Photo courtesy of Rediff.comThe Sapphic Film Festival began last Friday with the movie But I’m a Cheerleader and will continue to feature lesbian-oriented films every other Friday at 8 p.m. in Lucie Stern Hall, room 100. The event offers rare, more obscure films as well as popular favorites.
The film showings are sponsored and run by seven members of the Lesbian Literature class. Sponsors supported the film dressed in bright pink fish net and cat ears as they welcomed audience members.
The opening movie was a comedy about a high-school cheerleader who hates to French kiss her boyfriend, has half-naked pictures of girls hanging in her locker and hugs her fellow teammates a little too often. Her parents send her to “straight camp,” where almost every stereotype of what it means to be gay is satirized.
The audience guffawed when the main character, Megan, protested that she couldn’t be gay, exclaiming, “I get good grades, I go to church – and I’m a cheerleader!”
“I’m hoping to bring some issues to people that they weren’t aware of – multicultural issues. And about stereotypes, like But I’m a Cheerleader,” said sophomore Kat Weller-Fahy, one of the organizers.
The next film, showing on March 10, is a drama set in India called Fire.
Weller-Fahy recommended the film, saying, “people aren’t as aware of issues in other cultures.”
Fire is about two women, Radha and Sita, who are in arranged marriages within the same extended family. Their marriages are loveless and passionless, and they become lovers and find in each other what they would never have with their husbands.
On March 31, Saving Face is showing. It’s a romantic comedy about an Asian-American lesbian and her mother, who are both trying to deal with taboo relationships in their culture.
Lost and Delirious will be shown on April 14. The film takes place in a fancy girls’ boarding school. Shown from the perspective of Mary, a shy freshman, it tells the story of two lovers named Tori and Paulie. When Tori fears that her family will discover the relationship, she breaks it off and Paulie desperately attempts to win her back.
The last film, showing on April 28, is Watermelon Woman. It is a campy film about a young black lesbian in Philadelphia who is making a documentary about a black 1930s film actress, Watermelon Woman. Her own life begins to parallel the life of .
