Wicked Queer, New England’s oldest and most beloved LGBTQ+ film festival, continues this week with screenings at venues spanning metro Boston, including no fewer than 10 screenings at The Brattle Theatre. Highlights of the back half of the fest include the U.S. premiere of Patricia Ryczko’s sci-fi parable “Reset” on Friday, the horror comedy “The Brooklyn Butcher” on Saturday and the Festival Spotlight screening of Elena Oxman’s “Outerlands” on Sunday. Viewers looking for the full eclectic festival experience, meanwhile, might seek out four wildly different programs of shorts: “Beyond Kinsmen: Men Searching for Love, Understanding and Revenge,” focusing on men’s stories, on Thursday; comedy spotlight “Laugh, Cry and Embrace the Chaos” on Saturday; “Uncharted Desires,” a program of women’s shorts, on Sunday; and Sunday’s festival closer “WQ:41 GTFO,” featuring the fest’s wildest and most unclassifiable short subjects. The diversity on display is a welcome reminder of the vast and vibrant world of queer art that, despite the best efforts of the current powers that be, will never be silenced.
Game, as they say, recognizes game, and this week the Harvard Film Archive kicks off its tribute to the 50th anniversary of one of the world’s other great troves of cinematic treasures: Japan’s Kobe Planet Film Archives, home to more than 20,000 priceless film prints and countless related artifacts. The series, titled “Planet at 50,” begins Friday with a program titled “Prewar and Wartime Animation,” collecting some of the earliest extant examples of Japanese animation, all projected on film with live musical accompaniment by Robert Humphreville. That’s followed by “To All the J**ps: South Korean A-Bomb Survivors Speak Out” (1971), a harrowing and rarely screened documentary by the Nihon Documentarist Union. Saturday, meanwhile, brings Igayama Masamitsu’s fascinating quasi-documentary “The Sea Demon on Land” (1950), which follows a real octopus as it escapes from a fish market and crawls its way back to the sea. The series, which continues into May, shines a light upon some overlooked corners of one of the world’s most vital cinemas.
This goes double for the HFA’s ongoing “Yugoslav Junction” series, which returns on Sunday with a fascinating new documentary. Matevž Jerman and Jurij Meden’s “Alpe-Adria Underground!” (2024) delves into an archive of nearly 200 experimental independent films from Soviet-era Yugoslavia restored recently by the Slovenian Cinematheque. To squeeze in as much footage as possible, Jerman and Meden adopt a split screen approach similar to Todd Haynes’ “The Velvet Underground” (2021), often filling the screen with up to four shots of a single film. Even those with little knowledge of Yugoslav cinema will likely come away dizzied by the wildly varied voices on display: the absurdist hippie psychedelia of Karpo Godina, the introspective film-poems of Franci Slak, the wild punk cut-ups of Davorin Marc. Perhaps most fascinating is the segment on “OM Productions,” a supposed “collective” of more than 40 filmmakers who were, in fact, assumed names and personalities of a single director (the filmmaker’s name is bleeped in the film’s interview segments, as best to preserve the mystery). It’s a breathless reminder that the world of cinematic possibilities extends far beyond the standard film-school canon.
The tributes to the late and sorely missed David Lynch continue this week, with screenings at no fewer than three local cinemas. First up, the Brattle has a new 4K restoration of Lynch’s sophomore feature, “The Elephant Man” (1980), screening from Sunday through Tuesday. A work-for-hire biopic of renowned Victorian sideshow performer Joseph Merrick, “Elephant Man” might seem slightly atypical of Lynch’s work from today’s vantage, but it is a fine showcase for the filmmaker’s striking visuals and deeply felt humanity, and proved to the world he had more in him than the outré expressionism of “Eraserhead” (it also contains arguably the most widely famous moment in Lynch’s filmography, Merrick’s howled protestation of “I am not an animal!”). On Tuesday, the Landmark Kendall Square Cinema continues its monthlong spotlight on Lynch with his 1985 arthouse breakout “Blue Velvet.” On Wednesday, the Somerville Theatre kicks off its own Lynch tribute, “Wonderful and Strange,” with a true rarity: a pristine, newly discovered 70 mm print of Lynch’s 1984 adaptation of Frank Herbert’s “Dune.” These films are about as different as three works from a single director can be, and viewing them within the space of three nights is an opportunity as unique as Lynch’s films themselves.
On Wednesday, The Brattle welcomes writer and film critic Marya E. Gates for a series of screenings inspired by her new book, “Cinema Her Way,” a collection of in-depth interviews with 19 world-class female filmmakers (featuring illustrations by Brattle technical director Alex Kittle!). Gates will be on hand Wednesday to introduce beautiful new 4K restorations of two of the book’s subjects: Gina Prince-Bythewood’s beloved indie rom-com “Love & Basketball” (2000) and Lizzie Borden’s pioneering sex worker drama “Working Girls” (1987). Next Thursday, Gates hosts two seminal films by director Bette Gordon, “Variety” (1983) and “Luminous Motion” (2000), followed by a discussion with Gordon herself. Copies of “Cinema Her Way” will, of course, be available to those who feel inspired toward future research – and, perhaps, toward making films of their own.
Oscar Goff is a writer and film critic based in Somerville. He is film editor and senior critic for the Boston Hassle and his work has appeared in the monthly Boston Compass newspaper and publications such as WBUR’s The ARTery and iHeartNoise. He is a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics, the Boston Online Film Critics Association, and the Online Film Critics Society.
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