OUTwatch, the county’s three-day LGBTQI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex) film festival is headed to the Rialto Cinemas next weekend.
The festival, which features eight films, runs the gamut when it comes to the topic. The opening film, “Gay Chorus Deep South,” is a documentary that tracks the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus as they head to the deep south following a wave of discriminatory anti-LGBTQ laws — while the closing film, “The Infiltrators,” follows a group of young undocumented activists after they willingly give themselves over to Florida border patrol and embark on a mission to free themselves and other detainees from the Broward Transitional Center before being deported.
Showing a variety of situations and identities is important to the heart of the festival, which aims to “help educate and inform us while entertaining us,” said Jody Laine, one of the festival’s producers. “It really helps to bring us together and give self worth, give insight. To some people, it gives hope; it really covers a lot of bases. It’s really important.”
“We believe it’s important to have people see themselves on the screen,” added festival producer Shad Reinstein.
Another goal, and one Laine’s favorite parts about helping co-produce the festival, is bringing the community together.
“When people leave the theater sometimes they’re in tears, sometimes they’re just ecstatic. It really brings out great emotions in people,” she said.
The film festival started in 2012 after the festival producers saw “Cloudburst,” a 2011 film about a lesbian couple who escape from their nursing home on a mission to get married.
“This amazing film with Olymphia Dukakis playing an 80-year-old butch lesbian came out, and we figured out we had to show that film and we moved on from there,” Reinstein said.
Seven years in, both Reinstein and Laine still look forward to bringing the films to Sonoma County. While they didn’t want to pick favorites in this year’s lineup, they did discuss both “Gay Chorus Deep South” and “Kattumaram.”
“One film that I think is really really great is ‘Gay Chorus Deep South,’” Laine said. “I think it’s going to really resonate with a lot of people … I think that it’s really going to resonate not only with the LGBTQI community, but also with families and church groups, anybody who works in the peace and justice arena.”
“A lot of people lately are talking about climate change, and one of the films I liked because I learned from it was a film called ‘Kattumaram,’” Reinstein said. “It’s about a community in the southern part of India that has been destroyed by the tsunami and what’s happening to that community — but it’s also a coming out story of people searching and moving on to being themselves. It’s talking about this community that’s effected by climate change, as well as a 20-something lesbian teacher coming out.”
Each of the eight films has one showing throughout the three-day festival. Tickets and all-access passes can be purchased online at outwatchfilmfest.org or at the door at the Rialto Cinemas, 6868 McKinley St., Sebastopol.
