“The Owls” brings the phrase “les­bian drama” to hyper­bolic heights. Cheryl Dunne directs les­bian super­stars, VS Brodie and Guin­e­vere Turner, among oth­ers, in a poignant film that explores les­bian stereo­types through Sarah Schulman’s self-deprecating script.

The film fol­lows a group of four 40-something les­bians strug­gling in their unhealthy rela­tion­ships amidst the boonies of the Cal­i­for­nia desert. The group hides a hor­ri­fy­ing secret, of which the audi­ence is aware from the begin­ning, and which another les­bian attempts to uncover.

The actors fill their roles beau­ti­fully, espe­cially Guin­e­vere Turner, who flits effort­lessly from her character’s hilar­i­ously ego­tis­ti­cal self descrip­tions to her dra­matic inter­ac­tions with the other characters. The film is effec­tively shot doc­u­men­tary style — the char­ac­ters give indi­vid­ual inter­views with the cam­era and flash­backs are shown.

The indi­vid­ual inter­views show­case the film’s strongest moments but it takes a strange turn when sud­denly, in the mid­dle of the film, the actors begin dis­cussing their respec­tive char­ac­ters and con­cepts like “butch” and “femme.” It feels painfully self-conscious and con­trived and would have been best reserved strictly for the end of the film, if nec­es­sary at all.

Over­all, the film reveals impor­tant and funny points about the por­trayal of les­bians in media. If only it would lighten up a little.

Rebecca Slaven is a con­trib­u­tor to Sad Mag.

Sad Mag is very proud to announce the win­ners of our Show Us Your Pride photo con­test! Con­grat­u­la­tions to REV and Tyler Bar­toshyk, our first and sec­ond place fin­ish­ers respec­tively. Check out their beau­ti­ful work:

First place win­ner. Photo by REV.

Sec­ond place win­ner. Photo by Tyler Bartoshyk.

And look! Sad Mag and its fam­ily was so busy this Pride sea­son, and we received so many fan­tas­tic sub­mis­sions for the con­test, that we made this really gay slideshow! Share and enjoy.

Sad Mag does Pride 2010 from SAD MAG on Vimeo.

Thank you to the con­trib­u­tors to the slideshow:

Michelle Rick­etts
Rev
Tyler Bar­toshyk
Tina Krueger-Kulic
Chris J.
Jonah Fheonix
Shauna Nero
Terry Beaupre
Shane Oost­er­hoff
Charles Troster
Carter-Ethan Rankin

Thank you to the con­test sponsors:

It may look like a real­ity show and talk like a real­ity show, but “The Real World” it ain’t.

Famil­iar con­flicts and enter­tain­ing dia­logue make the doc­u­men­tary “Queer Prom,” screened Mon­day at Tin­sel­town as part of the Van­cou­ver Queer Film Fes­ti­val, feel hon­est with­out indulging too heav­ily in sac­cha­rine feel-good moments or worse, slow-motion montages.

Directed by Nicky Fors­man, who also directs the OUTTV series “Don’t Quit Your Gay Job,” the doc­u­men­tary fol­lows a group of LGBT youth at the Qmu­nity GAB Youth Cen­tre as they attempt to orga­nize the annual Queer Prom: a homophobia-free event for queer 13-to-25-year-olds who may have grad­u­ated or are still in high school or col­lege. Ulti­mately the event is a suc­cess, though the group doesn’t make it through unscathed.

TV Pro­duc­ers take note: Queer Prom is what hap­pens when you put quip-heavy per­son­al­i­ties in a meet­ing room deemed a fur­nace and tell them to plan a large-scale event. It’s also one of the pro­found secrets of people-based doc­u­men­tary film­mak­ing: when shit gets hot, the raised crank­i­ness lev­els con­tribute to some really good dialogue.

“Nobody cares about fuck­ing mock­tails,” uttered by dec­o­rat­ing com­mit­tee mem­ber Tay­lor after an argu­ment with GAB staff over the place­ment of Prom mock­tail selec­tion on that meeting’s agenda, was a laugh-winner, “It’s one of the top 4 or 5 best things ever. It’s pretty much bet­ter than the renais­sance,” also care of Tay­lor, was another.

The list goes on, and it was a nice sur­prise Fors­man avoided focus­ing on the teenage cul­tural obses­sion of drama, or should we say, da–rah–mah­hhh, in favour of show­ing how humourously and ami­ca­bly a group of youth inter­ested in mak­ing a dif­fer­ence can work through prob­lems with­out killing each other – though, threats are made. Friend­ships are tested dur­ing the film but are always resilient; every com­bat­ant inevitably rec­on­ciles over a fist bump with the other, in stark con­trast to other documentary-style pro­duc­tions in North Amer­ica that thrive on unre­solved con­flict (hello again, MTV).

Queer Prom reveals that the queer youth in Van­cou­ver are, in a word, amaz­ing, and can take care of each other in ways given fam­i­lies sim­ply can’t, or worse, won’t.

To describe the doc­u­men­tary in one word would be the same way a GAB staff mem­ber describes Queer Prom, the event, at the end of the film: important.

Jeff Lawrence is a con­trib­u­tor to Sad Mag and V-Rag mag­a­zines.

Sad Mag is hon­oured to par­tic­i­pate in the BC Asso­ci­a­tion of Mag­a­zine Pub­lish­ers’ Main Street Mag­a­zine Tour, tak­ing place on Thurs­day, August 19 and start­ing at 6:00 p.m. We join local pub­lish­ing leg­ends Ricepa­per Mag­a­zine, OCW, Sub­Ter­rain, Room, and Front in a shop-hop event led by local poets Jen­nica Harper and Eliz­a­beth Bachinsky.

We will be at Mine:Stylesource talk­ing about drag cul­ture and the his­tory of Main Street with some spe­cial guests. We will be also be giv­ing away mag­a­zines, swag and a one-year sub­scrip­tion to one lucky winner.

For more infor­ma­tion on the pro­gram, visit BCAMP’s web­site. While you’re at it, read our Main Street Mag­a­zine Tour pro­file at Van­cou­ver is Awe­some, penned by Lizzy Karp.

Sad Mag is proud to be counted among the Van­cou­ver Queer Film Fes­ti­val’s com­mu­nity spon­sors this year. With ninety films being screened at four major cin­e­mas this year, the festival—now in its 22nd year—has grown to an impres­sive size. In a year of dras­tic cuts to gov­ern­ment fund­ing for the arts, a pro­gram of this  qual­ity and diver­sity is to be admired.

The fes­ti­val kicks off tonight and runs until August 22. Sad Mag has a pair of tick­ets to give away to the Fri­day, August 20 screen­ing of Cheryl Dunye’s “The Owls.” To enter, copy and paste the fol­low­ing into Twitter:

RT to enter to win 2 tix to the @queerfilmfest’s screen­ing of “The Owls” from @sadmag http://ow.ly/2oqE9

The con­test is now closed. Con­grat­u­la­tions to our win­ner, @onewetfoot!

From the program:

THE OWLS

Fri | Aug 20 | 5:00 | Granville 7 Theatre

“The Owls” reunites Guin­e­vere Turner and VS Brodie, the lead­ing actors of the les­bian cult hit “Go Fish.” This iconic queer cin­ema cou­ple is cast along­side a slate of les­bian film mav­er­icks, includ­ing Skyler Cooper, Deak Evgenikos and direc­tor Cheryl Dunye (“The Water­melon Woman”).

This film can boast being a truly exper­i­men­tal, col­lab­o­ra­tively cre­ated thriller, mur­der mys­tery, dyke drama. Sound allur­ing, yet hard to pic­ture? Imag­ine “Mul­hol­land Drive” meets “I Know What You Did Last Sum­mer” meets a les­bian fem­i­nist col­lec­tive meet­ing, all set in the stark Cal­i­for­nia deserts out­side of Bev­erly Hills. Made by The Par­lia­ment Film Col­lec­tive, co-founded by Dunye to help queer film­mak­ers pro­duce excit­ing and orig­i­nal work, “The Owls” employs a hybrid of drama and auto-documentary film­mak­ing. The action hones in on four older dykes (Older Wiser Les­bians = Owls), who seem to have learned very lit­tle about healthy rela­tion­ships and liv­ing drama-free. They are barely keep­ing it together while hid­ing a dark secret.

The Owls | Cheryl Dunye | USA | 2010 | 66 min

Let’s state the obvi­ous: sex sells. If you want proof that we live in a sex-saturated cul­ture, I urge you to watch music videos for ten min­utes and count the num­ber of oiled-up, gyrat­ing bod­ies. Or observe the pop­u­lar (and admit­tedly hilar­i­ous) Old Spice ads fea­tur­ing Isa­iah Musafa, who immod­estly advises while wrapped in a towel that women love a man who smells like Old Spice. Sex in adver­tis­ing is absurd — no mat­ter how good you smell, men, I can still tell the dif­fer­ence between a beer belly and a six-pack — but it’s omnipresent. Strange, then, that sex has been miss­ing from sell­ing, well, sex.

Sex­ual health, to be more spe­cific. Think back to high school sex ed, which may be the last place any­one ever sat you down and talked to you about sex. Or maybe your par­ents gave you “the talk.” What I remem­ber was a lengthy ser­mon about the var­i­ous infec­tions that might make you itchy and a recita­tion of sta­tis­tics about unwanted teen preg­nancy. It goes a lot smoother with school boards and par­ents if young peo­ple are taught about all the scary con­se­quences of hav­ing sex, in (usu­ally inef­fec­tive) attempts to dis­suade them from fol­low­ing their hor­mones, rather than get­ting an edu­ca­tion that talks about plea­sure and enjoy­ment. We all know sex is awe­some– we learned that from TV– but sex­ual health is mar­keted about as erot­i­cally as decon­ges­tants or lax­a­tives. And yet your sex­ual health is essen­tial to a pos­i­tive sex­ual expe­ri­ence. The only care­free sex is safe sex, after all– you can’t be worry-free if you don’t know your body and trust your part­ner. And with that in mind, Options for Sex­ual Health decided that this is the sum­mer to remind peo­ple all over BC that sex­ual health is sexy. At least as sexy as an Old Spice com­mer­cial (well, fin­gers crossed).

A new adver­tis­ing cam­paign, which shows two young peo­ple mak­ing out in a clinic wait­ing room, is now on buses all over the province, and with it is the Sexy Sum­mer Kiss­ing Con­test. The rules are sim­ple: take a make­out photo with a part­ner. Bonus points for incor­po­rat­ing the theme of sex­ual health– that’s your cue to bring in some props. Send it in to contest@optbc.org. We’ll post it up on our Flickr page and give away prize packs that will make your sum­mer safe and sexy, includ­ing a grand prize of a year’s sup­ply of con­doms (use them all your­self or share them gen­er­ously like a Sexy Santa Claus). It’s easy, it’s fun, and it gives you an excuse for a mid­day sum­mer make­out ses­sion– what’s not to love? It’s time that every­one remem­bered that tak­ing care of their sex­ual health doesn’t have to be a drag– it’s some­thing that can be done with a part­ner, that can be spiced up or exper­i­mented with, that can be fun, and, well, sexy.

For more details, visit Opt’s web­site at http://optionsforsexualhealth.org. If you have a burn­ing ques­tion about sex­ual health or any­thing sex-related at all, call our 1–800-SEX-SENSE line and talk to a real, live expert in all things sexual.

Michelle Reid is a con­trib­u­tor to Sad Mag and loves it with all her heart. In her pro­fes­sional life, she likes to talk about sexy times over at Options for Sex­ual Health, and yes, if you’re at a party and you need a con­dom, she’s a good per­son to ask.

The Ter­mi­nal City Rol­ler­girls will be host­ing the launch party for Sad Mag issue four on Wednes­day, August 4! Check out this sneak peek at the lat­est issue, with an arti­cle from Ana Maria Kresina (AKA Risquee Biznatch).

When I square up on the jam­mer line wait­ing for the dou­ble whis­tle, I am con­scious of the fans scream­ing in the stands, but more so, I am aware of what my body is about to do for me. As the momen­tum of the oval track pushes me out­ward and my feet slide within my tightly tied roller-skates, I can feel my left quad mus­cle sup­port­ing my body weight as I push hard with my right foot. I bite down on my mouth­guard, and I feel sweat trick­ling down the side of my face. All I can think about is how great it feels to skate.

— Ana Maria Kresina

Cover photo: Sarah Race

We’re com­ing out! To the Pride Parade, that is. Watch for us on Sun­day, August 1 with our BFF, Zee Zee The­atre, in the Van­cou­ver Pride Parade along Rob­son Street, Den­man Street and Beach Avenue. We will have stick­ers and but­tons and other good­ies for all!

While you’re out there, be sure to doc­u­ment the magic and get in on some great prizes from the Sad Mag Show Us Your Pride photo con­test! We have lovely things from Sephora and Bang-On t-shirts to give away.

The Sad Mag fam­ily is so excited to offer up a fresh issue of the mag­a­zine, launch­ing Wednes­day, August 4 at the Cobalt. Check out a sneak peek from the lat­est issue, writ­ten of the­atre leg­end Yayoi Hirano by Michelle Reid.

Yayoi Hirano and I sit at a card table in an empty room, while out­side there are the famil­iar sounds of Granville Island on a week­end after­noon: ducks, chil­dren, cars faintly thun­der­ing across the bridge over­head. Yayoi is wear­ing black sun­glasses and low black heels, dressed in lay­ers of black fab­ric. She is com­posed and ele­gant, her youth­ful appear­ance bely­ing the longevity of her career as a dancer, mask-maker, mime artist, sto­ry­teller and founder of the Yayoi The­atre Move­ment Soci­ety, which is now two decades old.

—Michelle Reid

Illus­tra­tion: Kristina Fiedrich

Patrick Spencer speaks with Sad Mag about bring­ing music to the peo­ple in Sad Mag Issue 4, launch­ing this Wednes­day, August 4. Check out a sneak peek of this arti­cle by Justin Mah.

I really like old tra­di­tional folk songs: there’s a song called “Red River Valley”—it’s an old bed­time story-type song that’s been around for more than a hun­dred years. I notice when I play that song—and I play it in my own way, kind of upbeat—it doesn’t sound like an old folk song, but at the same time, peo­ple over fifty years old, for instance, will rec­og­nize it and will stop and lis­ten and will say, ‘Hey, I really liked hear­ing that, I haven’t heard that song since my grand­mother used to sing it to me as a child.’

—Patrick Spencer, as told to Justin Mah.

Photo: Jonathan Tag­gart