Seattle has Capitol Hill, Los Angeles has West Hollywood, and
San Francisco has the Castro—but what about Portland? For a city
as queer friendly as Bridgetown, the gay community here is spread
remarkably thin. Besides a handful of gay bars and community centers
scattered around town, there’s no real pocket of real estate that can
be called the “gay neighborhood.”
While many a queer Portlander views the city’s geographical
non-separatism as a positive way of keeping the LGBT community out of
the urban ghetto, others—like Russ Gage and David Weissman,
co-founders of the Portland Queer Documentary Film Festival (QDoc),
which is currently in its third year—feel something’s
missing.
“The QDoc Film Festival was born out of a desire to bring the
Portland gay community together, if just for a few days,” Gage told me
when I met with him and Weissman over beverages at the Living Room
Theaters—one of many businesses currently transforming SW Stark
into an area better known for coffee and cuisine than its long-held
reputation as the cruising capital of Portland.
Before coming to Portland, Gage served for 10 years as the
operations director of the San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay
Film Festival, the oldest and largest LGBT film festival in the world.
He sees QDoc as being unique compared to the majority of queer-themed
film festivals, as it’s the only LGBT festival in the country dedicated
exclusively to documentary film.
“We keep an eye on the films that come out of the major
festivals—Sundance, Berlin, Amsterdam—and then try and
assemble a program based on what we think best suits the current
times,” he says.
No one can argue that the “current times” have been especially
tumultuous for gay and lesbian Americans, if not a bit surreal. Last
year saw the passage of the anti-gay marriage bill Proposition 8 in
normally liberal California, while states long thought to be less open
to gay marriage, such as Maine and Iowa, have made it legal.
QDoc’s other co-founder, David Weissman, is a filmmaker best known
for his 2002 film The Cockettes, a documentary about a group of
gender-bending performers who became a cultural phenomenon in the early
1970s. Weissman views the festival as an opportunity to bring
substantive films to audiences that might not normally be able see
them.
“This year, our intent was to select films that inspire people,” he
says. “We wanted stories that give people hope in this time of high
anxiety.”
The remarkable opening night film, City of Borders (screens
Thursday, May 28), about a group of gays and lesbians who regularly
attend the only gay bar in Jerusalem, is a powerful story of human
courage in the face of violent extremism—and despite the painful
reality of its subject, director Yun Suh’s film still feels optimistic.
Meanwhile, Training Rules (Saturday, May 30) exposes homophobia
and discrimination in women’s collegiate athletics, shining a light on
a disturbing trend many viewers—even those who consider
themselves well versed in the struggle for LGBT rights—might
never have known existed.
Other highlights include It Came from Kuchar (Friday, May
29), a tender and fascinating portrait of legendary underground
filmmakers Mike and George Kuchar, and Fig Trees (Sunday, May
31), a film that brings together Gertrude Stein, a singing albino
squirrel, and St. Teresa of Ávila to tell the story of AIDS
activist Zackie Achmat.
“We wanted to make a festival that would be much bigger than the sum
of its parts,” Weissman explains. “Good documentaries have the ability
to change a person’s perception of the world, and it’s an amazing
feeling to share this transformative experience with the growing
community here in Portland.”
Many of QDoc’s filmmakers will be in attendance for their films’
screenings. For more info, see Film Shorts, Movie Times and queerdocfest.org.