The Bear Tooth is hosting a GLBT Mini-Fest for Anchorage Pride Week with three movies: City of Borders (an Israeli documentary), The Big Gay Musical (a romantic date movie) – both showing on Monday June 21 – and the 1994 classic The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert showing Thursday June 24.
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert: Thursday, June 24 at 10 PM, tickets $3
This is the tale of two drag queens and a transsexual who embark on a road trip to a remote resort town in the Australian desert on a bus christened Priscilla. When Anthony “Tick”/Mitzi (Hugo Weaving) is invited to perform in Alice Springs, he recruits flamboyant young stud Adam/Felicia (Guy Pearce) and the legendary, refined Bernadette (Terence Stamp) to join him. Mitzi, however, fails to disclose one important fact to his friends: his wife is the one who invited them to Alice Springs.
With one big secret about to be revealed and another one up his sleeve, Mitzi is a little stressed. With long hours on the road ahead of them, the trio lip-synchs campy songs on the bus, creates fabulous costumes, and meets a multitude of colorful characters along the way. They party with friendly aborigines, are confronted by judgmental townspeople who are averse to drag queens, and meet Bob (Bill Hunter), a warmhearted mechanic and drag fan who joins them for the last leg of their trip when their bus breaks down in the middle of nowhere.
Fantastic costumes and fabulous makeup abound, and fine performances are delivered all around. But perhaps most important are the implicit messages that families come in all forms, that friends can make a family, and that love really knows no boundaries.
It’s the Australian film that blitzed overseas box offices. It caused a near riot at the Cannes Film Festival. It won an Academy Award®. It’s fun, daring, over-the-top and unforgettable. It’s a road movie with attitude and the occasional frock. (Australia 1994, Rated R)
The very real consequences of DADT repeal; seeking survivor benefits for same-sex partner of Alaska shooting victim; waiting on SCOTUS decision about whether it will hear Prop 8 case; and other recent LGBTQ news selected by Sara Boesser in Juneau, Alaska.
In this month’s “Ask Lambda Legal” column, Lambda Legal answers a question about the federal government’s longstanding ban against donations of blood from men who have sex with men (MSM).
Alaska Pride Conference 2012 kicks off on October 5 with a First Friday showing at Tref.Punkt Studio of Love is Love, a photographic exhibit of LGBT couples from across the state.
United for marriage: Light the way to justice. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments this Tuesday and Wednesday, March 26–27, in two cases about freedom to marry. Please join us on Tuesday, March 26, at the federal courthouse in Anchorage (7th & C) in a circle united for equality.
Pariah, a critically acclaimed film about a 17-year-old African-American woman embracing her lesbian identity, will screen at UAA on Friday, November 2, and will be followed by a discussion on acceptance in honor of Mya Dale. The event is free and open to the public.