This Weekend!Full Frame Film Festival and LGBT Related Movies

Hey all,
I just wanted to alert everyone about the Full Frame Film Festival happening this weekend in Durham (it actually opened tonight). This is The Festival's 13th year.

I was going through the list of featured films and saw some had LGBT themes. Here's a brief list I compiled with synopses (directly from the site) and their respective showtime information. Just to be clear, I've not seen any of these and I'm not "endorsing" any of them or their viewpoints. Though, hopefully some of you will be able to attend one or more over the weekend. Be sure to let us know what you thought of it! You could even write blog post review of the film! Tickets are $10 each...see this link for more information.

The Exectution of Wanda Jean [Friday, 7:50PM @ Carolina Theater] In 1988 Wanda Jean Allen shot her girlfriend, Gloria Leathers, to death outside the Village Police Department in Oklahoma City. The State charged Allen, who had a previous conviction of manslaughter, with premeditated first-degree murder and sought the death penalty. She was convicted. With direct access to Allen and her team of supporters, specifically her spiritual advisor, Reverend Robin Meyers, and her defense lawyer, Steve Presson, Garbus follows Allen’s final appeals for clemency and documents the last three months of her life on death row. The film further weaves in the experiences of Allen’s mother and siblings and also Leathers’s family and their reactions as the 2001 execution draws near. A staggeringly personal account of one woman’s battle to save her life, the film is also a searching examination of the morality of the death penalty, particularly when race, mental health, and sexuality come into play.

Regretters [Saturday, 7:40PM @ Durham Arts Council] Born men, once women, and now men again, Orlando and Mikael dig deep into the psychology behind the one regret they share: their sex change. Orlando was one of the first people in Sweden to undergo a sex change operation in 1967; Mikael went under the knife much more recently, in the 1990s. Before making this film, director Marcus Lindeen produced a well-received stage play based on their stories; now, he has Orlando and Mikael speak for themselves. The film is structured around a conversation between these two very different individuals as they describe their own experiences and ask insightful questions of each other. The ways in which their experiences overlap and diverge make this a complex, unflinching portrait of regret and a thoughtful exploration of identity and expectations.

[Just from reading the synopsis, I recognize that this film may be contraversial. I am affirming of any individual who identifies as transgender. I've not seen it and I am not endorsing it; I don't know what its agenda/viewpoint/message is. The film may be of interest to readers of this blog, which is why I've included it on this list. If you see it over the weekend, please give us a review!]

Stonewall Uprising [Saturday, 4:30PM @ Durham Convention Center] This essential history of gay rights in America centers on June 27, 1969, the night that patrons of a Greenwich Village bar, the Stonewall Inn, refused to be rounded up and humiliated just for being themselves. America was a homophobic nation, deluded by the belief—bolstered by hysterical documentaries like Mike Wallace’s CBS Reports episode “The Homosexuals”—that homosexuality was a mental illness. There was no such thing as being out of the closet—there was only in the closet. Greenwich Village was the exception, a place where gay people met openly. One hot summer night, with a police raid in progress, something snapped, and gays and lesbians fought back, hurling beer bottles and stones at the police. The loud and proud gay rights march that soon followed announced that gay people would now refuse to be treated as criminals. With a wealth of archival material and extensive interviews with participants, this film memorializes the rebellion that ushered in the gay liberation era.

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Orlando McDonald's Manager Allegedly Told Trans Applicant: 'We Do Not Hire F**gots': Seventeen-year-old Zikerria Bellamy applied online for a position as a shift manager or crew leader at an Orlando McDonald's. When she went in for the interview on July 28, Bellamy says a manager forced her to check a box indicating her gender.

"Once I looked at his facial expression, when I checked off male, like the whole face just changed. He was upset. I seen the anger, you know, like you can tell when someone gets upset," Bellamy said.

She said she was told she would not be granted an interview and received an angry, hateful voicemail from the manager later in the day.

"You went to [indistinguishable] McDonald's today," the message says. "It doesn't matter how many times you go down there. You will not get hired. We do not hire faggots. You lied to me. You told me you was a woman. And then you lied to me. You told me you were seventeen. I can't believe you. You're a lying brother. How could you ever lie to me?"

More coverage at Pam's House Blend.

This Is What Happens When You Switch Your Major From Engineering To Linguistics…

I have recently decided to change my major from Biomedical engineering to a double major in Linguistics and Neuroscience. Excited to actually study something that I find enjoyable, I have been spending every minute of my day procrastinating by trying to memorize what Wikipedia has to say about linguistics and neuroscience. Also I have been reading and have finished In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build A Perfect Language by Arika Okrent. An astoundingly interesting book and a must read for anyone with a slight flair for language. My further meanderings into procrastination led me to attend UNC Chapel Hill’s LGBT student group’s meeting last Thursday where the topic was Trans 101 (I have to express my dearest apologies for I have forgotten the presenters surname, first name is Mandy). After which I felt that using gendered pronouns was now akin to hate crimes.

Yet instead of being inspired to fight for and rally for LGBT equality with civil disobedient vigor, I couldn’t help wondering that explicitly asking if one preferred male or female pronouns was a bit long-winded. Then a small voice inside my head uttered "the neuter case!" (which is common in the other Germanic languages). We would simply need to turn back the clock to old English where there was a plethora of pronouns. So just as we might say the gendered 'he' or 'her' we would say neutered 'hit.' We could even introduce different new and artificial pronouns for gender identity and expression; as well as transitions and intersexes and so on. There by mapping the English language to the current need for equality and representation.

Though ultimately this would not bring about equality though language, like Ludwik Łazarz Zamenhof hoped to do with his Esperanto, but it would make the tool that is language more, in a way, ergonomic. Yet such an overhaul is simply a flight of fancy; I do not expect nor actively entertain the idea that grammarians could be the new LGBT activists though I will certainly be a linguist of the movement. So now I leave you dear reader to write your next rally speech in old English.