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NEW FEST: 20th Anniversary NY LGB&T Film Festival: "Were the World Mine" (2008)

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Aloysius J. Gleek:



Were the World Mine  (2008)


Review Summary

An outcast in his town's homophobic community, Timothy's spirit soars when his eccentric teacher casts him in A Midsummer Night's Dream. After discovering a love potion, Timothy puckishly begins to turn his closed-minded town gay. He soon commands the love he desires and deserves. But once he reluctantly returns the towns free will, negating the potion, he is surprised by what remains. ~

IMDb:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0476991/

If you had a love-potion, who would you make fall madly in love with you? Timothy, prone to escaping his dismal high school reality through dazzling musical daydreams, gets to answer that question in a very real way. After his eccentric teacher casts him as Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream, he stumbles upon a recipe hidden within the script to create the play's magical, purple love-pansy. Armed with the pansy, Timothy's fading spirit soars as he puckishly imposes a new reality by turning much of his narrow-minded town gay, beginning with the rugby-jock of his dreams. Ensnaring family, friends and enemies in this heart-wrenching chaos, Timothy forces them to walk a mile in his musical shoes. The course of true love never did run smooth, but by the end of this moving musical comedy of errors based on director Tom Gustafson's prolific award-winning short film, Fairies, the bumpy ride comes to a heartfelt conclusion. With vibrant imagery, a first-rate ensemble cast and innovative music rivaling the best of pop/rock and contemporary Broadway, Were the World Mine attempts to push modern gay cinema and musical film beyond expectation.



http://www.indiewire.com/movies/2007/11/production_repo_20.html

"Were The World Mine"

Director Tom Gustafson adapts his short, "Fairies," into his feature debut. Using Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" as inspiration, this comedy/musical follows a high school boy's discovery which leads to his uptight hometown becoming more open-minded.

After screening "Fairies" at 75 film festivals (including Tribeca in '04), Gustafson was still into the story and decided to expand it with the help of Shakespeare. "We went to the text of 'Midsummer' to figure out where we could pull lines of text to help create the story that we were trying to tell at that point," Gustafson says. "It's pretty amazing that we have a musical that's all original besides the Shakespeare text, which is public domain. It's really freeing, you don't have to go and track down a bunch of artists for the rights."

In the film the main character Timothy (Tanner Cohen) has the part of Puck in the school production of "Midsummer," but as the lead up to opening night grows closer, Timothy finds a potion -- similar to the one Puck has in "Midsummer" -- that makes people fall in love and uses it to make the most unlikely people (particularly same sex) fall in love with each other. The musical numbers (lyrics directly from "A Midsummer Night's Dream") are then incorporated through Timothy's daydreams.

To find financing Gustafson spent a year trying to interest the Broadway community, but after being promised the world by some only to find they could provide nothing, he decided to make the film with the little money he had, shooting it in Chicago last June. But looking back, Gustafson believes using the short as a launching pad for the feature made the whole process less daunting. "It's still scary as hell," he says, "but it was already an interesting story, and we could show the short to perspective financiers, instead of starting something completely brand new."

Produced by Gustafson, Peter Sterling and Cory Krueckeberg (who also co-wrote the film with Gustafson and was the production designer), the film was shot on Super 16 by D.P. Kira Kelly. The film is currently being edited by Jennifer Lilly. Executive producers are Reid Williams and Jon Sechrist.


Florida Film Festival
2008  Won Audience Award Best Feature
Best Narrative Feature
Thomas Gustafson

 Nashville Film Festival
2008  Won Best LGBT Film
Thomas Gustafson
Best Music in a Feature Film
Jessica Fogle
Cory James Krueckeberg
Tim Sandusky

Torino International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival
2008  Won Audience Award Feature Film
Thomas Gustafson  

Aloysius J. Gleek:

southendmd:
Thanks for that, John.

It's also playing at the Provincetown film festival in two weeks and I'm going!

Aloysius J. Gleek:

Were the World Mine
A Musical Dream Come True

"If you could make someone love you, would you?"

Click here and scroll to get the video trailer:
http://www.afterelton.com/blog/snicks/delirious-musical-were-the-world-mine-to-close-NY-LGBT-film-festival




http://www.newfest.org/cgi-bin/iowa/index.html

Aloysius J. Gleek:
What a beautiful night! Jenny (newyearsday) took me to the most wonderful film, and we met a new friend, Don Bachardy, the star of this amazing documentary.

I hope you will have a chance to see this--it's just incredible!



The Trailer:
http://www.zeitgeistfilms.com/chris&don/

Chris & Don: a love story

(USA, 2007, 90 mins)
Directed By: Guido Santi, Tina Mascara

When 18-year-old Don Bachardy was introduced to 49-year-old Christopher Isherwood in 1950s Malibu, neither man knew it would be the start of a love story that would last for 30 years.

Chris & Don chronicles their years together, with the vibrant and engaging Don at this extraordinary documentary’s epicenter. Don, a UCLA student with artistic talents, became the ideal companion for Isherwood, the celebrated British writer best known for his Berlin Stories.

Despite their age difference, a relationship blossomed, and Don soon moved in with Chris. Growing up in the LA suburbs enamored with Hollywood, Don had crashed premieres to take photos with celebrities. With Chris, he suddenly found himself hobnobbing with all manner of luminaries from the arts and literary scene, such as WH Auden, Igor Stravinsky, and Tennessee Williams.

Encouraged by Chris, Don developed his artistic ambitions in art school and eventually found his own fame as a painter, with Chris as his regular model. Open about their relationship at a time when homosexuality wasn’t discussed in polite conversation, Chris and Don weathered the various storms resulting from their different ages, classes, and backgrounds, and remained together until Chris’ death in 1986.

Combining interviews with Don, Chris’ personal journal entries, rare home movies, and archival footage, Guido Santi and Tina Mascara have crafted a very personal story, best demonstrated through the charming animated sequences depicting the horse and cat alter-egos the couple doodled on their personal letters over the years. Chris & Don is a touching, illuminating portrait of the enduring power of love.



A sleeper hit at the Telluride Film Festival, CHRIS & DON: A LOVE STORY is the true-life story of the passionate three-decade relationship between British writer Christopher Isherwood (whose Berlin Stories was the basis for all incarnations of the much-beloved Cabaret) and American portrait painter Don Bachardy, thirty years his junior. From Isherwood’s Kit-Kat-Club years in Weimar-era Germany (the inspiration for his most famous work) to the couple’s first meeting on the sun-kissed beaches of 1950s Malibu, their against-all-odds saga is brought to dazzling life by a treasure trove of multimedia. Bachardy’s contemporary reminiscences (in the Santa Monica home he shared with Isherwood until his death in 1986) artfully interact with archival footage, rare home movies (with glimpses of glitterati pals W.H. Auden, Igor Stravinsky and Tennessee Williams), reenactments, and, most sweetly, whimsical animations based on the cat-and-horse cartoons the pair used in their personal correspondence. With Isherwood’s status as an out-and-proud gay maverick, and Bachardy’s eventual artistic triumph away from the considerable shadow of his life partner, CHRIS & DON: A LOVE STORY is above all a joyful celebration of a most extraordinary couple.

CHRIS & DON will open on June 13 2008 at New York's Quad Cinema, 34 West 13th Street, (212) 255-8800

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