the late 1950s, a climate wherein being queer was…complicated.  Landmark in its positive portrayal of sapphic romance and celebrated for its passionate, sensual bedroom scenes that nearly fog the camera’s lens, Deitch’s vision for Cay and Vivian’s nuanced onscreen relationship explores the tension inherent in a sheltered woman accepting her newfound sexual self.

Desert Hearts has been digitally restored by The Criterion Collection/Janus Films and UCLA Film & Television Archive in conjunction with Outfest UCLA Legacy Project and Sundance Institute.

35mm, color, sound, 96 min.  Dir. Donna Deitch.  Production: Desert Hearts Productions. Distribution: Criterion. Producer: Donna Deitch. Based on the novel by Jane Rule. Screenwriter: Natalie Cooper. Cinematographer: Robert Elswit. Production Design: Jeannine Oppewall. Editor: Robert Estrin. With: Helen Shaver, Patricia Charbonneau, Audra Lindley, Andra Akers, Gwen Welles.

Includes shorts from She Was a Visitor (1970), Berkeley 12 to 1 (1968), Memorabilia  (1969)

QUERELLE

Friday | February 10 | 7:30pm

Adapted from Jean Genet’s novel Querelle de Brest (1947) into a cinematic world of pure mood and aesthetics, Querelle follows our titular (anti)hero on an odyssey of self-discovery by way of the dangerous drug deals, games of chance, and murderous exploits abundant in this French portside community.  Released posthumously after his sudden death at age 37, Fassbinder’s fiercely personal swan song utilizes the hyper-artificiality of a classic studio sound stage to explore a visceral aspect of male relationships, depicted here as a constant navigation between violence and intimacy.  As confrontational in its saturated hues as in its celebration of raw, sometimes absurd eroticism, this unapologetic final title in Fassbinder’s filmography cements his legacy as Germany’s ultimate provocateur.

35mm, color, 108 min.  Dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder.  Production: Planet-Film; Gaumont; Albatros-Filmproduktion. Distribution: Gaumont.  Producer: Dieter Schidor.  Based on novel by Jean Genet.  Screenwriter: Burkhard Driest, Rainer Werner Fassbinder.  Cinematographer: Xaver Schwarzenberger, Josef Vavra.  Editor: Juliane Lorenz, Franz Walsch.  Cast: Brad Davis, Franco Nero, Jeanne Moreau, Günther Kaufman, Laurent Malet.