Los Angeles queer film fans are feeling the summer void left by the beloved Outfest, which suspended its program last year due to financial issues and staff layoffs and has yet to resume. But a new film series called Queer Rhapsody is looking to fill the void at five venues from July 19-28. It will be curated by the UCLA Film and Television Archive and one of Outfest’s former owners. Though it’s not just aiming to replace the 40-year tradition of Los Angeles’ oldest film festival. Moreover, Queer Rhapsody is explicitly a series, not a festival.
Focusing on liberation stories and a program of more than 50 features and documentaries, Queer Rhapsody will open at the Hammer Museum’s Billy Wilder Theater with Drew Denney’s “Second Nature.” Narrated by Elliot Page, the documentary follows transgender pioneer and evolutionary biologist Dr. Joan Roughgarden as she meets with scientists to study the more than 1,500 animal species that engage in same-sex sexual practices and same-sex families.
Other highlights include Jules Roskam’s Sundance premiere “Desire Lines,” which follows an Iranian-American trans man’s journey to find his place in history; Fauzia Mirza’s “The Queen of My Dreams,” about a queer Pakistani graduate student on a Bollywood-inspired journey; coming-of-age film mashup “Ask Any Buddy,” Julia Fuhr Man’s story of marginalized queer athletes in “Life Is Not a Competition But I’m Winning”; and Silas Howard’s queer supernatural young adult comedy “Darby and the Dead,” followed by a queer prom at Eagle Rock’s recently revived Eagle Theatre at Vidiots.
IndieWire spoke with May Hong Ha-Duong, director of the UCLA Film & Television Archive, and Martin McDonald, creative director and programmer of Queer Rhapsody, about their aspirations for the series, which will also play at venues including the Egyptian Theatre, Los Feliz 3 and the Broad Museum’s Oculus Hall.
“We recognized a while ago that there might be a need to support contemporary queer cinema in Los Angeles,” Haduon says. “They were really thinking about access. Access to film is part of how we form our identity. Seeing ourselves on screen is how we see others… [what was really so important] It kept that lifeline on screen.”
After essentially all of its staff was laid off last year when many of them decided to unionize, Outfest will not be returning to Los Angeles this year and has not yet announced plans to return.
“What I saw was a need for spaces where people could come together and where artists were at the center,” Hudnon said. “And, of course, looking ahead a few months, we thought about how UCLA and other venues can continue to engage with queer film, and do so in a collective, thoughtful way without necessarily saying this is XYZ. What is our north star here? It’s about creating spaces where people can be around queer film.”
“I don’t think there’s a lack of space. The big thing that May and I talked about early on was the presence of cultural activists and people who are curating and thinking about what our community needs in this moment,” added MacDonald, the former Outfest staffer. “Whether it’s freeway or not, there’s a geographic or cultural reason to work with all of our venue partners.”
“Darby and the Dead” by HULU
IndieWire also spoke with Howard, a Los Angeles-based transgender filmmaker whose 2022 film “The Derby and the Dead,” produced by 20th Century Studios, premiered exclusively on Hulu. It’s no longer available to stream on the platform, but is available to rent from digital providers. That’s one of the reasons Howard was excited to have his diverse teen comedy hit theaters on Vidiots.
And it’s a joyous moment for Howard, too, in terms of advancing transgender narratives: He was one of the first trans male filmmakers to direct a studio project, became the first transgender director with the TV series “Transparent,” and has also helmed “A League of Their Own” and “Quantum Leap.”
“Who knew there wouldn’t be room on the streaming shelves?” Howard said when asked about Derby and the Dead being removed from Hulu. “It wasn’t supposed to happen, but it was unfortunate given the residual profits and tax deductions. It sold for a year, and then it was available on Amazon, iTunes, etc. shortly after, so I considered myself lucky. They were really careful, but it seems Disney, who makes the decisions, or their accounting department, pulled the movie, and Hulu had just finished researching it, and it was one of the most diverse audiences they could reach with their project, the youngest audience. I’ve heard of much worse cases, so I considered myself very lucky.”
Howard’s directorial debut, the queer crime drama By Hook or by Crook, won a slew of unexpected (for a filmmaker) awards at Outfest in 2021, so like many queer people in Los Angeles, he’s feeling the pain of the festival not continuing. “Outfest has always been an important festival to me because it’s in LA and it provides me with connections to people in the industry. It’s going to be back. I don’t think it’s going to be cancelled forever, but it’s a shame. I love that festival. It’s one of the big reasons I moved here…People often ask me, ‘Do we still need LGBTQ film festivals?’ To me, it’s so important for filmmakers who want to find an audience and get their work seen.”
Darby stars Lele Downs and Moana breakout star Auli’i Cravalho and tells the story of a young girl who is given the ability to see the dead after a near-death experience. “I haven’t done a lot of queer or transgender specific work, so Darby was probably the first film I did that was genre specific. I felt so supported. It was my first studio. It went really well,” Howard said. “They didn’t crush my spirit. I had a really good time and I was prepared for whatever was to come.”
Silas Howard attends the Film Independent special screening of Mutt, which he executive produced, at the Film Independent Theater in Los Angeles, California on August 23, 2023. Getty Images
Regarding the film’s streaming-only debut, Howard said, “There are complex factors at play. A theatrical release would be very stressful because you have to make money at the box office. On the other hand, it’s a relief not to have to work hard for months on a film and then pay back investors.” [20th Century] They gave us double the budget we proposed because they thought it was a big movie. [But] Streaming is definitely important in terms of what gets lost in the shuffle. I can’t wait to see it in theaters again.”
A question surrounding many queer filmmakers is whether they should only tell queer stories. “I’m queer and trans, so that’s definitely my lens, and doing something that’s very genre specific is really exciting to direct,” Howard said. “I’ve never worried about being typecast because I love telling queer stories. Doing something that’s too normcore is stressful. On The Derby and the Dead, my music director was like, wait a minute, where are all the queer kids in the movie? So, [trans activist and actor] Nicole Maines, the studio was really excited about it. She plays one of the mean girl’s best friends.”
Howard next directed two episodes of the Netflix series “The Corpse,” based on Greg Cope White’s memoir “Pink Marine.” [gay] “This is the story of a guy who joined the Marines in the early ’90s under the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ mentality,” he says. “We started this before the strike and picked it up again a year later. I’m grateful it wasn’t shelved like so many other things.”
Queer Rhapsody runs from July 19 to 28 in Los Angeles. For more information about the series, check out the official Queer Rhapsody website.
