A kinky (and Divine) weekend at the cinema

From cult classics, to riveting documentaries — the LGBT experience will be highlighted on silver screen July 18, 19, 20 and 21 at the SieFilm Center. Below is a list of all the LGBT-themed films.

Thursday, July 18
Before You Know It • 7 p.m. Post-film Q&A with director PJ Raval and additional guests. Ticket price includes Opening Night Reception in Henderson’s Lounge at the Sie FilmCenter.
The subjects of Before You Know It are no ordinary senior citizens. They are go-go booted bar-hoppers, love struck activists, troublemaking baton twirlers, late night Internet cruisers, seasoned renegades and bold adventurers. They are also among the estimated 2.4 million lesbian, gay and bisexual Americans over the age of 55 in the United States, many of whom face heightened levels of discrimination, neglect and exclusion. But Before is not a film about cold statistics and gloomy realities, it’s a film about generational trailblazers who have surmounted prejudice and defied expectation to form communities of strength, renewal and camaraderie – whether these communities be affable senior living facilities, lively activist enclaves or wacky queer bars brimming with glittered trinkets and colorful drag queens. 

Friday, July 19  
The Campaign • 5 p.m.
This locally produced marriage equality documentary examines the struggles and harsh defeat of the hard-fought No on 8 Campaign, as well as how public attitudes toward same-sex marriage have evolved since the ’50s. In 2008, after a long-fought legal battle, same-sex couples briefly won the right to marry in California. To make same-sex marriage illegal again, opponents quickly put a proposition on the November 2008 ballot. Proposition 8 asked if the California Constitution should be changed to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry. Incredibly earnest campaign workers are interviewed in the bustling campaign office, as are voters on the street and at rallies at City Hall. 

Who’s Afraid Of Vagina Wolf? • 7:15 p.m.
As another birthday rolls around, 40-year-old filmmaker Anna (played by the director) returns to her never-changing list of resolutions: lose 20 pounds, get a girlfriend, and direct a feature film. Imagine Liz Lemon, if she were a lesbian cinéaste with a dash of Cuban blood in her. This year, Anna plans to knock (at least) two of those resolutions out with one stone, as she begins writing a lesbian remake of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, devised to win the affections of her leading lady, Katia (Janina Gavankar of The L-Word). With Anna planning to act opposite her beautiful crush, her two best friends, Penelope (Go Fish’s Guinevere Turner) and Chloe (True Blood’s Carrie Preston), round out the four-person cast. Unfortunately, things don’t run smoothly, as egos begin to clash and crewmembers start sleeping with one another.

Interior. Leather Bar • 7:30 p.m. With post-film Q&A with director Travis Mathews 
The 1980 film Cruising (starring Al Pacino as an undercover cop investigating a murder in the NYC gay leather bar scene) was plagued with controversy, and its director was forced by the MPAA to cut 40 minutes of sexually explicit material. Those 40 minutes have never been screened publicly. Filmmakers James Franco and Travis Mathews set out to reimagine what might have transpired in those lost scenes in this intriguing film about the making of a film. The cameras roll as Franco and Mathews assemble a mix of gay and straight men, including the likeable Val Lauren in the lead role. What emerges is a portrait of the fascinating dynamics that drive the filmmakers’ need to challenge normalcy, the interplay of celebrity and experimentation, and the dilemma faced by actors struggling to reconcile who they are with the idea of performing in a sexually explicit, gay, S&M film.

The Most Fun I’ve Ever Had With My Pants On • 9:30 p.m.
Freespirited young lesbian Andy (writer-director Drew Denny) and her reserved childhood friend Liv (Sarah Hagan, Freaks and Geeks) are traveling across the Southwest to disperse Andy’s father’s ashes. Starting out building campfires, drinking, snuggling and reminiscing about the good old days, tensions arise as the trip progresses, forcing them to examine the core of their relationship. Are they friends or something more? Denny’s autobiographical comedy about connection, the open road and, yes, how to have fun with your pants on, is a joyride of sweet twists and turns.

The Watching Hour presents: Cruising• 10 p.m. Introduced by INTERIOR. LEATHER BAR director Travis Mathews
(Archival 35mm presentation) For equal opportunity skank in queer cinema, you can’t get much nastier than this incendiary pair of thrillers from 1980 which delve deep into the underbelly of New York’s post-disco gay scene and come up covered in grime. William Friedkin’s Cruising sparked a storm of protests as rookie cop Al Pacino goes undercover as a leather-clad bar boy hunting down a serial killer who knifes his hogtied victims in the back. Al learns how to sniff poppers and thrash around hilariously on the dance floor before finally getting his man… or does he?

Saturday, July 20
Portrait Of Jason • Noon
(Newly restored 35mm print) For 12 hours over the course of the evening of December 3, 1966, director Shirley Clarke and her friends interviewed Jason Holiday about his life, his loves, his work and his beliefs. Jason, a 33-year-old hustler dreaming of a career as a nightclub entertainer, dazzles the audience with stories of confrontations with his family growing up in Trenton, the orgies he has attended, and the hustling that has formed the pattern of his life as a black, gay man. He recalls his college days before dropping out, working as a bar hustler and as a servile houseboy in San Francisco, becoming a heroin addict and spending time in jail, and his time in a hospital mental ward. He describes his existence while waiting for his dream to come true.  

The Most Fun I’ve Ever Had With My Pants On • 12:15 p.m.
Encore.

The New Black • 2:30 p.m. 
The New Black is a documentary that tells the story of how the African-American community is grappling with the gay rights issue in light of the recent gay marriage movement and the fight over civil rights. The film documents activists, families and clergy on both sides of the campaign to legalize gay marriage and examines homophobia in the black community’s institutional pillar—the black church and reveals the Christian right wing’s strategy of exploiting this phenomenon in order to pursue an anti-gay political agenda. 
The New Black takes viewers into the pews and onto the streets and provides a seat at the kitchen table as it tells the story of the historic fight to win marriage equality in Maryland and charts the evolution of this divisive issue within the black community.

In Their Rooms: San Francisco,Berlin, London • 2:15 p.m.
In Their Room (2009-present) is an on-going multi-city documentary series about gay men, bedrooms and intimacy. The series veers into the bedrooms of men where you see them doing everything from the most banal to the sometimes more erotic. The throughline of the series highlights the ways in which gay men in disparate cultures deal with connection, intimacy and loneliness in the modern world. In an age of accelerated gay acceptance and visibility, it’s shocking that many of these stories are being left undocumented.

Who’s Afraid Of Vagina Wolf? • 4:45 p.m. 
Encore.

Last Summer • 4:30 p.m. with director Mark Thiedeman and Actor Sam Pettit
For two small-town teenagers in love, this is that one last chance they will spend together before going their separate ways. Baseball star Luke knows that the intelligent Jonah will go off to college in the fall, and over the course of the next few months these boyfriends will lose themselves in nature, bicycle rides and each other while they still can. With echoes of Terrence Malick, writer-director Mark Thiedeman offers up a debut feature that balances haunting beauty with adolescent passion.

C.O.G. • 7 p.m. 
Recent college graduate David (Jonathan Groff, Glee) decides to get close to nature, and the working class, by spending a summer picking apples in Oregon with his friend Jennifer. Even after she blows him off, he charges ahead on a picaresque journey that will take him from orchard to processing plant to an arts and crafts workshop, guided along the way by an increasingly eccentric and motley bunch of mentors. The first feature based on the writings of David Sedaris, C.O.G. captures the author’s stringently funny perspective and establishes writer-director Kyle Patrick Alvarez as a gifted young storyteller.

Reaching For The Moon • 7:15 p.m.
Veteran filmmaker Bruno Barreto (Dona Flor And Her Two Husbands) returns with a steamy tale of an unlikely romance between two extraordinary lesbian artists, set against the backdrop of political upheaval and a clash of cultures. Grappling with writer’s block, legendary American poet Elizabeth Bishop (Miranda Otto) travels to 1950s Rio de Janeiro to visit her college friend, Mary (Tracy Middendorf). Hoping to find inspiration on Mary’s sprawling estate, Elizabeth winds up with much more — a tempestuous relationship with Mary’s bohemian partner, architect Lota de Macedo Soares (Glória Pires), that rocks the staid writer to her foundation. Alcoholism, geographical distance and a military coup come between the lovers, but their intimate connection would span decades and forever impact the life and work of these two extraordinary artists.

Pit Stop • 9:15 p.m.
Recovering from an ill-fated affair with a married man, Gabe finds solace in the relationship he maintains with his ex-wife and daughter. On the other side of town, Ernesto evades life at home with his current live-in ex-boyfriend by spending much of his spare time in the hospital with an ailing past love. Impervious to the monotony of their blue-collar world, they maintain an unwavering yearning for romance. Far from the gay centers of the world, director Yen Tan explores the complex and oft-forgotten lives of gay men in small-town America.

I Am Divine • 9 p.m. with post-film Q&A with actress Mink Stole 
I Am Divine is the story of Divine, aka Harris Glenn Milstead, from his humble beginnings as an overweight, teased Baltimore youth to internationally recognized drag superstar through his collaboration with filmmaker John Waters. Spitting in the face of the status quos of body image, gender identity, sexuality, and preconceived notions of beauty, Divine was the ultimate outsider turned underground royalty. With a completely committed in-your-face style, he blurred the line between performer and personality, and revolutionized pop culture. I Am Divine is a definitive biographical portrait that charts the legendary icon’s rise to infamy and emotional complexities.

The Watching Hour presents: Polyester
Introduced Mink Stole • Midnight
(Archival 35mm presentation) Ladies and gentlemen, the first superstar couple of ’80s indie cinema: Tab Hunter and Divine! This shocker of a crazed pairing came courtesy of John Waters’ Polyester (filmed in “Odorama”, in which patrons of its original theatrical run were given scratch-n-sniff cards to relive key odors throughout the film!) Frustrated housewife Divine bounces back from her disastrous marriage to a porno theater owner and finds love in the arms of study Tab, but all is not as it seems in this crackpot ode to classic crime melodramas.

Sunday, July 21
Dynasty Drag Brunch • Noon 
This year our partners at The Biennial of The America’s are celebrating Denver’s History and we’re joining in the celebration by shining a sequined shoulder pad on the television show DYNASTY, notoriously “about” but never “filmed” in Denver. The opulence! The luxury! The hair!

Kinky Boots • 2 p.m.
(35mm presentation) Charlie Price (Joel Edgerton), owner of the traditional men’s footwear factory that has survived in his family for generations, faces the imminent closure of his beloved business which would have a severe impact on the employment prospects of local people. 
That is, until a chance meeting with flamboyant cabaret act Lola (Chiwetel Ejiofor) convinces him that, to stay afloat, his company’s footwear range will have to branch out.
Reaching For The Moon • 2:15 p.m.
Encore.

Valentine Road • 2:30 p.m. 
In February 2008, a classroom shooting shattered the coastal, working-class town of Oxnard, California. As the community reeled and the national media descended, a 15-year-old lay dead and his 14-year-old attacker awaited trial for murder. Was this a hate crime, retaliation for unwanted playground flirting or something more complex? Valentine Road picks up where the traditional media coverage left off, delving deeper to explore the entwined paths of victim Lawrence “Larry” King and his killer, Brandon McInerney. Family, friends, teachers and classmates of the two young men, as well as their attorneys, law enforcement officials, jurors and mental health professionals, discuss the aftermath of the deadly incident, the trial and its impact on the community. 

The Happy Sad • 4:30 p.m. 
In the age of polyamory and blurred lines of sexuality, what really makes for a happy relationship? Two young couples in New York—one black and gay, one white and heterosexual—find themselves intertwined as they create new relationship norms, explore sexual identity, and redefine monogamy in this captivating new film directed by Rodney Evens (Brother to Brother).

Pit Stop • 4:45 p.m.
Encore.

G.B.F. •7 p.m.
Ticket price includes a post-film Closing Night reception in Henderson’s Lounge at the Sie FilmCenter 
The fight for supremacy between a school’s most popular girls takes an unexpected turn when Tanner (Michael J. Willett) becomes its first openly gay student. As they race to bag the big trend in fashion accessories, the Gay Best Friend, Tanner, must choose between skyrocketing popularity and the friends he is leaving behind. Darren Stein (Jawbreaker) returns with another comic send-up of high school clique culture, including memorable performances by Megan Mullally and Natasha Lyonne.