Bright Lights Film Journal :: July 1997

July 1997 | Issue 19

Articles

Gary Morris

Hong Kong's gender-benders are the stuff of legend; director Patrick Chan adds two key works to the canon in these 1996 bookend satires of fame, pop music, and forbidden kisses.

In the Life

Gary Morris

The theme of the latest edition of the acclaimed PBS queer newsmagazine is the queer body and the queer body politic under assault.

Movies

A New Kind of Tranny: Different for Girls

Gary Morris

In a cinema crowded with self-conscious transgressions, Kim offers the real article when she strips to show her straight boyfriend the thrilling secrets of the altered body.

Gay USA

Gary Morris

Queer activism circa 1977 showed a diverse optimistic community moving ever closer to unity — before the body blow of AIDS.

Sexual Subversion: The Bride of Frankenstein

Gary Morris

No institution — society, religion, marriage, or heterosexuality — was safe from the penetrating queer eye of James Whale. Make way for the homosexual creator!

Camera as Cocksucker: Rene Clement's Purple Noon

Gary Morris

Noon isn't the only thing that's purple in this bizarre continental ode to Alain Delon's crotch

Stars

A Mannequin's Face: Joan Crawford

Howard Mandelbaum

The scathing last word on the patron saint of drag n' camp, the Queen of the Land of the Cinema, La Divina Jona!

Festivals

Queer Voices: The 1997 San Francisco International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival

Gary Morris

The world's biggest lesbian and gay filmfest shows the pleasures and pitfalls of gay auteurs caught between assimilation and opposition. Watch out for the "Stepford" homosexual!

The Penis in the Festival

Gary Morris

And you thought the lavender-haired titmouse was an endangered species! Penises are hard to find even in gay movies that ought to know better.

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The fabulous "furies" sequence from the 1932 film Crime Without Passion, by the master of the 1930s Hollywood montage (and more), Slavko Vorkapich. All hail the anima!