Night of a Thousand Judys: A Benefit with Justin Sayre by

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It’s hard to believe June is nearly half over. NYC’s Pride Week is just around the corner, with the kick-off rally on June 16. Here’s another event you’ll want to include in your Pride Week festivities: on Monday, June 18, the Ali Forney Center will be hosting its second annual Night of a Thousand Judys at Playwright Horizons. The concert will raise funds for AFC’s various efforts to aid homeless LGBT youth in New York and beyond. Written and hosted by The Meeting*’s Justin Sayre, the show will honor the legendary singer and actress Judy Garland with special skits, tributes and songs from her storied career.

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Love in a Sweatshirt by

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This past October my friend, Laura and I were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge along with seven hundred other Occupy protestors. Laura, who I’ve known since middle school, happens to be a Muslim American. She wears beautiful headscarves that show her beliefs and upbringing.

I stood in my jail cell with six older women, all of whom happened to be teachers. Laura walked along the row of cells with her Arresting Officer. My fellow jail mates cheered as she passed, just as they did for every other protestor. I was about to join in, but then my stomach dropped. My hand reached for my mouth and sharp tears burned my eyes. I’m used to seeing Laura in private without her headscarf, so it took me a moment to realize. They had stripped her of her headscarf, and with it, my apathy and sense of defeat. Outrage and humiliation rushed through me as she dragged her feet with her arms outstretched, her face in shock and her mouth and eyes wide. Her thick, glossy, dark Mediterranean hair was matted to her head from the long, laborious day on the bridge. It took my cellmates a few moments to recognize her without the clean, white satin framing her tan face and resting on her shoulders and upper back. More…

Arthur Russell Summer Mix Tape by

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Arthur Russell, whose music was used as the score of Keep the Lights On,  was an artist who defied genre. A gifted cellist and composer, his oeuvre ranges from minimalist compositions to beat-heavy disco songs and just about everything in between. But no matter what genre-bending song of Russell’s you happen to be listening to, his talent and his penchant for exploration are made abundantly clear. These selections aim to convey the wide range of both sounds and emotions Russell was able to call upon in his own music as well as provide a context to the acts he associated and/or collaborated with. These songs (with the exception of the last one)  are more upbeat than one might expect from Arthur Russell and seem particularly appropriate as summer comes closer.

Dinosaur L – Go Bang (1982)

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A hip, infectious acid-jazz groove from one of Arthur Russell’s countless monikers with vocal contributions from minimalist composer Julius Eastman.

Loose Joints – Tell You Today (1983)

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An upbeat pop gem from the collaboration of Russell and renowned New York DJ Steve D’Aquisto.

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Wizards, Spaceships, and the Queers Who Love Them by

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I had never heard the term “queer” – in a positive context, at least – until I was a freshman in college. I never saw Paris is Burning until the year after that. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit collected dust in the back of my bookshelf, lest my Catholic mother catch a glimpse of it and keel over in shock. My exposure to queer art and media as a teenager was limited, to say the least. Even with the endless resource that is the Mighty Internet, the sheer volume of information out there overwhelmed me.

However, being a giant nerd, I went to the next best thing: slash fiction.

A fantasy and science fiction fan since I was a kid, I’d been reading fan fiction since the fourth Harry Potter book. Slashfic, which features same-sex characters in romantic pairings, was only a click away.

On a cloudy evening in 2009, over twenty-five women, including myself, crowded into a cramped hotel room in Philadelphia. In their day-to-day lives, they were housewives, college students, archeologists, lawyers, nannies, and sign language interpreters, but that night, they were all the same thing: fan girls. Specifically, they were gathered for MiniMerlin 2009, the first unofficial fan convention for Merlin, a new Arthurian legend-inspired show on the BBC. Out of desperation to gain some semblance of order in the midst of this gaggle of chattering fans, someone popped in a DVD and shouted above the din, “The vid show is starting!”
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ISOAW: New Festival Dates Announced! by

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We are thrilled to announce that IN SEARCH OF AVERY WILLARD, shot concurrently and and featured in KEEP THE LIGHTS ON, will have it’s New York premiere at the 2012 Northside Festival in Brooklyn and will join KTLO at the Frameline Film Festival in San Francisco and Outfest in Los Angeles! Check out our current festival lineup below for a complete list of dates and ticket info.

Our team can’t wait to bring ISOAW to a theater near you, but we need your support now more than ever. There are only a few days left of our Kickstarter campaign and we need a final boost to reach our fundraising goal before this Thursday, June 7th! Many thanks to the amazing, generous backers who have gotten us this far!

If you can, please help us share this missing piece of queer art history with the world and make a contribution here.  More…

Music Box Films Acquires KEEP THE LIGHTS ON!! by

New York, NY (March 12, 2012) – Music Box Films announced today that the company is acquiring all North American rights to KEEP THE LIGHTS ON, the latest film from Ira Sachs. The film premiered to critical acclaim at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.  Subsequently, at the 2012 Berlin International Film Festival, it received the Teddy Award, the prize for the best film with an LGBT theme.

In his autobiographically inspired, fictional relationship drama KEEP THE LIGHTS ON, filmmaker – and recipient of Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize in 2005 for his film FORTY SHADES OF BLUE – Ira Sachs chronicles the emotionally and sexually charged journey through the love, addiction, and friendship of two men (portrayed by Thure Lindhardt and Zachary Booth). The film was produced by Sachs, Marie Therese Guirgis, and Lucas Joaquin, and the stellar supporting cast includes Julianne Nicholson (HBO’s Boardwalk Empire), Souléymane Sy Savané (GOODBYE SOLO) and Paprika Steen (APPLAUSE). The film will screen at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival next month.

Written by Sachs and Mauricio Zacharias, KEEP THE LIGHTS ON is an honest, unflinching portrait of a relationship between two men in New York City. Despite meeting through a casual sexual encounter, documentary filmmaker Erik (Lindhardt) and closeted lawyer Paul (Booth) find a deeper connection and become bonded in an almost decade-long relationship defined by highs, lows and dysfunctional patterns. Through it all, Erik struggles to negotiate his own boundaries and dignity and to be true to himself.

Ed Arentz, Managing Director of Music Box Films, said: “We’ve been fans of Ira Sachs since THE DELTA so its a special treat to be able to present his latest film. Ira gets the big, little and difficult things right in KEEP THE LIGHTS ON: the thrill and evanescence of desire, the endurance of love, the unknowableness of others and the sense of time going by. His homage to legendary New York photographer and filmmaker James Bidgood is an added bonus.”

Noted Sachs: “Music Box has proven itself in a few short years to be a cutting edge distributor with a sophisticated understanding of both the market and cinema.  Ed and Bill have a keen eye for films that have a potential to breakout from the independent landscape, and I’m excited by their ambition and excitement for Keep the Lights On.”

The deal for the film was negotiated by Marie Therese Guirgis (Producer of Keep the Lights On) and Kevin Iwashina (Preferred Content), with William Schopf, president of Music Box Films.

Keep The Lights On Is Coming Home! by

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Terrific news! The Tribeca Film Festival announced today that Keep The Lights On will have its official New York premiere in the fest’s exciting Spotlight program. After thrilling screenings at the Sundance Film Festival and the Berlinale, Ira Sachs’ Teddy award-winning new film about a troubled relationship will finally be screened in the city where it takes place! The Tribeca Film Festival takes place from April 18 – 29th. And on the other side of the world – if you happen to be in Hong Kong, KTLO will screen at the Hong Kong International Film Festival on March 25th, and April 8th. More festival screenings to be announced soon, so keep checking back!

The Reviews Are In! by

What a week! With all the madness at Sundance, we hardly got a chance to update and let you know how things were going with our screenings. Well, now we have a little breathing room before Berlin and can change all that. The long and the short of it is – Keep The Lights On definitely made it’s mark at the Sundance Film Festival. We were one of the most buzzed about films at the festival, and also one of the best reviewed. Salon.com‘s Andrew O’Hehir described the film as “an instant landmark in gay cinema, and easily the finest dramatic film I saw at Sundance this year”, while LA Weekly‘s Karina Longworth called it “a richly textured, sad and beautiful autobiographical love story.” David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter said of the film, “Breaking new ground in contemporary American gay cinema, Ira Sachs’ deeply personal drama Keep the Lights On examines a volatile 10-year relationship between two divergently addictive personalities, observed in a style that is loose and impressionistic while at the same time microscopic in its intimate detail.”

Other reviews compared Sachs’ work favorably to films like Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes From a Marriage and Andrew Haigh’s Weekend, last year’s groundbreaking gay English romance film. The lead performances of KTLO actors Thure Lindhardt, Zachary Booth, and Julianne Nicholson were also praised by critics across the board. Around the festival, word of mouth built steadily over the week, with straight audiences and gay alike finding common spaces to appreciate the film’s unique take on a fractured relationship story. For a full rundown of all the reviews and press mentions KTLO accumulated over the week, click below. We’ll be updating the list as more reviews roll in. Next stop – Berlin! More…