Thirteen’s 18th Annual OUT! Festival celebrates LGBT Pride month June 15–27 with programming that focuses on women in the movement—from lesbians fighting for the right to be mothers and church leaders to young female filmmakers trying to make their way in a world of traditional lifestyles and prejudices. Highlights include Straight White Men and Me, lesbian filmmaker Antonia Kaouses’ witty exploration of the world of “SWMs”; In the Life TV’s Voices of Pride special; and This Obedience, which follows one woman’s battle with the Evangelical Lutheran Church.
What lesbian on the brink of coming out hasn’t made a trip to the local video store in search of a copy of the timeless lesbian classic Desert Hearts? Relive your early sweet days of exploring with Wolfe Video’s release and signing event of the new double DVD of Desert Hearts. Meet actor Patricia Charbonneau and director Donna Deitch at this June 19 Virgin Megastore Union Square event. Purchase your DVD and receive a free collector’s floatie pen, showing the dramatic moment when Cay’s convertible roars in reverse on the desert highway and she meets Vivian.
Logo premieres its new reality series Curl Girls on June 18. The series follows the lives and loves of six Southern Californian lesbian surfers both on and off the beach. The women featured all balance busy professional and personal lives with their passion for surfing, and drama in the ocean is accompanied by the drama of navigating tricky relationships amongst this group of athletes.
Throughout June, HBO on Demand screens the winners of its short LGBT film competition, SHOUT. Four short film script submissions were chosen and the filmmakers each received $15,000 to produce their scripts. The results include Happenstance, in which a woman finds out that she has a lot in common with her son’s new girlfriend, and Donny & Ginger, a dark drama about a lonely cop and a drag queen prostitute he meets one night.
Though doing anything “under the stars” in Manhattan requires a bit of imagination, watching films in Bryant Park on the grass picnic-style during the HBO Summer Film Festival is probably the closest you’ll get to the real thing. The festival runs Monday nights from June 18–Aug 20 and screens classic films such as Woody Allen’s Annie Hall, Casablanca, and Psycho in NYC’s interpretation of the drive-in movie.
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