Nobody would have predicted that Brokeback Mountain, when it burst onto the scene in 2005, would become what, at the time, was arguably the most commercially and critically successful queer film in history. Nobody would have predicted that it would go on to earn $178 million at the box office worldwide. And nobody would have predicted that the Academy would deem an emotionally and sexually charged love story between two gay shepherds to be the best of the best and consequently nominate it for a record eight awards for a queer film. But Brokeback Mountain did accomplish all of these things and was, in fact, the favourite to win Best Picture that year. Back then, it was the biggest of big deals that an independently-produced gay film reached this level of success. For everyone paying attention to the Brokeback Mountain’s success story, it felt, particularly to queer audiences, like the industry was demonstrating an open-mindedness that had never been truly seen before and, what’s more, signalling a breakthrough in conservative, homophobic Hollywood.
But then the Academy awarded Crash (2005) with the Oscar for Best Picture. Many members of the Academy—remember: old, straight, white men—later confessed that they had, in fact, refused to watch, and therefore vote for Brokeback Mountain because of its queer subject matter. What initially felt like a move toward a better and more inclusive space within the industry turned out to be false hope, indeed, evidence that there still existed a degree of ignorance, of fear—of, perhaps, hate—in Hollywood.
And yet Brokeback Mountain still changed the game for queer cinema because, if anything, it showed the powers in charge how hungry—how starved—audiences were for queer stories in film, how queer cinema wasn’t a niche category, and, above all, how there was beauty, viability, and importance in the stories and lives of queer people.
Finally, a decade later, real, visible, and unapologetic strides were made: Mya Taylor became the first Black transgender actress to win a major film award for her performance in Tangerine (2015); Carol (2015) and Call Me By Your Name (2017), in addition to receiving critical and commercial acclaim, each became cultural phenomena for lesbian and gay audiences; Love, Simon (2018) was the first-ever gay film produced by a major Hollywood studio; and the masterpiece that is Moonlight (2016) became the first gay, Black film to (finally) win Best Picture at the Oscars. And these are just a few of the many visibly and proudly queer mainstream films released since Brokeback Mountain!
Looking at the HollyShorts Film Festival and its LGBTQ+ category of films this year, it is truly a wondrous sight to behold. HSFF has put together a catalogue of queer shorts that showcases—sometimes literally—the full rainbow of today’s queer experience.
Heather María Ács’ Flourish, for instance, takes the viewer on a Gen Z-ian trip through the multitude of gender expressions. Her film features an all-queer cast that is diverse in race, queer identities, and queer bodies. The product design fittingly boasts vibrance in its costumes, glittery excess in its nightclub set, and bounty in the mismatched collection of props, all of which allude to how loud queer people, especially queer youth today, can finally be and how, ultimately, queer people’s heightened volume of expression and livelihood was earned—or, more correctly, fought for—by carving it out themselves.
Bonnie Discepolo’s Graceland explores today’s notions of gender expression against the backdrop of the conventional nuclear family, exhibiting the generational conflict between a clean-cut, old school suburban mother (Anna Camp) and her transgender son (Katie Beth West), who rejects the name Grace and chooses instead the name Elvis. What’s interesting—indeed, refreshing—about Discepolo’s film is the subversion of work and struggle: it is not Elvis who bears the weight of the journey towards acceptance; rather, it is Elvis’ mom who must embark on a journey of self-discovery and ultimately adapt her beliefs and her role as parent in order to have a loving, open, and successful relationship with her son. So too often it is the queer individual who, in their coming-out narrative, does all of the work in creating a space in which they can live their truth. No, Graceland shows that it is also incumbent upon the parents of queer children to meet them halfway. Elvis, in fact, does not hide who he is and—literally, in a talent show sequence—stands in the spotlight.
On the other end of the spectrum of generational conflict, Miguel Angel Caballero’s Acuitzeramo tells a story of grief, loss, love, and, at the end of it all, hope. Set in rural Mexico, Salvador (Sal Lopez), upon the death of his partner of fifteen years, reaches out to his partner’s estranged son Anthony (Luis Aldana) to attend the funeral. The problem is that Anthony was unaware that his father was gay, let alone living with Salvador. Unlike most of the other films in the LGBTQ+ block, Acuitzeramo is subtle, quiet, and bare, speaking to the silent pain many queer people around the world still suffer today. Though Lopez’s beautiful performance as Salvador registers barely above a whisper, his eyes—and the lines that surround it—are loud with heartache and pain.
Meanwhile, Sophie Kargman’s Query is the opposite: dialogue-driven, calculated, and quippy, her film is essentially a day-long conversation between two straight bros (Justice Smith and Graham Patrick Martin) who try to determine where one’s sexual attraction and orientation are learned, if they are indeed learned concepts or natural traits, or whether one has control in who one is attracted to. The script (co-written by Kargman and Ryan Farhoudi) is, here, the standout star, striking the perfect balance between entertaining wordplay and sexual philosophy. With Kargman’s direction—the way she paces the film is perfection—the dialogue makes way for action, particularly in a climactic moment between the two bros that blurs not only each of their defined stances on sexual attraction, but the defined lines of their relationship as well.
Erin Brown Thomas’ Feeling Flush, taking place entirely in a four-by-six bathroom, portrays Vicki’s (Kelly Vrooman) confrontation with boundaries and intimacy when her new girlfriend Samantha (Scout Durwood) refuses to let her pee in peace. It’s a comical and yet tender film about feelings of security, not just in a relationship but also in one’s self. The actress’ performances are on-point—Vrooman, in particular, blends perfectly sharp wit with vulnerability, and nails the awkwardness that sometimes comes with being human—and Thomas’ camera work only enhances the chemistry between them. Making use of every inch the small bathroom affords, Thomas allows the camera to shoot from different angles, thus lending the conversationally-driven film a sense of movement that makes visible Vicki’s internal journey towards self-security.
Other shorts to look out for at this year’s HSFF include: Elegance Bratton and Jovan James’ Buck, which explores the intersection of queerness, race, mental health, and drug use; Andrea Rosen’s The Rain Poncho, a hilarious look at two lesbian mothers raising their teenage daughters; and Vote Neil by Honora Talbott, a documentary that follows an ex-Marine man’s campaign as he runs to become the first to openly gay man elected to the Alabama State Legislature.
Looking at the colourful and wholly entertaining block of queer films HSFF is showcasing this year—films that present queer joy, triumph, and life as much as they do queer tragedy—the words of Lazer (Poppy Liu) in Ács’ Flourish come to mind: “The world is a mess. And because it is the apocalypse, we are going to go dancing, and we are going to have queer, kinky sex, and we are going to love each other. Because this is our legacy.”
One can only imagine where queer cinema would be today if, fifteen years ago, Jake Gyllenhaal had been able to say those words in Brokeback Mountain.
