Ernest Hardy

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Outfest 2008: Where Do We Go From Here?

Ernest Hardy
One of the struggles faced by Outfest (a.k.a. the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Film Festival) in recent years has been to clarify its purpose in a post–Will & Grace/Queer Eye for the Straight Guy world in which studies on cultural homophobia show Americans (notably younger generations) becoming more tolerant......
Don and Chris in front of Hockney's 1968 double portrait

Chris & Don: Opposites Attract

Ernest Hardy
A glint in his eye and a grin on his lips, artist Don Bachardy looks into the camera and explains the dynamic of his three-decade relationship with the late literary icon Christopher Isherwood as if it were a fairy tale. “His role,” Bachardy says, “could be described as that of......
Desert explorer: Donna Deitch; Credit: Kevin Scanlon

One From the Heart: Outfest Achievement Award Winner Donna Deitch

Ernest Hardy
‘I feel really honored,” says director Donna Deitch, the recipient of this year’s Outfest Achievement Award, between sips of coffee at Masa of Echo Park. “Outfest is an organization that does much more than have a festival for one week or 10 days of the year,” she adds. “There’s the......

Sissy

Ernest Hardy
By the time 12-year-old Latino homo Sissy holds a dance-off with his sneering older sister — she and her girls break it down to the Sylvers’ “...
The Wrecking Crew

The Wrecking Crew: Behind the Music

Ernest Hardy
(Click to enlarge) The Wrecking Crew The shimmering intangibles of pop music — whatever it is that makes three or more recorded minutes of music connect to and resonate within the human spirit — are the co-subjects in this wonderful documentary on the Wrecking Crew, the industry-acclaimed but otherwise little-known......
Beirut's Postcards From Italy video

DIY MTV: Music Videos Struggle to Keep Up With YouTube

Ernest Hardy
In this age of YouTube saturation, the power of the music video as marketing and branding tool has only grown greater, but breaking through the clutter of music clips takes increasing ingenuity. Program 1 of the Los Angeles Film Festival’s “Eclectic Mix” music-video showcase establishes early on that animation (from......
Chaotic Ana

Mujeres Rule at Recent Spanish Cinema 2008

Ernest Hardy
(Click to enlarge) Chaotic Ana An immediately noticeable thread running through the programming of this year’s Recent Spanish Cinema showcase is both the quantity and quality of strong roles for women. It’s not that the men are slighted — the experimental mind-fuck of the documentary Pepe Sales: Poor, Poor Men......
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Visualizing the Sacred: Islam on Film

Ernest Hardy
UCLA Film & Television Archive (Click to enlarge) The Message The title of UCLA’s monthlong series of films about the lives of Muslims around the world is given a rich twist with director Moustapha Akkad’s 1976 The Message, in which (according to Islamic tenets) neither the voice nor the image......
The Machine Girl

Eastern Promises: Asian Pacific Film Festival

Ernest Hardy
At this year’s Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival (a.k.a. VC Filmfest) — another typically strong program from the 24-year-old event — the documentaries shine brightest. What makes the nonfiction lineup so powerful isn’t just the timeliness of the issues addressed but the ways in which the films seem to......
Cover

Pan African Film Festival Under Cover

Ernest Hardy
(Click to enlarge) Cover When it was first announced that director Bill Duke was making Cover, the story of a devout Christian woman who discovers that her husband is on the down-low and may have given her HIV, there was a huge outcry from black gay and lesbian activists who......