aGLIFF

Saturday was far too beautiful a day to spend in a movie theater. But watching the Polari screening of God Loves Uganda at the Stateside Theater on Saturday afternoon was worth sacrificing a couple of hours of stunning Austin weather.

God Loves Uganda is a terrific, must-see documentary that both enlightens and infuriates. It's relentlessly unpleasant viewing, but this gripping movie casts a much-needed spotlight on one of society's great outrages: American evangelical Christians' quest to spread homophobia in Uganda.

As the growing acceptance of gay marriage demonstrates, evangelicals have long been losing the culture wars in the United States. But decades before gay marriage was legal in any state, fundamentalist Christians already were seeking greener proselytizing pastures in the developing world. Uganda became a prime target for evangelism after Idi Amin's brutal regime ended in 1979, giving American missionaries an opportunity to build churches and schools and recruit new followers.

Downtown Austin is a crowded, parking-challenged place these days, so I gave myself plenty of time to get to the Stateside Theater for a Thursday night screening of Reaching for the Moon at Polari.

But there was no need to arrive so early; it was a slow night downtown, with a sane amount of traffic and plenty of parking near the Stateside. It also was a slow night at the film festival, with no lines and a modest crowd in the theater.

The Reaching for the Moon audience saw a lush, beautiful film based on the true story of the longtime romance between American poet Elizabeth Bishop (Miranda Otto) and Brazilian architect Lota de Macedo Soares (Glória Pires). But for all its lavish production values, Reaching for the Moon is a rather lifeless take on what should be an interesting story of a taboo relationship.

The first day of Polari (formerly aGLIFF) happened to coincide with the birthday of the Paramount theater last night.

Opening night found a nearly full house at Stateside Theatre for Alan Brown's award-winning Five Dances. First, however, creative director Curran Nault took the stage to open the fest and along with interim executive director Aaron Yeats and board Vice President Paul Soileau (aka Rebecca Havemayer, aka Christeene), reminisced on the contributions aGLIFF founder Scott Dinger. They announced that henceforth the festival's audience award will be officially known as the Scott Dinger Audience Award.

Five Dances is a sultry, sexy meditation on familiar themes of a rural boy coming to terms with his sexuality after leaving home for the city. Set to a soundtrack rich with cello by Private Romeo composer Nicholas Wright, and interspersed with crooning jazz tunes by Scott Matthew, Gem Club and Perfume Genius, five young attractive supremely talented modern dancers practice and perform a composition in five movements by choreographer Jonah Bokaer as Brown's camera lingers, capturing every form, every curve, the subtle shadows cast by every muscle.

Polari Film Festival (which used to be known as the Austin Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival) recently announced the theme for their 26th year: "Don’t Just Sit There: Indulge. Engage. Create."

Artistic Director Curran Nault says about this year's slate, "Our theme and focus is on work that is uncommonly galvanizing, vibrant and sensuous." Among the nearly 100 films selected for the schedule will be a number of dance-themed movies.

The five films announced early for the fest, which runs October 16-20 at the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz and Stateside at Paramount, are:

Five Dances (2013) -- This opening-night selection is directed by Alan Brown, who will be at the screening with star Ryan Steele. Chip (played by newcomer Steele) is an 18-year-old dancer from Kansas bursting into the world of modern dance in NYC. [trailer on Vimeo]

I only spent one day at aGLIFF Polari this year, due to whatever cruddy crud I contracted halfway through Fantastic Fest. (All I can say is that no germs better try attacking me during AFF.) Anyway, on the last day of the festival (last Sunday) I headed downtown to watch a web series and a documentary for my taste of aGLIFF. Polari. Eventually I'll get the name right.

Actually, aGLIFF Polari had at least one cute bumper showing before the movies to explain the name change. PJ Raval was in the bumper I saw on Sunday, thus confirming Don's theory that PJ Was Everywhere this year. Here's the embedded video if you want to watch it yourself.

My Saturday at aGLIFF Polari began with the Family Films shorts program. This kid-friendly screening included three fantastical tales -- two of them new and one a timeless classic.

First up was The Maiden and the Princess, one of the most delightful shorts I've seen lately, about a girl in need of a different kind of fairy tale and a rogue storyteller determined to see that she gets it. Familar faces David Anders and Julian Sands topped the cast list of this short directed by Ali Scher who co-wrote with Joe Swanson.

Deflated, the second short in the program, is a local production by writer and director Dustin Shroff. A young boy is forced by convention into choosing the one green ball from a store display when the one he really wants, like all the others, is pink. Deflated was not only short, sweet and to the point, it was also accessible even to the youngest children in the audience. The program concluded with a vintage short, the 1956 winner of Cannes' Palme d'Or, The Red Balloon.

My second selection for Saturday was Heavy Girls, an offbeat German film that explores a love affair between a lonely middle-aged bear and the straight, married caretaker of his elderly mother. When independent film was described as "gay cowboys eating pudding," this is the sort of movie that might come to mind.

What begins as quirky and light-hearted evolves into something completely weird and almost wonderful, but ultimately ends on an abrupt and pointless note. The characters were uninteresting and unlikable. Extended plodding scenes filled with classical music droned the audience to sleep, and the plot was so lazy and meandering it felt completely disjointed from the sudden way the film ended. There was a little to like here, but unfortunately, it was sandwiched between too much dead material.

Kyle Henry's movie Fourplay was among the most anticipated films of aGLIFF Polari, and with good reason: It promised to be the sort of sex comedy that aGLIFF Polari audiences have adored in years past, and has strong hometown connections. One segment of the movie, Fourplay: San Francisco, screened at aGLIFF in 2010 as a short film.

Does Fourplay deliver on its promises? It played to a large and often wildly enthusiastic audience at the Paramount on Friday night; based on the audience's reaction, I'd say Fourplay does deliver, although I wasn't quite as impressed as many in the crowd were.

A compilation of four sexually oriented shorts set in four cities (Skokie, Austin, Tampa and San Francisco), Fourplay plays sexual intimacy mostly for laughs, although the movie does have some darker moments. The sexual encounters are as varied as the cities where they occur, from a woman's dogsitting adventure in Skokie to a public restroom orgy in Tampa. Fourplay is nothing if not sexually adventurous, which makes for a very interesting (if sometimes farfetched) examination of human sexuality.

My final screening at aGLIFF Polari had an irresistible title: "Talkin' Bout My Generations: Multi-Generational Shorts." Being a fan of short films and The Who, how could I resist this collection of shorts spanning every stage of life? And I'm happy to report that the films were invariably terrific and a great way to wrap up my festival experience.

The shorts collection opened with The Devotion Project: #1 -- More Than Ever, a documentary in which an elderly New York gay couple recounts their 54-year relationship. William Campbell and John Hilton hit the highlights of their years together, from their 1950s meeting at a bathhouse to John's conscription into the Army (obviously, he didn't tell) to their careers and old age, when John helps the ailing William, who speaks only in a whisper.

More Than Ever is dripping with poignancy, but it's never cloying. It's a solid piece of documentary filmmaking, one that demonstrates that no matter the stage of life, gay relationships are no different than their straight counterparts.

Following More Than Ever was Deflated, a look at a young boy's gender crisis. Left in a discount store to find a cheap toy while his father shops elsewhere, the boy encounters a giant basket filled with pink inflatable balls, along with a half-deflated green one. Torn between his preference for the color pink and society's expectation that he take the green ball, he suffers a gender identity crisis over something as simple as choosing a toy.

aGLIFF may have rebranded itself "Polari" and changed venues this year, but the vibe remains the same: enthusiastic crowds, interesting films and some familiar indie film celebrity faces wandering around the Alamo Drafthouse. (Look -- there's PJ Raval! Look -- there he is again!)

My festival adventure began Friday night at the much-anticipated headliner screening of Kyle Henry's Fourplay at the Paramount. The hilariously raunchy compilation of four sexually oriented shorts set in four cities (Skokie, Austin, Tampa and San Francisco) was a hit, as expected. The crowd wildly cheered Henry's film and asked lots of great questions at the post-screening Q&A with Henry, co-writer Carlos Trevino, cinematographer PJ Raval (who seemed to be everywhere at aGLIFF Polari) and a host of cast and crew members. The Q&A included some unexpected revelations; I was surprised to learn that my favorite of the four shorts, the one set in San Francisco, was based on a true story of a transgendered prostitute and her quadriplegic client. (Look for my Fourplay review this week.)

The festival had lots of competition for parking spaces on Saturday. Apparently some sort of major sporting event was happening near downtown. (That is, I assume the madding crowds sporting West Virginia University t-shirts were not attending the film festival. Their team won the game, but not seeing Fourplay was their loss.) My day was off to a good start, however, when I found a parking space immediately. (Hint: The St. David's Episcopal Church garage is usually the best deal in town.)

The newly-rebranded aGLIFF Polari film festival kicked off Wednesday evening at the Stateside Theatre with an introduction from Film Programming Director Curran Nault, who explained his philosophy of diversity and inclusiveness in the programming selections this year. He then presented Queer Youth Media Project student Valentina Weatherspoon, who showed two short films she made: Not My Type and Sick Kids, both of which were under 2 minutes and showed great potential for a first-time filmmaker. A third short, an experimental piece called A Place for Us, left the audience bemused before the opening-night feature, Cloudburst (pictured above).

Cloudburst, directed by Thom Fitzgerald, stars Olympia Dukakis and Brenda Fricker as Stella and Dot, a lesbian couple in their seventies who have been together for over 30 years. A health scare prompts Dot's granddaughter to trick the blind old woman into signing a power of attorney, and then forcibly removes her to be placed in a nursing home. Stubborn and rightfully upset, Stella sneaks Dot out, and they decide to go to Canada where they can be legally married. They encounter Prentice (Ryan Doucette), a twentysomething modern dancer hitchhiking north to see his dying mother, and develop an unusual relationship with him.