'Pride' film festival includes panel talk, after-party

Following the PRIDE Film Festival screening on Friday, the stage was opened, rainbow-colored fabrics hung from the ceiling and the lights turned down low as the after-party began. \nThe event featured three separate showings of different films, as well as an after-party -- one of several new features to this year's festival -- and panel discussion with the directors. For two days, the seats were filled at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater at 114 E. Kirkwood Ave.\nKim Davis, president of the Indiana University GLBT Alumni Association, said the goal of this year's festival was to create a constant space where people could come and not only watch the films but also have a place to discuss them. \n"The festival is a real bonus for the Bloomington community," she said. "Having this film festival and seeing it become so popular says something about the Bloomington community itself as a haven for GLBT people."\nA crowd favorite was the film, "One Wedding and a Revolution," a story about the first government-sanctioned wedding of a gay or lesbian couple in San Francisco on Feb. 12, 2004. \nMargaret Emmert, a Bloomington resident, said she enjoyed the dialogue of the mayor in the film the most. \n"When he talked about how he enjoyed being married to his wife and thought everyone should be free to experience that, it really spoke to me," she said. \nJim Andrews, a Bloomington resident, said he agreed. \n"The film was very well-done and it vindicated the mayor's decision to follow through," he said.\nAndrews said during his 30 years in Bloomington he has seen a change in the community regarding GLBT issues.\n"When I first moved here, there was a lot going on involving gay rights, but in the eighties that died down," he said. "I'm glad to see it making a resurgence now with events like this film festival. It gives us a face and proves that we are not scary people."\nDavis said last year people left the theater to discuss the films because they couldn't stay. She said she felt a lot of the emotion was lost when this happened. \n"Last year there was so much positive energy afterward that we decided we needed a place to sit down and talk about the films," Davis said. \nThough the screening Friday night ended by 9:30 p.m., Erica DeSantis, a Bloomington resident, stayed at the party until nearly 11 p.m. \n"I enjoyed the party almost more than the films," she said. "It brings a sense of community for us, allows us to meet new people and it's definitely been a wonderful edition to the festival experience."\nA second addition to this year's festival was the panel discussion held after the second screening Saturday afternoon. Director Scott Schirmer was the only Bloomington resident to have a film in the festival. His film, titled "Off the Beaten Path," is about a Christian man trying to accept his friend's sexuality while his friend tries to accept himself.\nDirector Jonathan McNeal was also present at the panel to talk about his film, "The Rubi Girls," along with Josh Stuckey, a member of the Rubi Girls. The Rubi Girls are a tight-knit group of professional gay men in Dayton, Ohio whose approach to comedic drag has raised more than $140,000 for HIV/AIDS. McNeal became a Rubi Girl after he began work on the documentary.\nMcNeal said there were two reasons he created the film.\n"I wanted the movie to not only tell their story, but to have an underlying message of what it means to be a family," he said. "We don't have to have A and B to equal a family and I wanted people to see that."\nAt the beginning, McNeal only taped the shows as they were performed, but that soon changed.\n"I realized there was candid stuff happening behind the curtains that was just as interesting as what was happening on stage," he said. \nMcNeal said people are surprised to know something like this is happening in the Midwest.\n"Some of the first people in line at the box office are middle-class, straight, white women," he said. I never imagined that it would blossom into this, but I'm glad that it did."\nStuckey, a fourth grade teacher, said he was worried at first when the film went national about what his students would think.\n"Everyone ended up rallying behind us, students and parents alike," he said. "We underestimate the heterosexual community because they are a lot more accepting than we might think." \nSchirmer's said his main goal when shooting a film is to have fun, but at the same time to present a message to people.\n"They always told me that you have to entertain people to get them to listen to you, so I wanted to present hints of important issues that we all face like suicide and religion without blind-siding everyone with sadness," he said. "My answer to that was to throw men of different masculinities together in one film and let them fight it out, both physically and emotionally."\nFilming took only three days. \nDavis said she hopes the festival will become an annual tradition.\n"People are getting use to this idea that every January they get to attend the PRIDE Film Festival," she said. "We obviously have a need for this sort of thing and it is my hope that we can continue to supply that throughout the years."\n-- Contact Staff Writer Lynndi Lockenour at llockeno@indiana.edu.