Results tagged “insideout2009”

It's the last day of Inside Out, but there are still a few screenings you can catch before Toronto's queer film fest closes up shop for another year. Last year's closing-night gala was XXY, an Argentinian movie from director Lucia Puenzo that told the touching story of an intersex teen named Alex who was faced with a difficult decision: to live life as a man, or a woman. This year's closing gala film is another from Puenzo, once again starring Ines Efron (XXY's Alex) as a troubled queer teen.

It's the penultimate day at Inside Out, so this is one of your last chances to catch this year's crop of queer cinema. One of the highlights of the day is the Queer Youth Digital Video Project, a program Inside Out has been running for the past eleven years, which showcases the work of seven different queer youths, each of whom has been given the opportunity to produce a short film on a shoestring budget.

For a lot of queer cinephiles, Milk (not that cowboy thing) was the real breakout gay movie of the new millennium. Here, finally, was a story about an out gay man whose homosexuality wasn't depicted as some tragic problem, but rather as a completely normal part of his life. More than that, it helped re-affirm the legacy of one of the great heroes of the gay-rights movement, one of the first openly gay elected official in the United States, and a man who helped pioneer the idea that the most important political action any gay person can take is to come out of the closet. Sean Penn's brilliant performance matched with James Franco's smoldering mustache certainly didn't hurt matters either. And so, Inside Out's decision to screen Academy Award–winning 1984 documentary The Times of Harvey Milk is a very smart piece of programming.

Torontoist took a day off from Inside Out, but we now resume our daily coverage of the queer film fest.

WORDS: Authors at Harbourfront presents a night of architects as part of the current (and disappointingly haphazard) Festival of Architecture and Design 2009. Canadian architect Witold Rybczynski reads from My Two Polish Grandfathers, a collection of autobiographical stories of his family’s flight from war-time Europe. Glenn McArthur presents a new photographic book of the man responsible for some of Toronto's landmark buildings, A Progressive Traditionalist: John M. Lyle, Architect. Jack Diamond will be presenting a new book about his firm's own work, Insight and On Site: The Architecture of Diamond and Schmitt. York Quay Centre (235 Queens Quay West), 7:30 p.m., $8 (Free for members/students with ID).

It may only be Tuesday, but for Inside Out, it's Hump Day; we are right in the middle of the 19th annual queer film fest.

Sometimes, thematic trends at Inside Out are unexpected. Last year, gay surfers were all the rage. This year, gay parenting seems to be all the rage. But AIDS stories always have been a mainstay at the fest, and probably always will be.

It's Day 4 of Inside Out and of Torontoist's coverage of the the annual queer film festival. There's a bunch of films on today, including Make the Yuletide Gay, starring Degrassi alum and fab cover boy Adamo Ruggiero. Torontoist caught Israeli sizzler Antarctica, which is sort of a queered-up feature-length version of Metropia, in Hebrew. There's sexy boys (and even the odd lesbian) to look at, but the plot is both meandering and banal, and the fleshy eyefuls aren't enough to keep the yawns at bay. Much more worthy of your attention is Drool, a 2008 American film starring Mulholland Drive's absolutely gorgeous Laura Harring.

It's Day 3 of the Inside Out festival, and there's a whole bucket load of queer films to catch.

Are you a gay, or a gay-at-heart, despairing over the heteronormativity of the multiplex? You've watched your Milk DVD so many times you've developed lactose intolerance, but you can't quite bring yourself to go see that movie with Robert Pattison in a false mustache? Lucky for you, the Inside Out Toronto LGBT Film and Video Festival is here to bring you the gayest movies this side of X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Now 19 years old, the queer film fest opens tonight with the gala screening of 2008 Swedish film Patrik, Age 1.5. In it, a bourgie gay couple moves to the burbs of Stockholm with a yen to acquire the trappings of middle-class success: a picket fence, a flower garden, and a baby. But when the adoption agency makes the pretty egregious error of inserting a decimal where it doesn't belong, Göran and Sven wind up with a 15-year-old badass instead of a 1.5-year-old baby. Patrik is a homophobe, and potentially a criminal, and clashes heavily with hot-tempered Sven. But, thanks to the Power of Love, everyone learns to get over their prejudices and yadda, yadda, yadda, you can see where this is going. Essentially Breakfast with Scot, sans dimples, Patrik, Age 1.5 isn't exactly a life-changing film, but it's totally cute, likable, and full of endearing performances, and some genuinely funny moments.