by Rafael Gallegos
Daily Lobo
This year's Gay and Lesbian Film Festival at the Southwest Film Center offered the usual cinematic fare - three documentaries and a full-length narrative.
The subject matter, however, was anything but the usual.
My weekend at the cinema started out with a disturbing look at a proselytizing haunted house. Every year Trinity Church in a suburb of Dallas, Texas, puts on its Halloween extravaganza, "Hell House."
This haunted house has a twist and the Pentecostals putting on the show have ulterior motives. After a lengthy audition and casting process that starts in the late summer, this merry band of evangelists put on a show aimed at scaring the sins out of its audience.
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"Hell House" depicts scenes of suicide, AIDS victims dying and abortions gone wrong. At the end of the show, the guests have a choice - to be saved or not to be saved. Director George Ratliff deserves much praise, as he does not get caught up in judging his subject matter. He presents Trinity Church and its followers as real people with good intentions and lets their misguided fundamentalism speak for itself.
The film does an admirable job at showing the pains of human life and what exactly leads to the escapism found in the fundamentalist church. With 75,000 attendees and 15,000 subsequent converts, Trinity Church's "Hell House" is a frightening success.
Next on the agenda was a much needed comedy. Enter "American Mullet." This light-hearted affair was a crowd favorite. What is a mullet, you ask? The Shlong, ShoLo, the Kentucky Waterfall, business-in-the-front party-in-the-back or the Achy-braky big-mistaky. All nicknames for what many of us consider the ugliest haircut ever.
Short in the front and long in the back, the mullet is the subject for renegade filmmaker Jennifer Arnold's mockumentary. With interview subjects ranging from Hispanic soccer players, a Billy Ray Cyrus impersonator, a handful of butches and many other dillussionals whose hairdressers were in it for the money, "American Mullet" captures the essence of a people with this hybrid haircut.
Part-working class white man, part-lesbian tough, the mullet is an expression of self. Arnold won the packed house over with her insightful look at machismo and the mullet. Future works by Arnold will include a feature produced by the Coen Brothers.
Rounding out the weekend at the Southwest Film Center was Harry Dodge and Silas Howard's "By Hook or By Crook." Part-Midnight Cowboy, part-Wizard of Oz in San Francisco, "By Hook or By Crook" was a film I wanted to like.
The gritty look of digital video shot in an industrial yet brightly hued setting was at first interesting to watch, as was Silas Howard's enigmatic Valentine, a lost and restless soul searching for her birth mother. But this film needed some more time in the editing room. For first time filmmakers Dodge and Howard, also the film's starring buddy types, "By Hook" makes for a nice viewing on the film-fest circuit, but it must have had a very forgiving audience.
Next weekend comes "Blue Vinyl" and "An Injury to One" - films that show, respectively, the world's second largest selling vinyl and the forgotten murder of a union organizer.
Tickets for all Southwest Film Center shows are $3 for students and $4 for the general public. For more information, call 277-5608 or go to the Web site at http://swfc.unm.edu.
