As I mentioned while talking about Levy Pride, I was happy to take part in some of the events outside the "main area" of the Klondyke Club. Going to the Lesbian Cheese Party was great fun, watching the arm wrestling and taking part in the cheese throwing, while still being back at the Klondyke for the dog show, which is the best part of this and any other pride.
This weekend is Manchester Village Pride, with lots of activities in the Village itself. There are also two official fringe events for the Pride - one is the family fun activities at the Great Northern this weekend, and the other is the Scene Film Festival which runs in the week before Pride.
Last Saturday after gym I went to Cultplex in Cheetham Hill to watch a couple of films as part of the Trans Image, Trans Experience (TITE) takeover of Cultplex. First up was "October Crow", written and directed by Jack Haven who I recently saw starring as Maddy in "I Saw The TV Glow". This clearly a labour of love, featuring a lot of Haven's real live friends, and written as a tribute to actor Peter Nolan Smith (Haven's upstairs neighbour). But it didn't really click for me - it was the kind of arty where every shot lingered about 25-50% longer than it needed to, the motivations of the characters weren't particularly clear or interesting, and shooting on iPhone meant that tracking shots going through light and dark areas suffered from the camera over-correcting the brightness in sometimes painful ways.
Fuelled by an excellent kebab, I watched the next film, "Puppygirl". The description of "a semi-delusional trans woman" in a "gonzo documentary" gave me the ick, but I decided to give the TITE and SCENE organisers the benefit of the doubt and I'm glad I did. Basically it's the story of Milo, a trans woman in Chicago, and part of a queer community there. Puppygirl play is really big among transfemmes, and people she's dating assume she's into it, when she's not. Then she gets invited to appear in a porn film as a puppygirl and decides to try and see what the fuss is about. The documentary follows the theme of a voyage of discovery, but is really a slice of life about Milo and her friends (including the film's director).
After that I headed over towards HOME for the free outdoor screening of "Clueless" with ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cosmolinguist. I thought I'd not seen it before, but within about 30 seconds of it starting I realised I had. So we just sat in the sunshine in deckchairs, drinking beer and enjoying the movie.
We missed the last few minutes of "Clueless" because it clashed with Greg Araki's "I Want Your Sex". This was a generation clash movie, with a famous Millennial artist who seduces her Gen Z intern into kinky sex. And like other Greg Araki films, it descends into nihilistic farce. If you like seeing horrible people doing horrible things and other people get sucked into their orbit and it all ending terribly, this is a fun film. In the video intro beforehand, Araki said it was an attempt to get the sexless Gen Z to fuck, and I don't think it works on that level - the main Gen Z character is clearly horny, and his life is ruined as a result. Still, it has a lot of Olivia Wilde in latex, so I could appreciate it on that aesthetic level. Also I was amused by my Gen Z friends' reaction to the film; they hated the fact that a powerful woman did terrible things and didn't really get any come-uppance. Perhaps that's the reaction Araki was trying to provoke?
