Tag Archives: Gay New York

Gay New York​News & Updates

Don’t forget your party cardigan by

outs still adam goldman crop

“Just because it’s over doesn’t mean you’re over it.”

So says the tagline for The Outs, a new web series launched in April from writer-director Adam Goldman. The Outs follows the story of a gay freelance writer and his ex-boyfriend as they try to move on with their lives and find love (or lust) again…with varying degrees of success. From uncomfortable run-ins with exes to unexpected hookups and the search for the perfect party cardigan, Jack (Hunter Canning) and Mitchell (Adam Goldman) and their motley crew of likable twenty-somethings paint an honest picture of single life in the city today.

In a departure from the sketch comedy style that distinguishes most popular web series, The Outs is a primarily character-driven show. Many viewers who expected short, disconnected vignettes on “gay life in New York” were surprised when the story returned to Jack and Mitchell in the second episode. Adam Goldman, however, sees The Outs  as telling a full story from beginning to end, and audiences seem to have embraced his vision.

More…

Gay New York​News & Updates

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

judy garland1

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.

More…

Arthur Russell​Gay New York​News & Updates

Arthur Russell Summer Mix Tape by

arthurrussell_1237201196_crop_550x434

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)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

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)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

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

More…

Avery Willard​News & Updates

ISOAW: New Festival Dates Announced! by

IN SEARCH OF AVERY WILLARD 3

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…

Gay New York

Dirty Looks: On Location Venue Portrait #1 – Everard Baths by

Every night this July, Dirty Looks: On Location will install a film and video work in queer social settings (like gay bars or community centers) or former sites of queer sociality (shuttered baths, bars, or sex clubs). An extension of the essential queer experimental screening series curated by Bradford Nordeen, On Location looks to bring the general public in contact with historically important queer artwork, and the history of queer New York.

More…

Our Man in Tribeca: A Fish Out Of Water

TFF 2012: Furious by

Cadillac

“Capitalism is not natural, it’s just brainwashed into us,” Antonino D’Ambrosio director and producer of Let Fury Have The Hour, a documentary of art as a political statement, as a “creative response,” tells me in the foyer of Tribeca’s Cadillac Lounge. “Dialogue is the beginning of change,” Antonino says as he turns to his publicist, who brings him a vegetarian sandwich.

In his first feature documentary, Antonino goes back thirty years to the cultural resistance of the 80’s, “when America changed forever.” He features dozens of mavericks of thought, science, and humor: artists, environmentalists, entrepreneurs, and futurists, including semi-legends like Wayne Kramer and John Sayles, and a string of brilliant left-wing counter-culture charming-motherfuckers. During quick interviews, they leave very little unchallenged: From our collective apathy, to our acceptance of hierarchy in politics, to capitalism and religion, all the way to the top – “How can there be God? God struck Haiti when there is Las Vegas?” More…

Our Man in Tribeca: A Fish Out Of Water

TFF 2012: To Live And Die For Globalization by

tribeca12416

I saw press crying at Tribeca’s pre-festival screenings. Actually, I heard them sobbing in the dark. Old-timers here told me it rarely happens. If ever. “Never.” So why was I so “lucky?”

Maybe it’s the recession, but man’s isolation in his fight against the “machine” is at the festival’s core. “When you’re cut off from social network you get lonely and die,” an artist explains in Antonino D’Ambrosio’s breathtaking Let Fury Have The Hour. But before death, Tribeca shows how haunted we are. A rallying cry of a fight we can’t resist. My first week here I felt depressed and encouraged all at once. More…

Gay New York

Hawk Kinkaid and HookOnline.org by

HawkKinkaid_by Ilenia Martini_L12

Hawk Kinkaid is speaking to me between meetings. His answers are quick and precise, and after about fifteen minutes, he tells me he has to go. It’s understandable of course. His current job is not what he’s best known for. Hawk Kinkaid is the name he used when he was working in the sex industry, and it’s the name he uses in his role as the creator of HookOnline.org, a website devoted to harm reduction and fostering dialogue between male sex workers, and Rent U, a teaching program he created as an off-shoot of Hook. I’m speaking to Kinkaid because of an event he’s hosting tonight (2/24) –a fundraiser and book launch party for In the Company of Men: Inside the Lives of Male Prostitutes, a book by Dr. Christian Grov and Dr. Michael D. Smith. Here’s our conversation.

Adam: How did you first get the idea to do Hook Online?
Hawk: I started the project over a decade ago, and the initial reason for starting it was that there were no resources for men in the industry to assist in the learning curve, in other words, the site serves to help keep people from making some of the more common mistakes that people make in the industry. It’s also a way to foster some conversation about the business so that we are helping people to understand it better. A lot of people, especially gay men who are working in the industry will take a kind of laissez faire approach. They think having sex and having sex for money is not very complicated, but there are effects and decisions you have to make when you work in the industry. Many people have made many mistakes in doing that. So what we try and do is give people an opportunity to better understand it when making that decision. We are a harm reduction program. Our goal is not to prevent people from being in the industry, and a lot of the people who work on the project are people who do very well in the business. They pay their taxes, they pay for their healthcare, they make all sorts of practical decisions. But many people don’t. They’re in the industry very temporarily, as a result of a bad situation or emergency or they just see an opportunity for a period of time so they take it on. So what we want to do is get them to think practically and occupationally about the decision they make.

What are some of the most common complications people face in the industry?
On a professional level there are always issues surrounding physical violence, drug and alcohol usage, especially when they’re working and people end up being taken advantage of that way. There’s also implications in their personal lives, in their friends and their support system. As far as social behaviors, as I mentioned, there’s often significant drug and alcohol usage in their free time – which can become an addiction. More…

Gay New York

United in Anger: Director Jim Hubbard on Telling the Story of ACT UP by

FDA Tombstone

Tomorrow night at the MOMA, KTLO contributor Jim Hubbard will open the annual Documentary Fortnight series with his exciting new documentary United In Anger. Perfectly timed for last year’s 30th anniversary of AIDS, and this year’s 25th anniversary of ACT UP, the film tells the story of the legendary activist group who fought tirelessly to change government definitions of AIDS, force scientists and the government to excel their development of life-saving drugs, and change the public perception of AIDS from a gay-disease to one that affected us all. The film examines the nuts and bolts of what made ACT UP’s successes and failures come to pass, with a special attention paid to the culture and camaraderie behind the scenes as well as the role of women in the group. I spoke to Hubbard last night about creating the film, the connections between ACT UP and Occupy Wall Street, and whether New York would be ready for another AIDS crisis.

Adam: Hi Jim, are you excited for the premiere?
Jim: Yeah. It’s started to keep me up night.

I know you were a member of ACT UP, both a longtime activist and longtime documenter of the movement, but how did this film come together?
It either took me 25 years, 10 years, or 3 years depending on how you count. I started filming ACT UP in June of 1987 at the Gay Pride March. I continued to film ACT UP for years afterward and make films about it. Elegy in the Street would be the most prominent of the films. But I was shooting 16mm and processing the footage myself, so I stood in contrast to all the people videotaping it, many of whom made dozens of tapes about ACT UP in the late 80’s/early 90’s. Then in 1995, at the behest of the Estate Project for Artists with AIDS I convinced 30 or 40 AIDS activist videomakers to donate work to the New York Public Library, for the resources there. And then ten years ago when Sarah Schulman and I started the ACT UP Oral History Project, I always had it in my mind that I would make a film based on the project, and I started seriously editing what became United In Anger, about three years ago. More…

Gay New York

Gay New York and the Arts of the 20th Century by

Capote and Beaton contact sheet

If you’ve been keeping up with our Gay New York section, you’ll know that we get pretty excited over any event that explores the forgotten or unexplored history of life as a gay person in New York. So when we heard the news that the Museum of the City of New York were planning to hold a “Gay New York” conference this Saturday (2/11) devoted to the ways that gay New York artists influenced the cultural life of the city from the 1920′s through the 1960′s – well, I mean, can you imagine what paroxysms of delight went roaring through our thin apartment walls?

Presented in conjunction with the MCNY’s remarkable exhibition Cecil Beaton: The New York Years, the conference will cover topics such as the gay artists and writers of the Harlem Renaissance, E.M. Forster and the West Village, Cecil Beaton’s relationship with actress and famed New York recluse Greta Garbo, art dealer Sam Green, and Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, and Leonard Bernstein. Speakers include George Chauncey, Wendy Moffat, Lynn Garafola, and more. Tickets start at $25 for members, and $35 for non-members, and are available at boxoffice.mcny.org. Don’t miss this rare treat. We’ll see you there!

Photo above:

Truman Capote and Cecil Beaton, ca. 1952
© Cecil Beaton Studio Archive at Sotheby’s
Courtesy Cecil Beaton Studio Archive at Sotheby’s