Nope, it didn’t start in Oakland. A backyard film series honouring our favorite criminal or criminalized queers. Films are preceded by some nice live musical performances (performers are not necessarily criminalized, they’re just nice people who play music)

As part of Pervers/cité:

August 12th, 2010 – 7-11pm
Performers: Sarah Bernard, + TBC
In Attendance: Mirha-Soleil Ross
Film: Yapping Out Loud by Mirha-Soleil Ross (2004)

Film Description: A video documentary based on first-person Toronto performance show (7 monologues) dealing with prostitution and anti-prostitution. A tour de force by Canada’s most famous transsexual sexworker animal-rights activist performance artist, Yapping is hilarious and moving –half autobiographical, half agitprop satire, fully unforgettable.
Sarah Bernard is a young girl from Haiti who has momentarily settled in Montreal. She writes songs and book(s) in English, French, and Creole for piano, guitar, and voice. (Someday, Spanish and Italian– someday.) She’s a DJ who lives on and for dance-floors, but when Sarah sings, you can find soft traces of traditional Haitian folklore, little girl blues, traces of growing up on a piano and moving across the continent. They haven’t invented a name for her genre yet.
watch?v=Ff0YISSyDXU&feature=player_embedded
* Special thanks to the Montreal Sound Team for setting us up with sound!

August 26th, 2010 – 7-11pm
Performers: Emay + DJ Meek, + TBC
Film: Madame Sata (2002)

Film Description: The film is based on the real person João Francisco dos Santos (1900-1976), better known by name of Madame Satã. He was a 1.78 meter black man weighing 88 kilos of muscle. In turn a bandit, a transvestite, street-fighter, cook, hero, convict and father to seven adopted children. Satã spent most of his years on the hot streets of Lapa, the Montmartre of the tropics, the bohemian Rio.

Already Happened:

July 15th, 2010 – doors at 8pm, film is at dark
Performers: not this time… sorry!
Film: I Shot Andy Warhol (1996)
A film about shooting Andy Warhol.

July 29th, 2010 – 7-11pm
Performers: not this time, wah wah…
Film: Before Night Falls (2000)

Film Description: The film offers an episodic look at the life of Cuban poet and novelist, Reinaldo Arenas (1943-1990), from his childhood in the province of Oriente to his death in New York City. As a youth he joins Castro‘s rebels. By 1963 he is studying in Havana. He meets the wealthy Pepe, an early lover; their love-hate relationship lasts for years. His writing and openly gay lifestyle get him into trouble: he spends two years in prison, writing letters for other inmates and smuggling out a novel. Later he befriends Lázaro Gómez Carriles, with whom he lives stateless and in poverty in Manhattan after leaving Cuba in the Mariel boatlift. When asked why he writes, he replies cheerfully, “Revenge.”