culture consumed (April, 2024)

[hermionesviolin]

films

• As promised, lots of Wicked Queer -- 6 programs live and 11 streamed; 10 features and 7 shorts programs (2 only partial); 13 with Abby and 4 on my own -- most of which I haven't written up yet (so feel free to ask questions in comments, since who knows when I'll manage to finish writeups)

  seen live:

  • Reel Queer Stories: People Have the Power (documentary shorts program) Saturday, Apr 6 @ 12:00 pm [written up here]
  • The Queen of My Dreams | Saturday Apr 6 @ 6:30 pm -- "Pakistani Muslim Mariam and her Canadian-born daughter Azra come of age in two different eras against the backdrop of a shared obsession with Bollywood fantasy." [written up here]
  • I Will Be There Every Single Night (Toda Noite Estarei Lá) | Monday Apr 8 @ 6:30 pm -- documentary about a Brazilian trans Assemblies of God woman [written up here]
  • Peafowl | Saturday Apr 13 @ 7:30 pm -- South Korean trans woman [written up here] went to this one on my own
    
  • G.T.F.O. (shorts program, weird films) Sunday, Apr 14 @ 4:00 pm [written up here]
    
  • The Devil Queen (A Rainha Diaba) | Sunday Apr 14 @ 9:00 pm -- 1974 Brazilian film [written up here]
  
  streamed:
  
  
  • [feature] Fire (1997, 104min, India/Canada, English) [written up here]
    
  • [feature] Close to You (2023, 100min, Canada, English) -- the new Elliot Page film
    
  • [feature] Desire Lines (2023, 81min, UK, English) -- trans-masc archives documentary, mostly 1970s/80s-present
    
  • [feature] Throuple (2024, 90min, USA, English)
    
  • [feature] Tongues Untied (1989, 55min, USA, English) -- experimental documentary by Marlon Riggs about Black gay men -- I watched this on my own
    
  • [feature] Lesvia (Λεσβία) (2023, 77min, Greece, Greek) -- documentary about the contemporary influx of lesbians to the Greek village of Eresos, where Sappho was likely from on the Isle of Lesbos -- I watched this on my own
  • [short film program] Latinx 2024 - Forever Young (85 min) -- I watched this on my own
    
  • [short film program] (Trans)portation: Transgender Stories (92min)
    
  • [short film program] QBIPOCS: STILL. WE. RISE. (102min) -- we watched 2 of these
    
  • [short film program] Wicked Queer Selects -- "A showcase of all the shorts that were paired with features" -- we watched some of these
  • [short film program] Emergence: Queer Asian Stories (105min) 
    
  
  
  
• also, The People's Joker with Abby -- which weirdly, all the pre-movie trailers were for horror/thriller movies? except the first trailer, which was for the Beetlejuice sequel.  Though it showed at opening night of the Salem Horror Fest, so shrug emoji.  And one of the trailered films (I Saw the TV Glow) apparently has queer content -- it's one of the Wicked Queer co-sponsored films at the upcoming Independent Film Festival of Boston. [edit: And apparently it has trans themes. /edit]

  The Wiki was helpful for checking on all the characters (yay, hyperlinks), though I would recommend watching the film before you read the Wiki, since I think there are some nice surprises.

books

• read Abby ~6 picturebooks
  
• [local library queer book club] The Selected Works of Audre Lorde by Audre Lorde [edited and with an introduction by Roxane Gay]
  
• [climate change book club] How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue (fiction)
  

theatr

• the HBS show -- this year's theme was the Barbie movie (the show has lots of HBS-specific content -- my friend Jo [who's a theatre professional but not an HBS] who told me about it because she was hired to work on the show said didn't know it was funny until the show actually opened and an audience laughed -- but usually parodies a well-known media property), so I bought a ticket and generally enjoyed it.  It's kind of impressive how thoughtful they are about some things.

***

Currently reading: 

[for May 9th local library queer book club] The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo -- riff on The Great Gatsby with a queer Asian woman as the POV protagonist, plus fantasy elements

[for May 19th feminist sff book club] The Pomegranate Gate by Ariel Kaplan -- I was reading this first, and have been generally enjoying it, but I then pivoted to The Chosen and the Beautiful since that book club meeting is sooner

Reading next:

[for May 22nd climate change book club] Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer -- though I'll actually miss the book club due to pre-existing concert plans.  This book is way longer/denser than I had expected, so who knows how much I'll get through it and when (especially given all the other demands on my reading time this month).

and maybe also [for May 16th work book club] She and Her Cat: Stories by Makoto Shinkai