FEAST FESTIVAL 2009.
QUEERDOC

This year Feast presents 3 of the best new queer Documentaries from around the globe plus Patrik 1.5, a fantastic feature from Sweden. Documentaries screen at the intimate Iris Cinema, Patrik 1.5 screens at the larger Mercury Cinema. Do book to avoid disappointment.

PLEASE NOTE: All films on Sunday 22 November will now be screened in the larger Mercury Cinema, instead of the Iris Cinema.
Both Cinema's are at the same location.

EDIE & THEA: A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT

Iris cinema Sun 22 Nov 3pm Director: Greta Olafsdottir and Susan Muska, USA, 2009, 67 min

Edie met Thea 45 years ago. "We danced so long, I wore a hole in my stocking". In this inspiring doco Edie and Thea sit beside each other and reminisce as a slide show of their shared life plays out before them. What makes this film truly special is their unfaltering, soul-quaking love for one another and their quirky charisma. Like all good love stories it ends in a wedding. Finally after their very long engagement, Edie and Thea make their way down the aisle for a fittingly poetic and playful climax of their life together.

This must see film explores our community's history, while charting one couples courageous passage through it. It is a life both ordinary and extraordinary, from their very visible romance in the closeted pre-Stonewall 60s to the present.

ASSUME NOTHING

Iris cinema Sun 22 Nov 5pm
Director: Kirsty McDonald, New Zealand, 2009, 80 min

In this award winning film about transgendered life in the Indigenous cultures of our South Pacific neighbours is brought to the screen in beautiful and enlightening ways. Assume Nothing focuses on the performances, photography and art of five alternative gender artists of Maori, Samoan-Japanese,and European descent.

Interviews and intimate glimpses of the artists' lives are interspersed with lush Super-8, 2-D and 3-D animations, photographs and beautifully staged performances, blurring the conventions of documentary as freely as the conventions of gender. Playful and provocative, Assume Nothing travels from New Zealand to New York exploring the creative world that flourishes between and beyond genders.

FIG TREES

Iris cinema, Sun 22 Nov 7:30pm Director: John Greyson, Canada, 2009, 104 min

This must see film won the 2009 Teddy Award (Berlin International Film Festival) for best documentary. Much celebrated queer director John Greyson has created a work as cheeky as it is moving, as magical as it is factual, as invigorating as it is sobering. You've never seen anything quite like this documentary opera (yes, it's an opera) on the history of AIDS activism.

Combining commentary on the corporate greed of pharmaceutical companies, the fictional portrayal of positive people, celebrity do-gooders, and the top 100 AIDS songs of all time all narrated by a squirrel... this experimental masterpiece will bend your mind into profound clarity. Beautifully staged and filmed arias are blended with the testimonies of AIDS activists Tim McCaskell and Zackie Achmat as we revisit South Africa of the nineties, a country in infuriating denial.