GAYLETTER

We are a lucky bunch living in New York City with the opportunity to experience so many invigorating and exciting cultural phenomena. One such gem not to be missed is this year’s gay and lesbian film festival NewFest. The “New York’s premier LGBT Film Festival,” a collaboration with the Film Society of Lincoln Center is celebrating its 25th anniversary and it’s starting this Friday, September 6 at the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

FYI, all screenings will take place at the Walter Reade Theater (165 West 65th St. between Broadway and Amsterdam).

I’ve spent the last ten days immersed in some of the selections and here is the short list of my recommendations:

Last Summer: A beautifully shot meandering poem of a love story about two high school boys about to be separated by life’s inevitable moving on. This film is so stunning and the boys so tender in and out of bed (though there’s tastefully no sex) it lulled me into a trance that lasted for hours.

Last Summer

Pit Stop: A thoroughly entertaining tales of blue collar love that plays out in a small Texas town. It’s not easy to find cock in their town but the two protagonists determined, sexy and willful manage to find one another in the end, thank god.

Pit Stop

Out In The Dark: I absolutely loved this film. A modern day love story/thriller between a well off Israeli lawyer living in cosmopolitan Tel Aviv and a Palestinian from Ramallah living with his war mongering belligerent homophobic dad and family. My closing note on the film reads “hot and steamy too.”

Out In The Dark

Interior. Leather Bar: James Franco attempts to shoot what he imagines the 40 minutes of the gay sex scene cut out of Pacino‘s 1981 film ‘Cruising‘ would have looked like. I didn’t totally get it but the concept made for some very interesting filmmaking.

Interior. Leather Bar

Test: Set in 1985 San Francisco, a handsome and smooth skinned blond modern dancer deals with the onset of the AIDS epidemic as he navigates his burgeoning career and the heated dating scene. This film won the grand jury prize for Outstanding U.S. narrative and screenwriting at the  2013 Outfest LA. The dance sequences are fantastic and plentiful, the topic still relevant — I really liked this one.

Test

Who’s Afraid of Vagina Wolf?: A film within a film lead by an all female cast that attempts to remake the Liz Taylor/Richard Burton Classic by a similar name. The director creates this elaborate scheme to seduce one of her stars and it all goes terribly wrong. Lots of insider lesbian humor and a full length vagina costume.

Who’s Afraid of Vagina Wolf?

The Rugby Player: An intimate and touching documentary about one of the heroes of United flight 93 Mark Bingham, a butch rugby player who happened to be gay. His mother drives the narrative peppered with lots of snapshots and video clips of the handsome man through various stages of his short life.

The Rugby Player

Kink: WOW, this was a real jaw dropping documentary that, “takes us into the painful but oh so pleasurable world of five BDSM workers as they choke, spank and scream there way through just another day at the office.” A real intimate and honest look into the making of this particular type of porn I previously knew nothing about but now feel totally schooled.

Kink

Getting Go: The Go Doc Project: Starring one of GAYLETTER’s dear friends Tanner Cohen who plays a student named Doc obsessed with a go-go dancer aptly played by Matthew Camp. Under the pretext of making a documentary about the dancer Doc gets to meet his dream boy and a whole lotta carrying on ensues.

Getting Go: The Go Doc Project

There’s one more film in the line up I haven’t seen yet but am so looking forward to — Mohammed to Maya about a transgendered muslim who travels to Thailand for sexual reassignment surgery. It sounds right up my alley. There’s plenty more to see, check out the full list of options here and enjoy the festival.

Mohammed to Maya