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  Michelle Tea in San Francisco's Mission district in the '90s Local filmmaker Aubree Bernier-Clarke (who you might also know from Swan Island or a recent Portlandia cameo) has issued a casting call for a short film she’s producing from Chapter 3 of legendary 90s dyke author Michelle Tea‘s Valencia. Below is her description of the project. If you’re interested in getting involved email valenciapdx@gmail.com.
This film will be part of a feature film based on the book, with different directors creating short films for each chapter. The novel dramatizes the hopes and hurts, apathies and ambitions of young lesbians looking for love in San Francisco’s Mission District in the early 1990s, focusing on Michelle, a poet navigating the druggy, boozy dyke scene while consorting with a series of lady loves.
I’m casting for the following roles:
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  Hello Sailor! 'Maggots and Men' screens Thursday at the Hollywood Theater Thursday
Beartown 16 goes all weekend long with an array of amazing events. Perry has some highlights in an earlier post. She was particularly excited about massages but I’m kinda down with the UnderBear Dance Party and how fun it would be to traipse Mississippi with a clan of cubs.
Maggots and Men: Queering History/Revisioning Utopia – This film revisions post-revolutionary Russia with a sailoriffic genderf***ed twist. I love how awesome and weird we can be sometimes. The historic Hollywood Theater is the perfect place to indulge in this film. Fleetweek here we come!
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  Portland Black Pride - June 15th to June 19th Portland Black Pride is back! After a hiatus of sorts Portland Black Pride is back – and collaborating with the PFLAG Portland Black Chapter.
“We are planning a series of events to take place during the dates of 6/15-6/19. We have combined a variety of youth, adult, and events for all ages during the black pride celebration week to ensure we are including and recognizing all of our community” writes Khalil Edwards, one of the organizers of the events.
More info and a full listing of events underneath the cut.
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 Queens... keeping the galaxy safe from boredom. I knew it. Somewhere, deep in the solar system, is a planet where only women can gaycation. Well, mostly drag queens really, but that’s better in my opinion. In 1991, the famous San Francisco drag queen, Doris Fish, released a really low budget movie called, Vegas in Space. She’d been scraping money together for eight years before she could actualize her dream. The best part? Vegas in Space is based on a party she threw.
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  Bear Bear Bust ! Photo by Wayne Bund for JustOut BearTown 16 is here! June 9th to 12th Portland will be packed with bears and beary events. While not a bear myself (but as a follically powerful individual I do sympathize with feeling empowered about hairyness) I was excited to hear that Beartown this year will feature massage therapists! Well damn. If that isn’t the best idea I’ve heard in a while, as big time gay social events can be a bit tension inducing.
Apparently, however, you gotta be smart and reserve a massage slot in order to make the best of this great offer – at $1 a minute with a 15 minute minimum, it sounds like a fairly affordable treat (and probably more satisfying than other pay-by-the-minute services i can think of). BearTown this year has a packed schedule full of events such as the Meet and Greet on Thursday, June 9th, from 7-11 pm at the Eagle Portland, and a full day of events from 10-2:00 am at various locations around town. Friday’s highlights include an UnderBear dance party, a cigar social, and Cheers, Cheese and Chocolates event at the Local Lounge.
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  Portland tickets are almost out so better move fast.
Summer Beats & Bacon is an evening for bacon connoisseurs, fiends and fans alike. It’s been over a year since the BCN/PDX Fridays! launch party, the last bacon tasting held as part of the Bacon Gospel. This latest round introduces four all new flavors bursting with summer fruit and berries, floral blooms, the heat you’ve been craving through winter’s dreary days and one flavor chosen by BCN/PDX Fridays! members to be their favorite flavor over the last year of monthly bacon fairy visits.
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  Put This on the Map is a documentary featuring 26 different LGBTQ youth living in East King County. In the film the youth speak about what it means to be LGBTQ and discuss both gender expression and sexual orientation. One of the things I enjoyed most about the film was that youth from across the LGBTQ spectrum were included. We get to hear from youth that identify as trans, gender queer, bisexual, lesbian and gay. They talk about their experiences with bullying, their families, coming out, school, friends, their relationships, and their hopes for the future.
The film offers good basic information but is a little too after school special-esque. It doesn’t really delve into any specific topic as the experiences of so many youth are touched on.
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  I am is filmmaker Sonali Gulati’s coming out letter to her mother. Eleven years after her mother’s death, Sonali explores the possibilities of how her mother might have reacted to her sexuality by returning to her childhood home in New Delhi and gathering the coming out stories of Indian queers and their parents.
Some might think a film of coming out stories from a country which only decriminalized homosexuality in 2009 would be intolerably grim. But the film includes many heartfelt interviews with Indian parents philosophizing on parental acceptance, the meaning of unconditional love and the process of letting your children become who they are. Some of these parents showed real bravery to stick by their kids and to change their own expectations. They’ve challenged the expectations of their extended families and a society that is very focused on heterosexual marriage. Many are clearly still struggling with it, but there is a lot of love in this film.
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  Last night I took a friend who was visiting from New York to the airport. We got in a great philosophical conversation about whether gay rights are the inevitable result of a free society. At this point in history, it’s possible to view gay marriage and other advances as “just a matter of time”. The truth is there are people who faced police brutality, unemployment, societal rejection, and death to make this conversation even possible. There are people who still face these horrors, but that’s another film…
On These Shoulders We Stand puts us across the living room from a fabulous cross-section of the activists of the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. There’s Ivy Bottini, founder and president of NOW New York. She was sacked when the term “Lesbian Menace” was coined.
There’s Dale Reynolds, the Hollywood leading man who founded Gay Actors RAP to fight homophobia in the film industry. Then there’s Reverend Troy Perry, founder of the Metropolitan Community Church who helped organize the first Pride Parade in L.A. a year after Stonewall.
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  It's hard to be pretty when being pretty makes you hard. The Adonis Factor, a film by Christopher Hines, is a look into the objectification and beautification inherent in the gay male world. Hines also brought us the movie, The Butch Factor. Both films discuss social and personal roles and image in gay culture. However, The Adonis Factor focuses more on beauty and image expectation.
I love queer documentary. I forget how narrow my perspective can be as a lesbian, and I’m always thrilled to find new beautiful pathways, and dark alleys in which to peek. I do kind of feel, that when I opened the door on this documentary, all that stood before me were boring pant suits. The emotional standpoint attempts to create empathy towards muscle ridden gay men, and remind us all that “beauty is a curse”. I can understand that breaking your back to reach a social expectation is grueling, but I’m not so sure sitting and watching an entire documentary on this one issue is eye opening.
I found the perspective narrow. Midway through, I got a sense that these men felt their pressure to work out and starve themselves was exclusive to them. There was an attitude that maybe straight people and other queer communities don’t have it quite as rough with pressure to be perfect. I did find some of the interviews to be interesting, but I couldn’t help that “I’ll give you something to cry about” feeling welling up inside me like an angry demon ready to devastate some carbs.
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