LLGFF: ‘Expectations’ & ‘Made in the USA’ shorts programmes

So, my time at the BFI’s London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival has officially come to an end, already, which is a massive shame since, as the cliché goes, I’ve had a great time and met some brilliant people. The last screenings we saw were two programmes of shorts, the gay-themed Expectations and the sapphic Made in the USA.

I have no real experience of watching shorts, so I fear I’m not the person to bring a particularly balanced perspective to those which were screened. I’m not a fan of short stories, and in the same way there’s just something about that short-form thing which really turns me off. Despite appreciating the idea of narratives which are pared down to the very bare bones, in practise I found those that did this mainly frustrating, while those with more fully-realised narratives – ie, the shorts which felt more like short feature films rather than self-contained vignettes – did more for me.

A lot of the discussion I’ve had with the other young reporters at the festival – both as part of our brief and in general – has centred around the future of ‘queer’ cinema and its relationship to both alternative and mainstream filmmaking. That both should be viable and welcome platforms for LGBT content, albeit in different ways, should be self-evident. But, also, none of us were particularly comfortable with the idea of ghettoising homosexual (etc, etc) content through marketing to that specific demographic. Equally, in a discussion with festivalgoers, the idea that all cinema with gay content is somehow inherently relevant or worthwhile to LGBT people was put forward (albeit by one person…) - which is patently ridiculous. Creating some mandatory canon of cinema that everyone with slightly leftfield urges ‘should’ watch is absurd and doesn’t help anyone, not least because of the amount of total shit they’d have to wade through. A notable amount of films that I enjoy have some sort of alternate sexual content, but though that is relevant to my enjoyment (as someone who does enjoy picking up twigs in the springtime, and other Dylan Moran euphemisms), it’s also a kind of shit for it to be the be-all and end-all of why you like something. So, first and foremost, what’s important is whether the work in question is worthwhile in and of itself. Fuck sexuality.

These series of shorts couldn’t really have emphasised my view on that any more; the gay section, Expectations, was especially generic, each short featuring, a), an attractive young man, of, b), varying degrees of sadness, and, c), dealing with coming out, in some fashion. Okay, okay, these programmes are obviously curated so that the component parts are sympathetic to one another – but, though I’m not knocking hot gay boys on film, that these sort of stories are prevalent enough to warrant an entire programme of shorts is rather worrying. For Christ’s sake, is that the extent of ‘the gay experience’? Although it may be representative of a certain amount of the gay audience’s experiences, surely things could be moved out of this rut of picturesque miserabilism.

Fortunately, the lesbian section, Made in the USA, though lacking the former collection’s multiculturalism (France, Brazil, Portugal… and the Isle of Wight) had a broader range of subjects than exclusively young people coming to terms with their sexuality, as well as a certain amount of humour. Having said that, I’m not sure whether the quality per se was any greater, with some, like the cloyingly twee and splitscreen-ridden The Archivist (dir. Katie Scoones, 2010) just beggaring belief that they could ever be shown at a sold-out screening in NFT1.

Though there was a lightness of touch and genuine humour to the final three shorts in the Made in the USA strand, there still wasn’t a great deal of depth. Not having a massive experience of shorts, I can’t really say if this is simply a drawback of the format – though, really, I don’t see why it need be – or maybe it just means that gay/lesbian filmmakers are hamstrung by trying too hard to appeal to a given audience.

The most successful of the shorts from each strands were, tellingly, those which not only expanded their focus most (rather than purely being about sexuality itself), but also those which attempted to encapsulate a fuller, more feature film-like narrative. Miika Leskinen’s Small-Time Revolutionary, though still focusing on a gay teen’s coming out, transcended the limitations made to seem built into the format by the other films in the Expectations strand, and was suitably revolutionary (ahaha) in being the only one to utilise a period setting (well, Thatcher-dominated England – THERE’S THE WHOLE OF HISTORY TO CHOOSE FROM, PEOPLE!), and expanded the focus to include the lead’s (albeit somewhat boxticking) group of friends, and his authoritarian mother and henpecked, stamp-collecting father. Actually, that makes it sound all rather hackneyed, but it was punchy enough to work – though, given that Ian McKellan had an audio cameo, we’re obviously dealing with a slightly more moneyed production than its rivals, but… ehh.

In Hens & Chicks (dir. Becky Lane, 2010), though not an equivalently professional production, the focus fell on a little girl and her friend, rather than her lesbian mums, which was something of a relief; to see gay themes as part of a narrative rather than dominating it.

At the risk of sounding too harsh, there were some rather lovely films in these two programmes – it’s just that none of them were entirely successful overall. For example, though ponderous, Wild Horses (dir. André Santos & Marco Leão, 2010) was pretty and atmospheric - but unfortunately almost entirely pointless (hipster wanking over his boyfriend showering; some quite beautiful but ‘so what’ shots of horse-stroking). I just wish there had been at least one fully satisfying short that could have combined successful acting and visual and narrative elements. Obviously these ten or eleven shorts can’t be taken as representative of short film as a format, or of gay shorts specifically, but this selection did made me wish for something with the idiosyncratic aesthetics of something like James Bidgood’s Pink Narcissus – or, even just something with a bit more energy. Looking even to the scores alone, there’s only so much wishy-washy whimsy-folk that you can take; I was left hankering for some electrothrash or something, to shake up the complacency.

Perhaps that’s true of all these films. There was a sense of complacency to them; they all seemed to fit too neatly into some pre-prescribed box. I think what I was waiting for was something with an unapologetic take on alternate sexuality, but which could still be about more than just sexuality alone… I didn’t get to see it in the festival, but, though there’s a case for it being all style and no substance, the stylistically sure hand and total lack of whinging introspection or even acknowledgment of its characters’ sexuality in Xavier Dolan’s Heartbeats/Les Amours imaginaires - where were those things in these shorts?!