Presented by the British Film Institute, 24 March - 7 April, in London cinemas
The 18th London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival kicks off this year with the
opening night gala showing of The Event (left) in London on Wednesday 24
March. This film has been described as ‘arguably the most significant
movie about Aids’ since Norman Rene’s groundbreaking 1990 Longtime
Companion.
The film is a big weepy and it has played to standing ovations around the
world. Its director Thom Fitzgerald (whose previous contributions to LLGFF
include
The Hanging Garden and Beefcake) tells Matt’s story through a series
of flashbacks and a failing HIV drug regime amidst the theatre of a poignant
mother-son relationship and case investigation. Watch this space for a review.
The closing gala night feature from Sara Millman Robin’s Hood (right) promises a re-working of the classic fable. Steal from the rich, give to the poor, in modern context.
This year’s festival also pays tribute to Derek Jarman and the circle of talent he inspired.
For more details of the great variety of films and documentaries screening
in the two weeks - and there’s bound to be several more dealing with
HIV issues, as is usual.
Call the BFI events line on 0870 240 4050 or visit: bfi.org.uk
One
World Beat is set to produce a three-day global music festival to support
global Aids relief from 19-21 March 2004. Throughout the three-day weekend,
music lovers will be able to watch performances as well as make donations
via the net at www.oneworldbeat.org. Over 500 musicians are set to take part
at some 50 events in 16 countries from Africa to America and across Europe.
London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire features an unsigned bands night on 19 March as part of the festival, promising hungry A&R talent-spotters and web link-up.
The global event is supported voluntarily by local and internationally-acclaimed musicians alike, including Phil Collins and Alicia Keys. Funds raised will help Aids-related needs in the developing world, especially organisations working with children.
Visit www.oneworldbeat.org or email festival@oneworldbeat.org
Original
play by Tony Kushner. Adapted to film by Mike Nichols for HBO TV screening
and shown on Channel 4, 7 and 8 February
I saw Millennium Approaches and Perestroika, the two plays that comprise Angels in America, when they debuted at the National Theatre in 1993.
I was stunned. This was an Aids play (all seven hours of it) light-years ahead of tearjerkers like Philadelphia or earnest docudramas like The Normal Heart. Kushner saw how much Aids mattered and that it was an overwhelming event in history.
Kushner pins ‘Angels’ round a gay couple, the tortured, faithless, Jewish Louis, who is HIV negative, and his scared-shitless but defiant WASP boyfriend Prior, who has Aids.
Prior - praise be! - is a hero with Aids who does not die by the end of the play but survives, sadder and perhaps madder, but an inspiration to his friends. His salvation is thanks partly to a terrifying angel who descends through the roof of his apartment (a stunning coup de théâtre in the original).
How would this great baggy drama translate into film? The answer is, beautifully. Nichols borrowed from another film about angels: Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire. That was a love story to Berlin. This is a similar love story to New York as it plunges through the epicentre of the Aids maelstrom in the late 80s.
Nichols alternates grimy interiors with serene helicopter shots and dreamscapes to point up ordinary characters caught up in an extraordinary moment of history.
Jeffrey Wright is arch and knowing as Belize the nurse, and Justin Clark plays his ‘girl-friend’ Prior with acid relish, stomping through Manhattan in Grim Reaper robes but spraying barbed asides even in the midst of visions.
And the more stellar actors give their money’s worth. Meryl Streep is, as usual, slightly mannered as the Mormon mom but is clearly anticipating a late-blooming career playing eccentric old ladies; Emma Thompson is awe-inspiring and ridiculous by turns as the angel. But it’s Al Pacino who’s the star. His Roy Kohn is a dying rattlesnake, malevolent and pitiful; the sewer rat lawyer who was Joe McCarthy’s henchman in the anti-Comminist purges, but who, a closet faggot, is dying of Aids by inches in Belize’s hospital.
All in all, a successful translation of a seminal Aids drama. Gus Cairns
