Acting Out (2014)

Director
Ana Grillo; Christina Magdalinou; Silvia Torneden

Main cast
Angelina Maccarone; Alice Nkom; Axel Ranisch; Texas Starr; Wieland Speck

Genres
Documentary

Description
ACTING OUT is a documentary about the International Queer Film Festival Hamburg that celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2014. The filmmakers have filmed, interviewed, gleaned the archives, watched hours of footage and edited reams of material into a small masterpiece. With its gorgeous shots and sublime soundtrack, the documentary entertainingly brings across both the unique atmosphere and 25-year history, and above all, illuminates the complex mesh that both forms and carries the festival. On another note, the film tries to detect the ways a queer film festival like this has functioned as a platform for unheard voices - and continues to do so in the present. For some people, its sole existence has been a life changing momentum.


Similar movies

The love story between British writer, Christopher Isherwood (whose book 'The Berlin Stories' inspired the musical and film Cabaret) and Don Bachardy, American portrait artist.
Ellen Page and her best friend, Ian Daniel, set off on a personal journey to explore LGBT cultures around the world. From Japan to Brazil to Jamaica to the USA, the two meet some fascinating people during their travels and hear their stories.
SEDUCED AND ABANDONED combines acting legend Alec Baldwin with director James Toback as they lead us on a troublesome and often hilarious journey of raising financing for their next feature film. Moving from director to financier to star actor, the two players provide us with a unique look behind the curtain at the world's biggest and most glamourous film festival, shining a light on the bitter-sweet relationship filmmakers have with Cannes and the film business. Featuring insights from directors Martin Scorsese, 'Bernando Bertolucci' and Roman Polanski; actors Ryan Gosling and Jessica Chastain and a host of film distribution luminaries.
This unusual documentary-style feature starts with ordinary people discussing their private erotic desires; what sets it apart from other documentaries, which often feature a lot of talk, is that in this experimental film, 10 of the subjects then act out their most intimate fantasies. Carl Gurevich and Ralph Rosenblum (the acclaimed editor of Woody Allen's comedies Annie Hall and Sleeper) co-direct this daring peek into the human sexual psyche.
On the 11th Annual National Day of Silence, Erin Davies was victim to a hate crime in Albany, New York. Because of sporting a rainbow sticker on her VW Beetle, Erin's car was vandalized, left with the words "fag" and "u r gay" placed on the driver's side window and hood of her car. Despite initial shock and embarrassment, Erin decided to embrace what happened by leaving the graffiti on her car. She took her car, now known worldwide as the "fagbug," on a 58-day trip around the United States and Canada. Along the way, Erin discovered other, more serious hate crimes, had people attempt to remove the graffiti, and experimented with having a male drive her car. After driving the fagbug for one year, Erin decided to give her car a makeover.
For decades, performance artist and writer Kate Bornstein has been exploding binaries and deconstructing gender. And, her own identity. Trans-dyke. Reluctant polyamorist. Sadomasochist. Recovering Scientologist. Pioneering Gender Outlaw. Kate Bornstein Is a Queer and Pleasant Danger, joins her on her latest tour capturing rollicking public performances and painful personal revelations as it bears witness to Kate as a trailblazing artist theorist activist who inhabits a space between male and female with wit, style, and astonishing candor. By turns meditative and playful, the film invites us on a thought provoking journey through Kate's world to seek answers to some of life's biggest questions.
In this crazy, chaotic gospel of chance, aspiring filmmakers Chris Stamp and Kit Lambert set out to search for a subject for their underground movie, leading them to discover, mentor, and manage the iconic band known as The Who and create rock 'n' roll history.
Out to Win is a documentary film that serves as an overview and examination of lives and careers of aspiring and professional gay and lesbian athletes from all over the world. Chronicling the present, framed within a historical context of those that came before, this film highlights the experiences of athletes who have fought and struggled, both in and out of the closet, to represent the LGBT community and their true selves. This film is told through the voices of pioneers, present day heroes, tomorrow's superstars and the people who've helped them succeed. Featuring interviews with trailblazers including Martina Navratilova, Billie Jean King, Jason Collins, Brittney Griner and more.
This documentary depicts the filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky talking about his life, his loves, his career as a filmmaker, graphic novelist, and workshop leader, and his eccentricities including tarot reader and theatrical director during The Panic Movement. Directed by Louis Mouchet, La Constellation Jodorowsky includes a lengthy on-camera interview with Jodorowsky in Spanish with subtitles. Marcel Marceau, Fernando Arrabal, Peter Gabriel, Jean "Moebius" Giraud, and Jean Pierre Vignau make appearances discussing their various projects with the director. In addition to the interview and film clips, Mouchet features some bizarre footage from Jodorowsky’s absurdist plays in which topless women splattered with paint writhe around the stage in a theatrical production meant to represent The Panic Movement, i.e., an artistic expression in which reason cannot fully express the human experience.
Filmmaker and ex-Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints member Reed Cowan examines that church's nationwide efforts to prevent the legalization of gay marriage - including California's Proposition 8, which was passed by voters in 2008. Confidential church documents, statements by high-ranking church officials and other sources detail 30 years of efforts to turn back gay rights, particularly by the Mormon-sponsored National Organization for Marriage.
Mutantes sheds light on a feminism that was little talked about in France. This documentary comprises of a series of interviews conducted in the USA, Paris and Barcelona, and documents from the archives about the political action of sex workers, queer activists and post-pornographic performances.
After a lifetime of hiding, Chely Wright becomes the first commercial country music singer to come out as gay, shattering cultural stereotypes within Nashville, per conservative heartland family and, most importantly, within herself. With unprecedented access over a two-year period, including her private video diaries, the film layers Chely's rise to fame while hiding in the late 90's with the execution of her coming out plan, culminating in the exciting moment when she steps into the media glare to reveal she is gay. The film shows both the devastation of internalized homophobia and the transformational power of living an authentic life. The film also documents the conflicting responses from Nashville, the heartland and the LGBT community as Chely Wright prepares for an unknown future.
By the mid-1980s, the fabled animation studios of Walt Disney had fallen on hard times. The artists were polarized between newcomers hungry to innovate and old timers not yet ready to relinquish control. These conditions produced a series of box-office flops and pessimistic forecasts: maybe the best days of animation were over. Maybe the public didn't care. Only a miracle or a magic spell could produce a happy ending. Waking Sleeping Beauty is no fairy tale. It's the true story of how Disney regained its magic with a staggering output of hits - "Little Mermaid," "Beauty and the Beast ," "Aladdin," "The Lion King," and more - over a 10-year period.
About a filmmaker not only revisiting, but also recreating (not in a conventional sense) one of his first films, The Perfect Human / Det perfekte menneske (1967)
In Uganda, a new bill threatens to make homosexuality punishable by death. David Kato - Uganda's first openly gay man - and his fellow activists work against the clock to defeat the legislation while combating vicious persecution in their daily lives. But no one, not even the filmmakers, is prepared for the brutal murder that shakes the movement to its core and sends shock waves around the world. (from imdb)
A documentary road-movie about 7 young women's artists on tour on a bus, all over Europe this summer, who create on stage a manifesto on feminism, sex, art and education.
At age 73, writer and melancholy master of the bon mot, Quentin Crisp (1908-1999), became an Englishman in New York. Rossiter's camera follows Crisp about the streets of Manhattan, where Crisp seems very much at home, wearing eye shadow, appearing on a makeshift stage, making and repeating wry observations, talking to John Hurt (who played Crisp in the autobiographical TV movie, "The Naked Civil Servant"), and dining with friends. Others who know Crisp comment on him, on his life as an openly gay man with an effeminate manner, and on his place in the history of gays' social struggle. The portrait that emerges is of one wit and of suffering.
Director Sophie Fiennes reunites with philosophical provocateur Slavoj Žižek for this follow-up to their hit The Pervert's Guide to Cinema, in which Žižek applies his inimitable and penetrating insights to films both famous and obscure as he interprets their overt and concealed meanings. (TIFF)
A chronological look at films by, for, or about (or "by, for, and about") gays and lesbians in the United States, from 1947 to 2005, Kenneth Anger's "Fireworks" to "Brokeback Mountain." Talking heads, anchored by critic and scholar B. Ruby Rich, are interspersed with an advancing timeline and with clips from two dozen films. The narrative groups the pictures around various firsts, movements, and triumphs: experimental films, indie films, sex on screen, outlaw culture and bad guys, lesbian lovers, films about AIDS and dying, emergence of romantic comedy, transgender films, films about diversity and various cultures, and then mainstream Hollywood drama. What might come next?
Paris Is Burning is a 1990 documentary (directeor Jennie Livingston) filmed in the mid-to-late 1980s, chronicling the ball culture of New York City and the poor, African American and Latino gay and transgendered community involved in it. Many consider Paris Is Burning to be an invaluable documentary of the end of the "Golden Age" of New York City drag balls and exploration of queer culture
The world knows Paul Newman as an Academy Award winning actor with a fifty-plus year career as one of the most prolific and revered actors in American Cinema. He was also well known for his philanthropy; Newman's Own has given more than four hundred and thirty million dollars to charities around the world. Yet few know the gasoline-fueled passion that became so important in this complex, multifaceted man's makeup. Newman’s deep-seated passion for racing was so intense it nearly sidelined his acting career. His racing career spanned thirty-five years; Newman won four national championships as a driver and eight championships as an owner. Not bad for a guy who didn't even start racing until he was forty-seven years old.
Legendary martial artist Bruce Lee is the subject of this thoughtful documentary by Lee aficionado John Little. Using interviews, behind-the-scenes footage and action sequences from Lee's last (unfinished) film, Game of Death, Little paints a textured, complex portrait of the world's most famous action hero
The story of artist Edith Lake Wilkinson, a painter who was committed to an asylum in 1924 and never heard from again. All her worldly possessions were packed into trunks and shipped to a relative in West Virginia where they sat in an attic for 40 years. Edith's great-niece, Emmy Award winning writer and director Jane Anderson, grew up surrounded by Edith's paintings, thanks to her mother who had gone poking through that dusty attic and rescued Edith's work. The film follows Jane in her decades-long journey to find the answers to the mystery of Edith's buried life, return the work to Provincetown and have Edith's contributions recognized by the larger art world.
Interview with Jason Holliday aka Aaron Payne, house boy, would be cabaret performer, and self proclaimed hustler giving one man's gin-soaked pill-popped, view of what it was like to be coloured and gay in 1960's America.
A look at the social and individual impact of the boy porn industry in Europe. Men in boy porn business within the commerciality of the passing beauty of youth, of poverty. Gay porn is the fastest growing segment of the Entertainment business. And it's the exploitation of the lonely...
From the first time he performed Swimming to Cambodia - the one-man account of his experience of making the 1984 film The Killing Fields - Spalding Gray made the art of the monologue his own. Drawing unstintingly on the most intimate aspects of his own life, his shows were vibrant, hilarious and moving. His death came tragically early, in 2004; this compilation of interview and performance footage nails his idiosyncratic and irreplaceable brilliance.
In a celebration of the trans community in Puerto Rico, the fissure between internal and external is an ever-present battle. A unique exploration of self-discovery and activism, featuring a diverse collection of subjects that include LGBTQ advocates, business owners, sex workers, and a boisterous group of drag performers who call themselves The Doll House, Mala Mala portrays a fight for personal and community acceptance paved with triumphant highs and devastating lows. Through riv
Over the course of a year, film follows Vancouver Pride Society president Ken Coolen to various international Pride events, including Poland, Hungary, Russia, Sri Lanka and others where there is great opposition to pride parades. In North America, Pride is complicated by commercialization and a sense that the festivals are turning away from their political roots toward tourism, party promotion and entertainment. Christie documents the ways larger, more mainstream Pride events have supported the global Pride movement and how human rights components are being added to more established events. In the New York sequence, leaders organize an alternative Pride parade, the Drag March, set up to protest the corporatization of New York Pride. A parade in São Paulo, the world's largest Pride festival, itself includes a completely empty float, meant to symbolize all those lost to HIV and to anti-gay violence.
A documentary on legendary movie-poster artist Drew Struzan.
Sex Positive explores the life of Richard Berkowitz, a revolutionary gay S&M hustler turned AIDS activist in the 1980s, whose incomparable contribution to the invention of safe sex has never been aptly credited. Mr. Berkowitz emerged from the epicenter of the epidemic demanding a solution to the problem before the outside world would take heed. Now destitute and alone, Mr. Berkowitz tells his story to a world who never wanted to listen.
He slept with Sal Mineo, was photographed by Andy Warhol, and he was lusted after by millions of men around the world. Model, photographer, filmmaker, clothing designer, and porn icon Peter Berlin is his own greatest creation. Berlin is front and center in this bio documentary from director Jim Tushinski, and featuring interviews with director John Waters, novelist Armistead Maupin, 70s porn director Wakefield Poole and more, all with Berlin as the subject. This intimate film reveals the legendary man with the white saran wrapped pants, undersized leather vests, and Dutch-boy haircut
What "That's Entertainment" did for movie musicals, "The Celluloid Closet" does for Hollywood homosexuality, as this exuberant, eye-opening movie serves up a dazzling hundred-year history of the role of gay men and lesbians have had on the silver screen. Lily Tomlin narrates as Oscar-winning moviemaker Rob Epstein (The Times of Harvey Milk and Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt) and Jeffrey Friedman assemble fabulous footage from 120 films showing the changing face of cinema sexuality, from cruel stereotypes to covert love to the activist triumphs of the 1990s. Tom Hanks, Susan Sarandon, Whoopi Goldberg, Tony Curtis, Harvey Fierstein and Gore Vidal are just a few of the many actors, writers and commentators who provide funny and insightful anecdotes.
In 2001 Jack Cardiff (1914-2009) became the first director of photography in the history of the Academy Awards to win an Honorary Oscar. But the first time he clasped the famous statuette in his hand was a half-century earlier when his Technicolor camerawork was awarded for Powell and Pressburger's Black Narcissus. Beyond John Huston's The African Queen and King Vidor's War and Peace, the films of the British-Hungarian creative duo (The Red Shoes and A Matter of Life and Death too) guaranteed immortality for the renowned cameraman whose career spanned seventy years.
In 1987, Eddie Lee Sausage and Mitch Deprey recorded the nightly squabbles of their over-the-top neighbors, homophobic Raymond Huffman and proudly gay Peter Haskett, and the chronicle of the pair's bizarre existence soon took on a life of its own. This darkly funny documentary checks in with former punks Eddie and Mitch, who detail their late-'80s Lower Haight surroundings, and surveys the tapes' influence on an array of underground artists.
Game Face shows the quest to self-realization of LGBT athletes and the acceptance in society. The film follows athletes during their coming out process, and sheds light on the obstacles LGBT sports players deal with throughout their career.
Describing herself as a 'street queen,' Johnson was a tireless voice for LGBT pride since the days of Stonewall. Her death in 1992 was declared a suicide by the NYPD, but friends never accepted that version of events. This documentary is a celebration of Johnson's activism and legacy. And an attempt to solve the mystery of her demise.
A diffraction of the autobiography using family footage filmed between the 1940s and today, this "science fiction documentary" creates multiple "I"s and transcends a story of mourning
Documentary about the gender-bending San Francisco performance group who became a pop culture phenomenon in the early 1970s.
This documentary shows a few days in the life of various members of Abdijan, Ivory Coast's gay and transgendered community. We get to meet a variety of woubis, yossis, etc. The hero/heroine of the film is a statuesque young man named Barbara who is organising the annual year-end party of the Ivory Coast Tranvestite Association, to be held December 27, 1997.
Through the voices of Americans from all walks of life, The Out List explores the identities of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community in America. In this series of intimate interviews, a diverse group of LGBT personalities bring color and depth to their experiences of gender and sexuality. With wit and wisdom, this set of trailblazing individuals weaves universal themes of love, loss, trial, and triumph into the determined struggle for full equality.
One of the dominating figures in Elvis Presley's life was his manager, who was known as the "Colonel". No other relationship in Elvis' life was as controversial and misunderstood as the one he had with Colonel Tom Parker. The truth about their unique friendship is revealed in this documentary.
A shocking look at how a recent anti-gay amendment to a Russian propaganda law has led to increased assaults on gay men and women. In modern-day Russia, where it is estimated that just 1% of the LGBT population lives completely openly, a recent anti-gay amendment to a “propaganda” law has been followed by a rising number of assaults on gay men and women by vigilantes who, more often than not, go unpunished for their crimes. The expose HUNTED: THE WAR AGAINST GAYS IN RUSSIA looks at this climate of hostility.
Documentary about legendary Paramount producer Robert Evans (the film shares the same name as Evans's famous 1994 autobiography).
What happens when a generation's ultimate anti-authoritarians — punk rockers — become society's ultimate authorities — dad's? With a large chorus of Punk Rock's leading men — Blink-182's Mark Hoppus, Red Hot Chili Peppers' Flea, Rise Against's Tim McIlrath — The Other F Word follows Jim Lindberg, 20-year veteran of skate punk band, Pennywise, on his hysterical and moving journey from belting his band's anthem, 'Fuck Authority', to embracing his ultimately pivotal authoritarian role in mid-life, fatherhood.
A documentary of the successful career and assassination of San Francisco's first elected gay councilor.
A sensitive portrait of Sabine Bonnaire, the autistic sister of the french actress Sandrine Bonnaire.
Zürich in the mid 50‘s: The young shy teacher Ernst Ostertag becomes a member of the gay organisation DER KREIS. There he gets to know the transvesti- te star Röbi Rapp – and immediately falls head over heels in love with him. Röbi and Ernst live through the high point and the eventual decline of the organization, which in the whole of Europe is seen as the pioneer of gay eman- cipation. Ernst finds himself torn between his bour- geois existence and his commitment to homosexuality, for Röbi it is about his first serious love relationship. A relationship which will last a lifetime. The film looks back from the present to the time when the „Mother“ of all European homosexual or- ganizations had its high point to the time it slowly fell apart. While the repression against homosexu- als became increasingly more intense in Zurich, two young and very different men fight for their love and – together with their friends – for the rights of gays.
FOREIGNERS OUT! SCHLINGENSIEFS CONTAINER is a thrilling, insightful, funny chronicle and reflection of one of he biggest public pranks and acts of art terrorism ever committed. Austria 2000: Right after the FPÖ under Jörg Haider had become part of the government, the first time an extreme right wing party became state officials after WW2, infamous German shock director Christoph Schlingensief showed a very unique form of protest. Realising public xenophobia and the new hate politics in the most drastic ways possible, he installed a public concentration camp right in the middle of Vienna's touristic heart, right beside the picturesque opera where hundreds of tourists and locals pass by daily. And it was no concentration camp you had ever feared to return from the old times, but one that cynically reflected our new multimedia culture. Satirising reality TV shows, "Big Brother" especially, a dozen asylum seekers were surveilled by a multitude of cameras, could be fed and watched by.
Julian Assange. Bradley Manning. Collateral murder. Cablegate. WikiLeaks. These people and terms have exploded into public consciousness by fundamentally changing the way democratic societies deal with privacy, secrecy, and the right to information, perhaps for generations to come. We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks is an extensive examination of all things related to WikiLeaks and the larger global debate over access to information.
It’s the summer of 1984 – Margaret Thatcher is in power and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) is on strike. At the Gay Pride March in London, a group of gay and lesbian activists decides to raise money to support the families of the striking miners. But there is a problem. The Union seems embarrassed to receive their support. But the activists are not deterred. They decide to ignore the Union and go direct to the miners. They identify a mining village in deepest Wales and set off in a mini bus to make their donation in person. And so begins the extraordinary story of two seemingly alien communities who form a surprising and ultimately triumphant partnership.
Set in the 1980s and 1990s, a man tries to salvage his relationship with his fiancée after revealing to her his aspirations of becoming a woman. This is the story of a wild and unusual love.
Religion, politics and gay pride clash in a small Tennessee town when out, proud and living in New York Jason Potts returns home to make life better for the LGBT teenagers.
If you had a love-potion, who would you make fall madly in love with you? Timothy, prone to escaping his dismal high school reality through dazzling musical daydreams, gets to answer that question in a very real way. After his eccentric teacher casts him as Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream, he stumbles upon a recipe hidden within the script to create the play's magical, purple love-pansy.
A pair of teenage boys growing up in a working-class neighborhood become aware of their homosexuality. While both were vaguely aware they might be gay, neither had ever acted on their impulses. Once they decide that they're attracted to each other, neither is sure just what to do.
Queer Duck: The Movie is the relentlessly funny, feature-length extension of the animated series Queer Duck, created by frequent The Simpsons scripter Mike Reiss. Sexually scandalous yet sweet, the movie is a cascade of pop-culture stereotypes of gays in America, punctuated by rapid-fire references (as with The Simpsons) to, well, just about everything: classic movies, game shows, Gilbert and Sullivan, Paul Lynde. Hey, there's even a storyline: Queer Duck (voiced by Jim J. Bullock) and his partner of 18 months ("That's a lifetime in gay years"), Harvey Fierstein sound-alike Stephen Arlo "Openly" Gator (Kevin Michael Richardson), hit a relationship crisis when the fey fowl is wooed by a brassy Broadway broad. Queer Duck wonders if he'd be happier being straight. While Gator the waiter spills his problems to a compassionate Conan O'Brien (thanks for the cameo)...
The film is the story of a group of soldiers, who, in the course of their compulsory military service in 1967 and 1968, before and during the military dictatorship in Greece, are assigned to the then recently founded Armed Forces Television. This TV station, founded for the civilian population, was run by the Cinematographic Unit of the army which until then had only produced propaganda films and newsreels and was responsible for entertaining the troops and other charity organizations with movie screenings. The personnel was composed mostly of soldiers, who already had experience in the film business in their civilian lives, as well as those who received their training in the army. The story may be only 95% true, but that is simply because the true story is even more absurd...
The family is pleasantly surprised and puzzled when Beethoven suddenly becomes obedient. Turns out it's a prince and the pauper scenario, with the real Beethoven now living with a pompous rich family.
An irreverent and refreshing take on the queer world of sex, lust and unrequited love. Lanky, blue haired Jackson, record store employee and poet, is in love with most of the men in his life! A refreshing departure from the typical gay love story, LUSTER is a raw and darkly comic look at young punks in love.
Oliver Watson has never been luckier: he is a successful advertising executive, shares a marriage of eighteen years with Sarah and has three loving kids: 17-year-old Ben, 15-year-old Melissa, and 9-year-old Sam. His perfect life suddenly falls apart when his wife Sarah announces that she wants to enter a graduate school 200 miles away from home, as she regrets that she gave up her bohemian protester's life and promising writing career to become the wife of a conservative traditionalist. Oliver unsuccessfully tries to save his marriage, until Sarah announces that she is seeing someone else. The children start acting out as a reaction and life is complicated by the death of Oliver’s mother and accepts a job in L.A. where he falls in love with Charlotte Sampson. Life again challenges Oliver when Charlotte is offered her dream job on Broadway.
Filip buys an 8mm movie camera when his first child is born. Because it's the first camera in town, he's named official photographer by the local Party boss. His horizons widen when he is sent to regional film festivals with his first works but his focus on movie making also leads to domestic strife and philosophical dilemmas.

© Valossa 2015–2024