Gary Carnivele

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23rd San Francisco Silent Film Festival at the Castro Theatre, May 30–June 3, 2018

 
The San Francisco Silent Film Festival (SFSFF) announced today the complete lineup for its 23rd edition. Adding a fifth day to the annual celebration of art of live cinema (silent-era films with live musical accompaniment), the festival will take place May 30 to June 3, 2018 at the historic Castro Theatre in San Francisco.

The largest, most prestigious festival devoted to silent film in the Americas, SFSFF will present twenty-three programs, all with live musical accompaniment, including eleven recent film restorations. Ten of those restorations will make their North American premieres at the festival and four are SFSFF projects.

Films from nine countries will be represented at the festival (Denmark, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Sweden, USA, and the USSR), and more than 40 musicians from around the world will accompany the films. The musicians include: the Berklee Silent Film Festival (student composers, conductors, and players, from the Berklee College of Music in Boston), Guenter Buchwald and Frank Bockius  (Germany), Sascha Jacobsen and the Musical Art Quintet (San Francisco), Stephen Horne (UK), Matti Bye Ensemble (quintet from Sweden and Finland), Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra (Colorado), Donald Sosin (New York), and Alicia Svigals (New York).

The 2018 San Francisco Silent Film Festival Awaard will be presented to Jon Wengström and the Swedish Film Institute at the premiere of the SFI’s new restoration of The Saga of Gösta Berling on Saturday, June 2, 7:00 pm. The film marks Greta Garbo’s first starring role!

The festival will begin on Wednesday, May 30 with a special presentation of Universal Pictures’ new restoration of Paul Leni’s 1928 The Man Who Laughs. Leni’s adaptation of Victor Hugo’s 1869 novel about a man disfigured from childhood stands with the great masterworks of the silent era. This presentation also marks the world premiere of a commissioned score by Berklee College of Music’s Silent Film Orchestra.

To close the festival on Sunday, June 3, SFSFF will present the North American premiere of Cineteca di Bologna’s restoration (in collaboration with Cohen Film Collection) of Buster Keaton’s Battling Butler, which will be accompanied by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra. Keaton considered this sparkling comedy his personal favorite among his works.

Complete information is available at www.silentfilm.org

* SFSFF 2018 PROGRAM LIST

May 30, 7:00 pm | Opening Night
THE MAN WHO LAUGHS
111 minutes | $24 general / $22 member
USA, 1928, d. Paul Leni
Cast: Conrad Veidt, Mary Philbin, Julius Molnar, Olga Baclanova
Spellbinding in its visual acuity and psychological depth, director Paul Leni’s adaptation of Victor Hugo’s 1869 novel about a man disfigured from childhood stands with the great masterworks of the silent era.
Live musical accompaniment by Berklee Silent Film Orchestra
Restoration by Universal Pictures

May 30, 9:00 pm | Opening Night Party
120 minutes | $25 general / $20 member
Combo Film and Party: $45 general / $37 member

  • Special added program May 30, 3:00 pm: Jon Wengström of the Swedish Film Institute (this year’s SFSFF Award recipient) will present an illustrated lecture with rare Greta Garbo footage at the PFA, Berkeley with Stephen Horne on piano. Info: bampfa.org

May 31, 10:00 am
Amazing Tales from the Archives
100 minutes | Free
Join us for another edition of our popular free program—a behind-the-curtain look at the international preservation scene! Sharing their amazing preservation tales are Deutsche Kinemathek’s Martin Koerber, who, with Weimar film scholar Cynthia Walk, will talk about the complete reworking of E.A. Dupont’s The Ancient Law (screening on Sunday); Davide Pozzi from L’Immagine Ritrovata in Bologna, whose Kinemacolor presentation will examine the first successful color process for motion pictures; and Elżbieta Wysocka of Filmoteka Narodowa, with SFSFF’s Robert Byrne and Russell Merritt, will share the detective story that led to the rediscovery and restoration of Richard Oswald’s German version of The Hound of the Baskervilles (screening on Saturday).
Live musical accompaniment by Donald Sosin

May 31, 1:00 pm
SOFT SHOES
45 minutes / with short: 62 minutes | $17 general / $15 member
USA, 1925, d. Lloyd Ingraham
Cast: Harry Carey, Lillian Rich, Paul Weigel, Francis Ford
Harry Carey plays small-town sheriff Pat Halahan, who comes into an inheritance and travels to San Francisco to collect. All hell breaks out in the crime-ridden metropolis, but Sheriff Pat holds his own, gets the girl, and saves the day!
With short: Detained (1924, d. Scott Pembroke, starring Stan Laurel, 17 m.)
Live musical accompaniment by Donald Sosin
Soft Shoes restoration funded through a grant from the National Film Preservation Foundation with additional funding from the SFSFF Film Preservation Fund. Film restored by by SFSFF in partnership with Národní Filmový Archiv (Prague) and is based on the nitrate print preserved at the archive.

May 31, 2:45 pm
MASTER OF THE HOUSE
DU SKAL ÆRE DIN HUSTRU
107 minutes | $17 general / $15 member
Denmark, 1925, d. Carl Th. Dreyer
Cast: Johannes Meyer, Astrid Holm, Mathilde Nielsen, Karin Nellemose
Several years before his piercing drama The Passion of Joan of Arc, Danish master Carl Th. Dreyer made this exquisite comedy. When downsized husband Viktor (Johannes Meyer) becomes an autocrat at home, his wife Ida (Astrid Holm) and wily family nanny Mads (Mathilde Nielsen) turn the tables, deftly puncturing Viktor’s sense of entitlement and restoring domestic equilibrium.
Live musical accompaniment by Stephen Horne
Print courtesy of the Danish Film Institute

May 31, 5:15 pm
AN INN IN TOKYO
TÔKYÔ NO YADO
80 minutes | $17 general / $15 member
Japan, 1935, d. Yasujirô Ozu
Cast: Takeshi Sakamoto, Yoshiko Okada, Chôko Iida, Tomio Aoki
Ozu’s poetic masterpiece follows a single father (Takeshi Sakamoto) who wanders the industrial outskirts of Tokyo looking for work with his two young boys in tow. The story is told with great delicacy and humor, the characters drawn with such vivid humanity, that, like most of Ozu’s oeuvre, Inn bristles with life-affirming truth.
Live musical accompaniment by Guenter Buchwald and Frank Bockius
Print courtesy of Janus Films

May 31, 7:15 pm
PEOPLE ON SUNDAY
MENSCHEN AM SONNTAG
73 minutes | $24 general / $22 member
Germany, 1930, d. Robert Siodmak, Edgar G. Ulmer, Billy Wilder, Fred Zinnemann
Years before their eventual Hollywood successes, a group of young German filmmakers took to the streets of Berlin to create “a film without actors.” A descendant of the “city symphony” films of the 1920s, People follows a coterie of city dwellers (an appealing cast of non-professionals) who go on a weekend outing. In its blending of fiction and documentary, the film is both charming and lyrical—and a breathtaking portrait of Weimar Berlin on the cusp of the rise of the Nazis.
Live musical accompaniment by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra
Print courtesy of Deutsche Kinemathek, with permission of Janus Films

May 31, 9:15 pm
THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPERS
GARDIENS DE PHARE
83 minutes | $17 general / $15 member
France, 1929, d. Jean Grémillon
Cast: Paul Fromet, Geymond Vital, Genica Athanasiou, Gabrielle Fontan, Maria Fromet
A raging sea strands a man and his son in a lighthouse off the coast of Brittany in this silent French masterpiece. As the film unfolds it becomes apparent that the son is suffering from rabies and getting progressively worse. Based on a one-act play created for the Théâtre du Grand Guignol, director Grémillon limns the horrific psychological details without resorting to guignolesque excess.
Live musical accompaniment by Guenter Buchwald and Frank Bockius
Print courtesy of National Film Centre of Tokyo

June 1, 10:00 am
GOOD REFERENCES
60 minutes | $14 general / $12 member
USA, 1920, d. Roy William Neill
Cast: Constance Talmadge, Vincent Coleman, Ned Sparks, Nellie P. Spaulding
One of the brightest comedic stars of the silent era, Constance Talmadge plays a penniless, yet cheerful single gal who can’t find work because of her lack of references—until she impersonates a sick friend and gets a job as secretary to an elderly socialite. And then things really go downhill!
Live musical accompaniment by Donald Sosin
Restoration by UCLA Film and Television Archive from an original nitrate print discovered at the Národni Filmový Archiv in Prague

June 1, 12:00 noon
THE OTHER WOMAN’S STORY
65 minutes | $17 general / $15 member
USA, 1925, d. B.F. Stanley
Cast: Alice Calhoun, Robert Frazer, Helen Lee Worthing, Gertrude Short
Robert Marshall’s dying utterance seems to point to Colman Colby (Robert Frazer) as his killer. Colby is arrested and at trial all testimony points to his guilt. But as the jury deliberates, the unfairly named “other woman” (Helen Lee Worthing) sets out to prove his innocence.
Live musical accompaniment by Stephen Horne
Restoration by SFSFF using materials preserved at the Library of Congress, Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation with funding by David Stenn
Live musical accompaniment by Stephen Horne

June 1, 2:00 pm
SILENT AVANT-GARDE
70 minutes | $17 general / $15 member
From the collection of Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Films
Included in this program of films from the extraordinary Unseen Cinema collection: Anémic Cinéma (1924-26, Marcel Duchamp); [Pas de deux] Looney Lens (1924, Fox Movietone); a Slavko Vorkapich montage with four sequences (1928–34); A Bronx Morning (1931, Jay Leyda); The Life and Death of 9413–A Hollywood Extra (1927, Robert Florey); Hände (1927, Mikos Bandy and Stella F. Simon); and 1931 Mexican footage by Sergei Eisenstein.
Live musical accompaniment by the Matti Bye Ensemble
Prints courtesy of Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film 1894-1941, a collaborative film preservation and restoration project by Anthology Film Archive, New York, and Deutsches Filmmuseum, Frankfurt-am Main, with generous support by Cineric, Inc., Eastman Kodak Company, and Film Preservation Associates
Live musical accompaniment by the Matti Bye Ensemble

June 1, 4:15
ROSITA
90 minutes | $17 general / $15 member
USA, 1923, d. Ernst Lubitsch
Cast: Mary Pickford, Holbrook Blinn, Irene Rich
Mary Pickford brought German director Ernst Lubitsch to Hollywood to direct her in Rosita, his first American film and their only collaboration. Pickford plays a Seville street singer who catches the eye of the comically lecherous Spanish king. MoMA’s restoration has returned this legendary film to a form as close as possible to its original release.
Live musical accompaniment by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra
Restoration by MoMA with funding provided by the Louis B. Mayer Foundation, Mary Pickford Foundation, RT Features, and The Film Foundation

June 1, 6:30 pm
MOTHER KRAUSE’S JOURNEY TO HAPPINESS
MUTTER KRAUSENS FAHRT INS GLÜCK
133 minutes | $24 general / $22 member
Germany, 1929, d. Piel Jutzi
Cast: Alexandra Schmidt, Holmes Zimmermann, Ilse Trautschold
Mother Krause shares a tenement apartment in Berlin’s Wedding district with her grown children, a shady lodger, his prostitute lover, and her child. She ekes out a living by selling newspapers, but when son Paul drinks up her earnings, desperation sets in. This Weimar masterpiece inspired R.W. Fassbinder’s 1975 Mutter Küsters’ Fahrt zum Himmel.
Restoration by the Munich Film Archive who reconstructed the film combining materials from the only remaining nitrate prints. The print has original intertitles in Berliner dialect.
Live musical accompaniment by Sascha Jacobsen and the Musical Art Quintet

June 1, 9:30
POLICEMAN
KEISATSUKAN
121 minutes | $17 general / $15 member
Japan, 1933, d. Tomu Uchida
Cast: Eiji Nakano, Isamu Kosugi, Taisuke Matsumoto
One of the few pre-WWII films of Tomu Uchida to survive reveals the Japanese director’s astonishing range. A stylish crime drama melding the fast pace of Hollywood with the fluid, evocative camerawork of the Germans is a gripping story of two childhood friends who grow to be on opposite sides of the law.
Live musical accompaniment by Stephen Horne
Print courtesy of the National Film Centre of Tokyo

June 2, 10:00 am
NO MAN’S GOLD
65 minutes | $14 general / $12 member
USA, 1926, d. Lewis Seiler
Cast: Tom Mix, Tony the Horse, Eva Novak, Frank Campeau, Michael D. Moore
Tom Mix was the first authentic cowboy to become a Hollywood Western star, appearing in nearly 300 films—almost all silent. One of the best titles Mix made for Fox Films, No Man’s Gold is a fast-paced actioneer featuring adventure, romance, and gorgeous Death Valley and Alabama Hills locations.
Live musical accompaniment by Donald Sosin and Frank Bockius
Print courtesy of Národní Filmový Archiv in Prague

June 2, 12:00 noon
MARE NOSTRUM
111 minutes | $17 general / $15 member
USA, 1926, d. Rex Ingram
Cast: Alice Terry, Antonio Moreno
Espionage, romance, and submarine warfare come together in this story, loosely based on Mata Hari, from the author of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Filmed in director Rex Ingram’s Nice studio and on Mediterranean locations, John Seitz’s luminous photography is shown to full effect in this tinted print.
Live musical accompaniment by Stephen Horne and Frank Bockius

June 2, 2:45 pm
TRAPPOLA
52 minutes, with short: 62 minutes | $17 general / $15 member
Italy, 1922, d. Eugenio Perego
Cast: Leda Gys, Suzanne Fabre, Gian Paolo Rosmino, Claudio Mari, Carlo Reiter
This effervescent comedy features one of the first starring roles for Leda Gys, Italy’s most-loved diva. Here she plays the irrepressible Leda Bardi, who goes from orphan to film star, poking gentle fun at convent life, movie production, and screen goddesses along the way.
With short: San Francisco, 1906 (newly discovered post-Earthquake footage!), screening in conjunction with Silver Shadows and the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum
Live musical accompaniment by Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra
Print courtesy of Cineteca Italiana, Milano

June 2, 4:45 pm
THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES
DER HUND VON BASKERVILLE
65 minutes | $17 general / $15 member
Germany, 1929, d. Richard Oswald
Cast: Carlyle Blackwell, Alexander Murski, Livio Pavanelli, Fritz Rasp
SFSFF is pleased to return Richard Oswald’s German version of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles to the Sherlockian canon. Long considered lost, this version was the last silent Sherlock Holmes film ever made and is considered the most important Hound produced in Europe.
Live musical accompaniment by the Guenter Buchwald Ensemble
SFSFF restoration in partnership with Filmoteka Narodowa – Instytut Audiowizualn (Poland), based on film materials conserved at the archive.

June 2, 7:00 pm
THE SAGA OF GÖSTA BERLING
GÖSTA BERLINGS SAGA
200 minutes | $24 general / $22 member
Sweden, 1924, d. Mauritz Stiller
Cast: Lars Hanson, Greta Garbo, Sven Scholander, Ellen Hartman-Cederström
Along with Victor Sjöström, Mauritz Stiller was a leading force behind the golden age of Swedish cinema. And his discovery of the young Greta Gustafsson gave the world the dazzling film star Greta Garbo! This is Garbo’s first starring role and she is radiant opposite the superb Lars Hanson as the defrocked minister.
Live musical accompaniment by the Matti Bye Ensemble
Restoration by the Swedish Film Institute
>>Preceding the screening, the 2018 SFSFF Award will be presented to Jon Wengström and the Swedish Film Institute.
>>There will be a 30-minute intermission at approximately 8:45 pm

June 3, 10:00 am
SERGE BROMBERG PRESENTS
65 minutes | $14 general / $12 members
A selection of short silents from Lobster Films—including several in 3D!
Included are Georges Méliès’s Robinson Crusoe (1902) and The Merry Frolics of Satan (1906); and in 3D, a Lumière Brothers stereoscopic selection and accidental 3Ds by Georges Méliès—The Oracle of Delphi (1903), The Infernal Cauldron, and The Mysterious Retort (1906). Plus, a stereoscopic demonstration from 1900, and a surprise or two!
Live musical accompaniment by Donald Sosin

June 3, 12:00 noon
A THROW OF DICE
PRAPANCHA PASH
74 minutes | $17 general / $15 member
India, 1929, d. Franz Osten
Cast: Seeta Devi, Humansu Rai, Charu Roy
Inspired by a tale in the Mahabharata, A Throw of Dice tells the story of two kings vying for the hand of a young woman. Filmed entirely on location in India, the film features Indian screen legends in the starring roles, a cast of more than 10,000 extras, and stunning visuals that capture exquisite landscapes.
Live musical accompaniment by Guenter Buchwald and Frank Bockius
Print courtesy of the British Film Institute

June 3, 2:15 pm
THE ANCIENT LAW
DAS ALTE GESETZ
129 minutes | $17 general / $15 member
Germany, 1923, d. E.A. Dupont
Cast: Henny Porten, Ruth Weyher, Hermann Vallentin, Ernst Deutsch
Ancient Law takes on the theme of Jewish assimilation in 19th-century Europe as it contrasts the closed world of shtetl life with liberal society. With its depiction of a rabbi’s son who breaks with family tradition to become an actor, this 1923 film was clearly the inspiration for the 1927 American film The Jazz Singer.
Live musical accompaniment by the Donald Sosin Ensemble with Alicia Svigals
Restoration by Deutsche Kinemathek

June 3, 5:30 pm
FRAGMENT OF AN EMPIRE
OBLOMOK IMPERII
109 minutes | $17 general / $15 member
USSR, 1929, d. Fridrikh Ermler
Cast: Fiodor Nikitin, Yakov Gudkin, Liudmila Semionova, Vaelerii Solotsov
A shell-shocked World War I soldier regains his memory after ten years and returns home to St. Petersburg, finding peace and justice but also heart-wrenching change. An exhilarating hymn of solidarity, this masterpiece has long been available only in truncated prints missing its most celebrated imagery—until now!
Live musical accompaniment by Stephen Horne and Frank Bockius
Restoration by SFSFF, EYE Filmmuseum, and Gosfilmofond of Russia, based on materials preserved by EYE Filmmuseum and Cinémathèque Suisse

June 3, 8:00 pm
BATTLING BUTLER
74 minutes | $24 general / $22 member
USA, 1926, d. Buster Keaton
Cast: Buster Keaton, Snitz Edwards, Sally O’Neil, Walter James
This sparkling comedy has Keaton as a wealthy fop who takes a high-end camping trip, meets a country girl, falls in love, and proposes marriage. When her he-man father won’t consent to a union with such a weakling, Buster masquerades as a prizefighter (who happens to share his name) to win the day.
Live musical accompaniment by Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra
Restoration by Cineteca di Bologna in collaboration with Cohen Collection

* SFSFF 2018 MUSICIANS

Based at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, the all-student BERKLEE SILENT FILM ORCHESTRA composes and performs under the leadership of Alison Plante.

Conductor, composer, pianist, and violinist GUENTER BUCHWALD is a pioneer of the renaissance in silent film music. He has provided live accompaniment for thousands of titles, playing at festivals worldwide from Berlin to Tokyo, both solo and with other musicians through his Silent Movie Music Company. Percussionist FRANK BOCKIUS joined Buchwald’s Silent Movie Music Company twenty years ago and has since performed for silent films around the world. Bockius will accompany Buchwald and several other performers this year.

Principally a pianist, STEPHEN HORNE often incorporates flute, accordion, and various other instruments into his performances, sometimes playing them simultaneously. Horne is considered one of the world’s leading silent film accompanists.

Led by bassist and composer Sascha Jacobsen, SASCHA JACOBSEN AND THE MUSICAL ART QUINTET also features Matthew Szemela and Michele Walther on violin, Keith Lawrence on viola, and Lews Patzner on cello. For his compositions, Jacobsen draws on a wealth of musical styles from classical to jazz.

Playing a variety of instruments that include piano, glockenspiel, violin, and percussion, the MATTI BYE ENSEMBLE is led by Matti Bye, silent-movie pianist at the Swedish Film Institute since 1989 and one of his country’s leading film composers. The ensemble members include Kristian Holmgren, Helena Espvall, Lotta Johannson, and Laura Naukkarinen.

Reviving the tradition of silent-film orchestras, MONT ALTO MOTION PICTURE ORCHESTRA culls historic libraries of music for live musical accompaniment. Rodney Sauer, Britt Swenson, David Short, Brian Collins, and Dawn Kramer have recorded and toured widely, creating vibrant and historically appropriate musical scores.

DONALD SOSIN scores silent films for major festivals, archives, and DVD recordings and is the resident accompanist at New York’s Film Society of Lincoln Center, the Museum of the Moving Image, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Violinist ALICIA SVIGALS is the world’s leading klezmer fiddler, a founder of the Grammy-winning Klezmatics who she led for seventeen years, and a composer who was selected to be a 2014 MacDowell Fellow.

PRESENTERS AT SFSFF 2018

Preservationist SERGE BROMBERG is the founder of Paris-based Lobster Films, where he has collected and preserved thousands of titles. Bromberg travels the globe presenting rare films with a showman’s flair.

SFSFF 2018 Award recipient JON WENGSTRÖM is curator of the archival film collections at the Swedish Film Institute, Stockholm.

This year’s Amazing Tales from the Archives presenters include: CYNTHIA WALK, Associate Professor Emerita, UC San Diego; MARTIN KOERBER, head of the department of Audiovisual Heritage at the Deutsche Kinemathek; SFSFF Board President and independent film preservationist ROBERT BYRNE and RUSSELL MERRITT, Professor in the Film Studies Department at UC Berkeley and member of the SFSFF board; ELŻBIETA WYSOCKA, head of film restoration and digital repository at Filmoteka Narodowa in Warsaw; and DAVIDE POZZI, Director at L’Immagine Ritrovata in Bologna.

* Tickets Information, Festival Dates and Public Contact Numbers
The 23rd San Francisco Silent Film Festival will take place May 30-June 3, 2018 at the historic Castro Theatre in San Francisco. For complete ticket information, please visit the San Francisco Silent Film Festival at silentfilm.org. The all-festival PASS is available for $260 general / $230 member. For group sales, call 415-777-4908 ext.1.

* For more information, visit the SFSFF website at silentfilm.org.

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Equality California Endorses TJ Cox for Congress in CA-21

Equality California, the nation’s largest statewide LGBTQ civil rights organization, has endorsed TJ Cox in California’s 21st Congressional District. The son of immigrants, Cox is a community development leader, health care advocate and entrepreneur running to represent the Central Valley district, which is one of the most competitive in the country after Hillary Clinton carried it in 2016 by 15.5 percentage points.

“California’s 21st district deserves a Congressman who will fight for everyone in the Central Valley — no matter where they came from, who they are or whom they love,” said Equality California Executive Director Rick Zbur. “TJ Cox is an outstanding candidate whose family has a long history of fighting for equality and social justice, and we’re proud to support his campaign.”

Republican incumbent Congressman David Valadao (CA-21) scored just 25 percent on Equality California’s 2017 Legislative Scorecard, indicating an anti-LGBTQ equality voting record. Unlike Valadao, Cox would fight to protect Medicaid, to pass the Equality Act and provide federal nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ Americans and to protect our communities from gun violence by instituting common sense gun safety laws.

“I am proud to receive the endorsement of Equality California,” said TJ Cox. “Our LGBTQ sons, daughters, brothers and sisters deserve equal rights and protections — from working without fear of discrimination to serving openly in our military without fear of reprisal. In Congress, I will stand up and fight for those rights and freedoms.”

Cox lives in Fresno with his wife Kathleen Murphy, M.D., a pediatric intensive care physician, and their four children. His mother Perla (Lola) DeCastro, an immigrant from the Philippines, was a pioneer for social justice and served as one of Nevada’s first equal opportunity employment officers. TJ continued his family’s tradition of service by founding the Central Valley New Market Tax Credit Fund, which invests in socially and economically disadvantaged communities throughout the Central Valley — raising and investing $65 million and creating over 1,500 Central Valley jobs.

California’s 21st District stretches from the Fresno suburbs in the north to Bakersfield in the south. The district is heavily agricultural, 70 percent Latino and over 200,000 residents were born outside the United States. Even after Clinton carried the district by a wide margin in November 2016, Valadao has voted with President Trump over 98 percent of the time.

Equality California is the nation’s largest statewide LGBTQ civil rights organization. We bring the voices of LGBTQ people and allies to institutions of power in California and across the United States, striving to create a world that is healthy, just, and fully equal for all LGBTQ people. We advance civil rights and social justice by inspiring, advocating and mobilizing through an inclusive movement that works tirelessly on behalf of those we serve. www.eqca.org

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Book Review: ‘Some Hell’ by Patrick Nathan

Many of us have sighed, shrugged, and explained to a well-meaning friend, “Oh, thanks for the recommendation, but I’m kind of done with fiction. I’ve gotten into reading [aviation history / comparative religion / cookbooks / insert nonfiction genre of interest].”

“But,” the friend insists, “it’s a debut LGBT coming-of-age novel!” That’s when we excuse ourselves to use the restroom, and climb out the window.

I’ll confess that I probably would not have chosen to read Some Hell, much less embraced this opportunity to review it, if I had not been familiar with the author’s nonfiction. Patrick Nathan is a thoughtful and provocative essayist, critic and interviewer whose work is reminiscent of Daniel Mendelsohn’s in Mendelsohn’s most generous moments. On the eighteenth anniversary of the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School, Full Stop carried Nathan’s essay “What Happens Next,” in which he addressed with incisive passion the National Rifle Association’s dominion over U.S. politicians. He suggested that we, the indolent consumers of reality-TV-style reportage, are complicit in the dozens of ensuing massacres. Among Nathan’s most multi-layered work is the 2016 personal essay “Parenthesis,” published at wordsinlight.org, concerning his grandfather’s obsession with his one-of-a-kind career—fashioning human dummies of wax and wood that were destined to be vaporized in U.S. government nuclear tests during the Cold War. In December, at the site Literary Hub, Nathan eloquently took on the Trump presidency: “Aside from expressing genuine compassion or indicating a shred of intelligence, there’s nothing the president can say, at this point, that should shock anyone.”

Some Hell is a character-inspired novel whose plot, when one reads recitations of its events, sounds as if it could overwhelm its characters. Accordingly, I find myself avoiding, more than usual, spoilers that might give away the story. The characters hold their own through the book’s many surprises. The writing is compelling, the characters heartbreakingly believable, and, although their circumstances can sound astonishing when described out of context, they are very much like the circumstances that have challenged, tempered, hardened, and sustained me and people I love.

“Coming-of-age novel,” the label generally being applied to the book in publicity materials and press reports, unfortunately will constrain readers’ expectations. Yes, Some Hell tells the story of an American middle-schooler. His name is Colin, and when we encounter him he is dealing with the universal pains of adolescence. He experiences familiar hardships including a crush on his best friend, sibling adversities, and a less-than-nurturing school environment. But many of Colin’s challenges are far from predictable, and his ways of dealing with those challenges even less so. He is a boy with a rich interior life, and the novel is driven by his growing alertness to the worlds around him and within him. His age places him squarely in Young Adult fiction territory, but the widely acknowledged if unwritten rules of that genre—particularly those governing explicit sex, underage sex, and kinky sex—disqualify him. Some Hell declines to conform to the rules of any established literary category.

Wisely, Nathan chose to give us a close view of Colin without writing in first person. We do not watch the world exclusively from Colin’s point of view; his mother, Diane, also maintains an active interior life to which we have access. When we are inside Colin’s head, we are not trapped with pubescent cynicism or petulance. We find room to understand, particularly when he does not, the difference between his posturing and his yearnings. His fantasies animate him even as he recognizes that he is using them to fuel denial: he approaches a pathologically isolated family member and we learn that for Colin, “It was easy to pretend he was rescuing stolen plans or launch code, and he slunk along the wall to avoid unseen trip wires. You couldn’t sneak up on the evil anarchist by strolling out in the open.”

Shifts in point of view can be jarring in the hands of an awkward novice. Nathan is skillful and very conscious of what he is doing when he concludes a chapter in Colin’s point of view with the single paragraph: “She could protect him.” The following chapter’s opening paragraph, “She couldn’t protect him,” launches a dark passage in Diane’s point of view. When Colin’s and Diane’s perspectives intersect, we read episodes that reveal the complexity of their relationship: “Why hadn’t he understood, until now, that when she waltzed around the house, reached for things like a ballet dancer, sang half of what she said, and closed her eyes with each deep breath, his mother was at her most depressed?”

Colin watches himself, sometimes with great skepticism, and learns more than he wants to know. Probably his greatest lesson is the universal one that each of us must learn from personal experience: that hell is our own creation. Like most of us, Colin tries to believe the surrounding culture’s platitudes about self-knowledge being a tool of growth and a step toward actualization, or at least a pivot away from despair. But the more intimately Colin comes to know himself, the more excruciating the torment he can customize for himself. Without asking us to suspend disbelief, Nathan has made bold decisions that push Colin’s hell to the borders of magical realism.

Nathan writes beautifully, without sentimentality. When we think a maudlin moment may have arrived, he yanks our chain: “His prayers sounded like questions, lilting up at the end as though God might simply pat him on the head. There was too much to worry about, his worry itself a growing thing—an infected organ inflamed and toxic.”

Notably absent from the book is any attempt to entertain the reader with humor. If we laugh, we laugh with wry recognition. Diane visits a therapist who is comically out of his depth—while she speaks of profound trauma, he compulsively clicks a pen, which he hovers over a note pad, and makes awkward, inappropriate jokes. “Just put down the fucking pen and listen to me, she wanted to say.” But she returns for follow-up sessions and laughs at herself for feeling that an ineffectual rookie therapist is just about right for her. Her son recalls a compassionate gesture from a schoolmate and we read, “Colin remembered her eyes, how they darted away and came back to him like fish hovering around a hook.” The image is funny in a jarring way, but many readers will remember agonizing during adolescence—With these feelings toward other people, am I a predator?—and relate to the inability of a person asking such questions to accept comfort.

Nathan introduces the effects of private, internal catastrophe with a detailed account of the devastation caused by a 1960 Chilean earthquake—still the most powerful seismic event ever recorded. This unsettling image would make its point even if it appeared as a random reference to generic cataclysm. But in his painstaking way, Nathan soon lets us know that one of Colin’s enduring memories, from his kindergarten days, is of televised images of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed over 230,000 people in fourteen countries. The boy studies earthquakes to better understand the inner turmoil he deals with each day. In his magically realistic style, Nathan returns to the theme long after the reader has set it aside it as a dramatic metaphor.

More clearly than anything else I have encountered, Some Hell shows a person growing into the eroticized experience of punishment, fear, humiliation, and even pain. In Justine and One Hundred Twenty Days of Sodom, the foundation texts of S&M, which fell into my lap when I was about Colin’s age, the Marquis de Sade wrote entirely from the point of view of the dom. He never revealed what’s in it for the sub, except the gratification of knowing that the dom has been satisfied. At 15, I shelved this among the many mysteries that would reconcile themselves to my understanding as I grew older. When I re-read de Sade a few decades later, the mystery remained intact. Edmund White, in his 2006 memoir My Lives, plunged into this territory in 356 overwhelmingly explicit pages. Nathan takes us deeply into this private space, credibly and with empathy, and weaves the essentials into a few well-placed, to-the-point paragraphs—“…stories on the Internet that could waste an afternoon. What boys were for, he was learning from these stories: kidnapping, controlling, shaming, binding, tormenting, enslaving, and, in the end, rewarding.”

In similarly taboo territory for a Young Adult novel, a teacher grooms a young student for a sexual relationship. The boy haltingly accepts the grooming because he is lonely, curious, and horny, and reflects that the teacher “wasn’t dangerous. Here was a man who could tell you everything, if you knew how to ask. He could show you everything.” The chilling nature of these developments reveals itself in the boy’s rumination on what he “made” the teacher do, as if his youthful curiosity rendered him a perpetrator.

By the way, in case it’s not too late, please do not read anything about Some Hell outside of this review—not even the liner notes! The tagline on the publisher’s website promises “A wrenching and layered debut novel about a [spoiler] teen’s coming of age in the aftermath of [enormous spoiler.]” For me, this kind of advance material made reading the book’s early chapters difficult; instead of settling in with the narrator’s voice and becoming acquainted with the characters, I found myself waiting for a very specific, very big event.

Once I had encountered that event, I went back and re-started the book at page one. This constitutes high praise from a reader who often claims, “I’m kind of done with fiction.”

 

Some Hell
By Patrick Nathan
Graywolf Press
Paperback, 9781555977986, 296 pp.
February 2018

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Republicans Introduce Joint Bill To Legalize Anti-LGBT Discrimination By Adoption Agencies Nationwide

If federal lawmakers want to show they care about children and families, there’s perhaps no better opportunity in the near term than by passing the Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act (CWPIA). Pending in the House as H.R. 1881 (introduced by Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Penn.)), and in the Senate as S. 811 (introduced by Senator Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.)), CWPIA would ensure that the maximum number of adoption providers remain in the marketplace and are able to serve America’s overloaded and burdened foster-care systems.

As FRC’s Travis Weber recently pointed out in an analysis of the topic, CWPIA is a win-win solution to our current foster-care dynamic. Protecting the freedom of providers to operate according to their beliefs ensures the maximum number of providers remain open for business and able to serve the ever-present waiting list of children looking for families to take them in. It also ensures the maximum number of potential adoptive families looking for children.

Charitable organizations, as Travis observes, make massive financial contributions to our nation’s public welfare — often without recognition or credit. These organizations include adoption providers. Yet these same providers are facing threats to their existence. They have already been forced out of Massachusetts, Illinois, the District of Columbia, and San Francisco due to their beliefs, and some were just suspended in Philadelphia. As they seek to follow their beliefs while continuing to serve the public good, the threat to them has continued to metastasize in other states, with lawsuits and public pressure opposing their freedom to operate according to their beliefs.

From the text of the bill:

This bill prohibits the federal government, and any state or local government that receives federal funding for any program that provides child welfare services under part B (Child and Family Services) or part E (Foster Care and Adoption Assistance) of title IV of the Social Security Act (SSAct), from discriminating or taking an adverse action against a child welfare service provider that declines to provide, facilitate, or refer for a child welfare service that conflicts with the provider’s sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions.

The Department of Health and Human Services must withhold 15% of the federal funds that a state or local government receives for such programs if the state or local government violates this bill. An aggrieved child welfare service provider may assert such an adverse action violation as a claim or defense in a judicial proceeding and to obtain all appropriate relief (including declaratory relief, injunctive relief, compensatory damages, and reasonable attorney’s fees and costs).

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Bills Against LGBT Rights are failing in US Legislatures

In a striking shift from recent years, major legislation curtailing LGBT rights has been completely stymied in state capitols around the country this year amid anxiety by Republican leaders over igniting economic backlash if they are depicted as discriminatory.

In the thick of this year’s legislative sessions, LGBT activists were tracking about 120 proposed bills that they viewed as threats to their civil rights. Not one of them has been enacted as many sessions now wind down; only two remain under serious consideration.

A key factor in the shift: In the Republican-led states where these types of bills surface, moderate GOP lawmakers and business leaders are increasingly wary of losing conventions, sporting events and corporate headquarters.

North Carolina, Indiana and Arizona were among the states that faced similar backlash in recent years over such legislation.

“Being anti-equality is not considered good politics anymore,” said legislative specialist Cathryn Oakley of the Human Rights Campaign, a national LGBT rights organization.

Just two years ago, it seemed that the state-level bills might proliferate. North Carolina passed a bill restricting transgender people’s bathroom access and Mississippi enacted a sweeping law allowing state employees and private businesses to deny services to LGBT people based on religious objections. Seven states have passed laws allowing faith-based adoption agencies some degree of protection if they refuse to place children with same-sex couples.

To the extent that the tide has turned, it’s due partly to the fallout over the North Carolina bill in 2016. The NCAA and NBA pulled games from the state; there were projections before lawmakers rolled back the restrictions that the law would cost the state several billion dollars in lost business.

The change in momentum at the state level comes at a time when conservatives have a strong ally in President Donald Trump on the issue. His administration is seeking to exclude transgender people from military service and promoting exemptions that could enable businesses, health care providers and others to refuse to accommodate LGBT people based on their religious beliefs.

Later this year, perhaps in June, a potentially momentous ruling is expected from the U.S. Supreme Court on whether businesses that serve the public can cite religious objections to refuse service to LGBT people, even in states that protect them in their nondiscrimination laws. The case involves a Colorado baker who did not want to make a cake for a same-sex couple to celebrate their wedding.

Some conservatives suggest legislative leaders are treading softly on these issues now for fear of provoking big corporations and pro sports leagues that support LGBT rights.

“The left is leveraging the cultural and economic power of big businesses like Amazon and Apple to force smaller businesses and nonprofits that hold traditional views on marriage to shut down,” contends attorney Emilie Kao, a religious freedom expert with the conservative Heritage Foundation.

“A lot of people feel they’re being bullied into silence, and the big businesses are all on the side of this new sexual orthodoxy,” Kao added. “For social conservatives, it feels very much like David and Goliath.”

This year, certainly, conservatives have struggled to gain much traction at the state level on LGBT-related issues. Among the many bills that failed:

—A Tennessee measure that would have required the state to defend schools in court if they were sued for limiting transgender students’ access to bathrooms.

—A South Dakota bill that would have required signs on some public restroom doors notifying users that a person of the opposite sex might be inside.

—A “religious liberties” bill in Georgia that would have given legal protection to faith-based adoption agencies that decline to place children with same-sex couples.

An ever-growing number of states — at least a dozen — have passed bills banning the practice of “gay conversion therapy” on minors. And voters in Anchorage, Alaska, rejected a ballot measure that would have restricted transgender people’s access to public restrooms.

The two remaining bills being tracked by LGBT groups — in Kansas and Oklahoma — are similar to Georgia’s adoption bill. Supporters say they are needed to ensure that faith-based agencies which oppose same-sex marriage can still help accommodate the rising number of children entering foster care due to the opioid crisis.

Without the bills, Kao says faith-based agencies face potential lawsuits by LGBT-rights groups “because they follow their beliefs that every child deserves both a mother and a father.”

The changing dynamics across the U.S. reflect the growing political clout of LGBT groups.

Megadonor Tim Gill has become one of the nation’s leading philanthropists for LGBT causes, spending tens of millions of dollars from his fortune accrued from a software company he started. One of his priorities now is to move beyond “the easy states” and build new alliances in Republican-controlled states that could pave the way for non-discrimination laws.

His Denver-based foundation is helping bankroll a national campaign being launched this week by the Ad Council, known for iconic public service ad campaigns including Smokey Bear and “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk.” Called “Beyond I Do,” it makes the point that while same-sex marriage is now legal nationwide, LGBT people still face legal discrimination in a majority of states — including getting evicted, fired or denied services.

Only 19 states — mostly Democratic strongholds — offer comprehensive nondiscrimination protections for gays, lesbians and transgender people.

The new ad campaign is projected to get at least $15 million in donated media support — including TV and radio time, and billboard space. Among the people featured in more than 20 stories and video spots are a Michigan couple who said a pediatrician refused to treat their newborn daughter because of objections to their same-sex marriage, and an Ohio woman who says she was fired as a teacher because she is a lesbian.

“We have to make new and different friends,” Gill said. “Ultimately a federal solution is better, but it always comes after the states have demonstrated the need.”

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Film Review: “Funny Story’


Calling a movie Funny Story is rather a brave move which can lead to unfulfilled expectations especially when your plot has its fair share of tragic incidents too. This feature from Michael J Gallagher whose work is usually created for the small screen. is full of good intentions and does at least start off on full of laughs, but then at the end gets way too muddled to be really funny

It starts with Walter (Matthew Glave) an aging actor who has coasted a very comfortable living out of once playing an action hero who has now become something of a cult figure.  He may have only had one role on the screen, but in his personal life he has had several and the movie starts with him trying to dump his latest very young girlfriend (Daiyse Tutor) who is far too interested in her cellphone to listen to him.  However when he comes to the punch line ‘we’re finished’ she trumps it with “I’m pregnant”

 Later when  Nic (Jana Winternitz) his estranged adult daughter phones Walter, he is unable to break the news and invites himself to come stay with her on her vacation in Big Sur.  She reluctantly agrees but then asks him to give her friend Kim (Emily Bett Rickards) a ride as her car has broken down.  Kim, however, is hardly a perfect traveling companion as she seems angry with the world in general, and with Walter ( who she has never met before) in particular.  However, It doesn’t stop her putting the moves on him that night and having sex.

Then what had been an odd couple road movie morphs into something much more difficult and rather awkward when they arrive at the vacation house packed with women and Nic comes out to her startled father and announces that Kim is, in fact, her fiance who she is about to marry the very next day.

Now Walter has two pieces of major news that he has to tell Nic about but he is faced with the dilemma of trying to decide if and how he should share with her as she prepares for what could be a doomed marriage after all.

Up to this point, the movie is deliciously funny thanks in part to the pitch-perfect performances of the three main actors. Walter’s awkwardness with his daughter’s sexuality is handled clumsily and seems some out of keeping with a man who has lived and worked in Hollywood all his life.  The muddle that follows (which we cannot go into without spoilers)  takes some of the gloss off the humor, but it has its heart in the right place which makes you want this engaging wee drama to succeed.

 

 

 

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Doctor Denies Treatment to 6-day-old Baby Because Her Parents — and it’s Completely Legal

A couple’s newborn baby faced discrimination because of their sexual orientation. The discrimination is 100 percent legal.

Michigan residents, Jami and Krista Contreras, took their newborn baby to the doctor, and their daughter was denied care.

 Is our doctor coming in? She said no-I’m going to be your doctor,  your doctor prayed on it and decided she won’t see you all today,” Krista said in an interview with ABC 7.

The couple is speaking out in the new ‘Beyond I do’ campaign that aims to raise awareness about the issues the LGBTQ community experiences.

The couple was surprised to learn that the discrimination is legal, and hopes to educate their friends and peers about the law.

“We spoke to other people and they would say well they can’t do that… that’s not legal and we looked into it and it was legal,” Jami said.

Even though the couple has faced discrimination in the past because of their LGBTQ  lifestyle they never imagined it would impact their baby girl.

“It was horrifying and humiliating and we just kept thinking god she’s 6 days old and she’s already experiencing discrimination,” Krista said.

Watch their story below.

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Fighting Back: Queers & the Class Divide at SFs GLBT HIstorical Society

The latest in the GLBT Historical Society’s monthly “Fighting Back” series exploring contemporary queer issues in a historical context, “Queers and the Class Divide” will offer a conversation about intersections between LGBTQ politics and growing class divisions locally and nationally. A panel of historians, veteran organizers and younger activists will discuss the history of economic inequality in the Bay Area and United States, the impact of wealth and poverty on LGBTQ community and politics, and how this history can help inform today’s resistance movements.

Wed, April 25, 2018

7:00 PM – 9:00 PM PDT

LOCATION
The GLBT History Museum
4127 18th St., San Francisco
www.glbthistory.org

ADMISSION
Free; $5.00 donation welcome

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Over 100,000 Have Knocked on the Door of 37 Countries to Demand End to Gay Sex Ban

Over 100,000 people have knocked on the door of 37 countries to demand an end to their gay sex bans.

A petition with 104,115 signatures was delivered to the Commonwealth headquarters in London today (11 April).

It is calling for the decriminalization of homosexuality in countries like India, Kenya and Barbados.

The thousands of people made the call before heads of Commonwealth countries arrive in London for a summit next week.

To coincide with this, a protest will take place on 19 April at 1pm in front of Marlborough House, London.

37 countries still have a gay sex ban

‘It’s outrageous that in 2018 Commonwealth leaders are still refusing to even discuss LGBT human rights,’ Peter Tatchell, whose foundation helped to launch the petition, told Gay Star News.

‘It’s never been on their agenda in six decades. Millions of LGBT people live in countries where being gay is a crime. That’s a violation of the Commonwealth charter and international law.

‘The fact the Commonwealth colludes with homophobic, biphobic and transphobic discrimination is truly appalling.

‘This petition is to tell the Commonwealth leaders that time’s up on blocking the debate and refusing to remedy the gross persecution of LGBT people in 37 member states.’

Phyll Opoku-Gyimah, co-founder of UK Black Pride, told GSN it’s important to question why these sodomy laws exist.

‘This is about colonialism,’ she said.

‘For me rejecting an MBE was not down to “I didn’t care”, I rejected it because LGBT people in Commonwealth countries are still tortured, persecuted, criminalized, imprisoned – they lose everything.

‘How could I possibly elevate an award over people I set out to serve?’

‘Britain should apologize’

S Chelvan, the International Rights Officer for UK Black Pride, was born in Sri Lanka.

For the past 16 years, he has worked with many people from Commonwealth countries who have fled persecution on the basis of their sexuality or gender identity.

‘Britain should apologize,’ he told GSN, adding it should avoid ‘neo-colonialism’.

‘[The government should] ask the activists how they want to address the inequalities in their countries,’ he added.

‘Listen to the activists, create the safe spaces, and take their directions on what they want us to do. We want to provide solidarity.’

Demands for Commonwealth’s 37 countries that ban homosexuality

These are the four demands of the petition to the leaders of all Commonwealth nations:

  • Decriminalize same-sex relations
  • Prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity
  • Enforce laws against threats and violence, to protect LGBT+ people from hate crimes
  • Consult and dialogue with national LGBT+ organizations

The petition is supported by: The Commonwealth Equality Network, Kaleidoscope Trust, Peter Tatchell Foundation, UK Black Pride, African Equality Foundation, Equality Network, African Rainbow Family, Movement for Justice, House of Rainbow, Out & Proud African LGBTI, Micro Rainbow, Africa Advocacy Foundation, Rainbow Across Borders, African Eye Trust. Manchester Migrant Solidarity and Care2.

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‘Conversion Therapy’ Services Would be Banned Under Measure Advancing in California

The California Assembly voted Thursday to add gay “conversion therapy” to the state’s list of deceptive business practices, following a debate that focused on the personal experiences of several lawmakers and hinted at potential lawsuits to come.

“It is harmful and it is unnecessary,” Assemblyman Evan Low (D-Campbell), the bill’s author and one of the Legislature’s most vocal LGBTQ members, said of the practice.

Low, who told Assembly members that he explored conversion therapy as a teenager and suffered depression over his sexual orientation, insisted that the bill would be limited to efforts that involve the exchange of money.

“There’s nothing wrong with me,” he said in an emotional speech on the Assembly floor. “There’s nothing that needs to be changed.”

The bill, which now heads to the Senate, has become the focal point of intense debate on social media. Some religious groups have said that such a law would be a violation of their constitutional rights, while advocates insist the provisions are narrow and there’s no credible evidence that the services work.

One key part of the debate centers on whether Assembly Bill 2943 would stretch beyond businesses that charge for these programs and extend to printed documents, even Bibles. An analysis by the Assembly Judiciary Committee says the bill would apply only to services that purport to change a person’s sexual orientation and offered “on a commercial basis, as well as the advertising and offering of such services.”

Lawmakers who spoke in support of AB 2943 also made clear that they believe those kinds of services have been discredited. “This is fraudulent, it should not be occurring,” said Assemblywoman Susan Eggman (D-Stockton). “But you can still try to pray the gay away, if you like.”

Assemblyman James Gallagher (R-Yuba City), who said the bill addresses a difficult issue, nonetheless said that it’s important to ensure laws don’t tamper with religious freedom.

“We have to think about the legitimate experience of people who have gone through conversion therapy and said this was a good thing for them,” Gallagher told his colleagues.

California law already bans the use of conversion therapy by mental health professionals on those under age 18. Low’s bill would expand the state’s efforts beyond minors. It would join a list of commercial activities deemed “unfair or deceptive acts or practices” and therefore banned under state law.

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