The World Beyond BetterMost > The Culture Tent
NEW FEST: 20th Anniversary NY LGB&T Film Festival: "Were the World Mine" (2008)
Front-Ranger:
--- Quote from: jmmgallagher on June 22, 2008, 09:32:52 am ---
http://www.salon.com/ent/critics_picks/2008/06/21/june21/
"Chris & Don: A Love Story"
English writer Christopher Isherwood and American painter Don Bachardy were a Los Angeles power couple decades before anyone had ever said "gay" and "marriage" in the same sentence -- unless they meant a tipsy hetero pair -- but the documentary "Chris & Don: A Love Story" is much more than an illustration that, hey, homos can have real relationships. Isherwood was already a middle-aged famous writer (author of "The Berlin Stories") when he met the much younger Bachardy on Santa Monica Beach in 1952, and in the succeeding years the duo both embodied stereotypes about homosexual love -- theirs was something of a master-pupil relationship, and not altogether monogamous -- and uprooted them. Direction by Tina Mascara and Guido Santi is straightforward, but this appealing mixture of home movies, contemporary interviews and animation captures the spirit of a pioneering sexual, personal and artistic partnership and the remarkable literary-artistic circle -- Aldous Huxley, Bertrand Russell and Igor Stravinsky were among their friends -- that nurtured it. (Now playing in New York and Rochester, N.Y. Opens July 4 in Los Angeles; July 18 in Boston and San Francisco; July 25 in Chicago, Lake Worth, Fla., Minneapolis, Philadelphia, San Diego, Washington and Wilmington, Del.; and Aug. 1 in Atlanta, St. Louis and Seattle, with more cities to follow.)
-- Andrew O'Hehir
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Offline Chuck and I watched this last nite. It is a lovely documentary with wonderful photos and home movies. I especially loved the drawings that Don made of Chris and others.
Couples of any stripe can learn a lot about love and relationships by watching this movie. Chris(topher Isherwood) and Don decided not to obtain a pet but instead to make each other their pet and give each other the affection that otherwise would be siphoned off by the pet. Thus, Chris became Old Dobbin the horse (he was 30 years older than Don) and Don is a lovely cat. This concept was illustrated in beautiful animations taken from the birthday cards they had given each other over the years.
Aloysius J. Gleek:
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Aloysius J. Gleek:
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJsczmtGjxs[/youtube]
Chris & Don - A Love Story (2007)
Published on Jun 29, 2017
--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on May 18, 2009, 04:55:36 pm ---Offline Chuck and I watched this last nite. It is a lovely documentary with wonderful photos and home movies. I especially loved the drawings that Don made of Chris and others.
Couples of any stripe can learn a lot about love and relationships by watching this movie. Chris(topher Isherwood) and Don decided not to obtain a pet but instead to make each other their pet and give each other the affection that otherwise would be siphoned off by the pet. Thus, Chris became Old Dobbin the horse (he was 30 years older than Don) and Don is a lovely cat. This concept was illustrated in beautiful animations taken from the birthday cards they had given each other over the years.
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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
The Trailer:
http://www.zeitgeistfilms.com/chris&don/
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