Upset: Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival opens Thursday with Cannes-acclaimed “La Bola Negra.” There’s a lot of talk about the Oscars. The film is also the first major gay film in the event’s 44-year history, following a decades-long quest by organizers to showcase high-profile queer stories.
The nearly three-hour passionate panoramic film unites three gay men in a story set before and after the Spanish Civil War, written and directed by two gay men, and starring three gay actors. This is unusual for a large-scale public production. The plot features a homosexual-themed manuscript by Federico García Lorca, a Spanish poet and playwright who was executed during the war. He is played by a gay Madrid playwright and performance artist.
“This is unprecedented in many ways,” Reeling founder and executive director Brenda Webb said in a Zoom interview. “An epic queer love story. Things like that don’t happen very often.” Over the past few years, she has spent months lobbying Hollywood studios to screen new gay and lesbian features in Reeling, without success. “Brokeback Mountain” was no good. Webb won awards for The Brothers, Bent, Stonewall, and The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe. “They weren’t easy on us when we got them,” she said.
Webb said the booking of La Bora Negra culminates a “major shift” in the mainstream of Reeling and other LGBTQ+ festivals. “Part of the problem is, if a distributor had a gay movie, one of the reasons they didn’t want it to be an LGBTQ film festival was because they didn’t want it to be labeled ‘gay’ even though it was gay. It’s like they tried to keep it a secret, right? That was a gay movie, but if Over time, gay and lesbian festivals have proven that they have large audiences, both gay and straight. “I think Netflix believes that queer audiences are key to the success of this film,” she said.
Netflix selected Reeling for the local launch of “La Bola Negra.” Ticket holders at Thursday’s sold-out Music Box screening will get their first look at the likely Oscar nominee. The Spanish-made subtitled film returns to the music box with a 35mm theatrical release next month.
Netflix will release “La Bola Negra” in select theaters on October 16th, but the movie will not begin streaming until December 2nd. Variety reports that “the 47-day exclusivity period is the most extensive theatrical release deal the company has ever given to one of its titles.”
La Bola Negra premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May, where co-directors Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo were jointly nominated for Best Director. Long-time collaborators, they co-wrote the screenplay with Spanish playwright Alberto Conejero.
“We wanted this movie to be big, to make a statement that LGBTQ+ stories can be big and don’t just have to appeal to a niche audience,” Calbo said. Madrid newspaper El Pais. “Let’s give all straight men the war movies they want, but let’s give our community the love stories they want.” he told the audience at the Telluride Film Festival. The Hollywood Reporter reported last week.
Touted by Chicago filmmakers as “the second-longest running LGBTQ+ film festival in the world,” Reeling was founded in 1981 to give Chicago’s LGBTQ+ community the stories they wanted but weren’t getting from Hollywood. This year’s festival will screen 36 narrative and documentary feature films and 59 short films from 22 countries across three venues from September 17th to 27th.
Chicago Filmmakers, a nonprofit now based in Edgewater, was located at 6 W. Hubbard St. when Webb first started the festival. The 90-seat storefront theater screened 16mm short films by experimental filmmakers such as Kenneth Anger and Barbara Hammer. “They’re bringing in a lot of experimental work,” documentary filmmaker Gordon Quinn told the Chicago Sun-Times in 1982. “Their Lesbian and Gay Film Festival was a huge success. It influenced film programming across the United States.”
Audiences have grown and there has been an increase in narrative and non-fiction features by independent filmmakers. This year, we have a diverse lineup of genres. There’s also a horror movie about a demonic ectopic pregnancy.
Here are some things to check:
“Meeting Marcia”
Writer and director Mackenzie Goodwin, co-host of the Two Dykes and Mike podcasts, has composed a fun LA comedy about queer careerism. The egg donor mother of the title’s aging TV star, a struggling playwright, shows up and disrupts a lesbian marriage proposal. The screening is sponsored by Tello Films, a streamer that bills itself as “like Netflix but lesbian.” (September 23, 6:30 p.m., Landmarks Century Center Cinema, 2828 N. Clark St.)
“Britney Greiner Story”
Directed by Alexandria Stapleton, it tells the moving portrait of a famous 6-foot-9 professional basketball center who is detained on drug charges and sentenced to a Russian penal colony. This ESPN documentary should appeal to more than just WNBA fans. Spoiler: She was released in a high-profile prisoner swap. Brought to you jointly by Bad Queers Podcast and Babe’s Sports Bar. (September 20th, 4:15 p.m., Landmark)
“Celluloid Closet”
On the final night, Webb will book a 30th anniversary screening of Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s groundbreaking documentary. Lily Tomlin shares her critique of Hollywood’s history of stereotyping gay, lesbian, and transgender characters. The title comes from a 1981 book by Vito Russo. He began his research while working in the film archives at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Webb remembers him taking two 35mm clip cans to the music box on a snowy Champagne opening night in 1986. “I was incredibly impressed that he survived this hellish day (canceled flights, bad weather) and that he displayed such positive showmanship,” he recalled. (September 27, 6 p.m., Chicago Filmmakers Firehouse Cinema, 1326 W. Hollywood Ave.)
Both Reeling’s opening and closing nights bring to life the agenda outlined on the festival’s website. “For 44 years, Reeling: Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival has believed in the magic of queer cinema, not because it allows us to escape the world, but because it helps us see the world and each other a little more clearly.”