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© St. Petersburg Times, published October 11, 2001
Festival gears up for finale
Tampa International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival -- The 12th annual celebration of queer cinema continues through Sunday at Tampa Theatre. Check the timeclock or visit the festival Web site at www.pridefilmfest.com for showtimes.
Tonight's lineup includes Trembling Before G-d, a documentary about Orthodox and Hassidic Jews balancing homosexuality and faith, and The Girl, a one-night stand that becomes a neo-noir mystery. Friday selections range from the somber drama of Perfect Son to Bruce Weber's keenly sensual Chop Suey, a documentary about the photographer's favorite subjects.
Seven film programs are slated for Saturday. The program begins with a collection of short subjects at 11 a.m. and continues through Mississippi (Red Dirt), Australia (Low-Fat Elephants) and Iceland (101 Reykjavik) before a nightcap at the Burning Man desert festival (On the Bus).
On Sunday, Franklin Street Mall outside Tampa Theatre is the setting for a street festival. Inside the historic movie palace, the projector warms up with short films about gay and lesbian youths followed by a panel discussion sponsored by Equality Florida. Don't miss the 12:30 p.m. screening of Scout's Honor, a grade-A documentary about discrimination among the Boy Scouts of America.
A free concert by Crescendo and the Tampa Bay Gay Men's Chorus will begin at 2 p.m., followed by free screenings of films produced by Florida filmmakers. The festival concludes with an 8:30 p.m. showing of the BBC television series Metrosexuality, somewhat akin to Queer as Folk.
Tickets are $7 per screening. Call (813) 879-4220 for information.
Together (R) (106 min.) -- Swedish filmmaker Lukas Moodysson pinpoints the dusk of the age of Aquarius on a hippie commune in 1975. Open relationships, closed minds and halfway realized dreams of freedom are all that Moodysson locates in the wreckage.
The commune leader (Gustaf Hammarsten) shares his wife (Anja Lundqvist) in accordance with Marxist principles. A battered wife flees from, and is found by, her alcoholic husband. Children with names like Tet (after the 1968 Vietnam offensive) playing Pinochet torture games prove how deeply their didactics run. Yet for each radical step these rebels take, some intangible force keeps nudging them back to establishment living.
Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert wrote: "It may be that Together only wants to remember a time. That it does with gentle, observant humor. If it has a message, it is that ideas imposed on human nature may be able to shape lives for a while, but in the long run, we drift back toward more conventional choices. In the 1970s, hippies defiantly sprawled on the floor -- in airports, movie theaters, classrooms, malls. Now they, and their children (and grandchildren), have gone back to chairs again, which were invented, as it turns out, for excellent reasons."
Opens Friday at Channelside Cinemas.