SUNDAY, JUNE 19
CASTRO THEATRE
North American Premiere
Displaced View 1:00 p.m.
3:00 p.m.
5:00 p.m.
AT HOME
TWO FILMS BY MIDI
KAMIKAZE HEARTS
(BABI-IT)
ONODERA
U. S.A., 1986
Israel, 1987
Midi Onodera is a Toronto-based filmmaker who has been producing films for eight years. She has 19 short films to her credit, including her latest, Displaced View. As a body, her films deal provocatively with issues of identity and isolation within the arena of sexuality and ethnicity. [Her fil m Ten Cents a Dance (Paral lax) caused a near riot at the 1986 Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. ] Minimal in design, they often combine documentary elements with fictional/dramatic forms. Midi has also worked with similar themes in still-photo and text pieces and has been published in periodicals such as Fuse, Incite, Impulse and Fireweed . Her films have been included in numerous exhibi tions in Canada including the 1984 and 1985 Toronto Festival of Festivals.
When I first met he?' I thought she was sleazy, she needed to make a living, she was fucking on camera - I thought she was just another dumb porno slut. But I was wrong _.
Through the lives of two homosexual writers who have been living together for the past ten years, At Home provides a brief look into the nuances of long-term relationships and marriage. DIRECTOR, SCRIPT: Jonathan Sagalie CAMERA: Udi Goren EDITOR: Rachel Ba1anga MUSIC: Peter Vertheimer CAST: Amikam Levi, Shmuel Vi1ozni, Ruth Sagalle 16 mm, 23 minutes San Francisco Premiere
CROWS Israel, 1987
A piercing authentic look at the life of homeless youngsters who lead a strange, commune-like life in a colorful garbage sanctuary amidst an ignoring Tel-Aviv. This is viewed through the eyes of Maggie, a naive but tough seventeen year old, who leaves her home in the province and comes to the big city and is taken in by a group of young homosexuals. DIRECTOR, SCRIPT, EDITOR: Ayelet Menahemi PHOTOGRAPHER: Amnon Za1aeyt MUSIC: Ari Frankel CAST: Gili Benousilio. I tzik Nini, Boaz Tourgeman, Doron Barabi 16mm, 45 minutes
DISPLACED VIEW 1988
Displaced View is the latest film by Midi Onodera, a third-generation Japanese Canadian (Sansei). Most Sansei grew up unaware of the unique history of their people. The film traces a personal search for identity and pride within that history. Through an examination of the emotional and cultural links between the women of one family, the processes of the construction of memory and the re-construction of history are revealed. The film is a celebration of the acceptance of self, not only as a Japanese Canadian, but as woman, person of color, lesbian, immigrant.
TEN CENTS A DANCE (PARALLAX) 1986
A striking split screen is used throughout the three scenes that make up this provocative film which deals with communication, sexuality and alienation. In scene one a lesbian and a straight woman discuss their planned sexual encounter. Scene two is an extended overhead shot of two men who meet in a bathroom stall. Scene three depicts phone sex between a man and a woman. Sponsored by Mona Tong Realty
So begins Kamikaze Hearts - it's a raw story about an impossible relationship between a young woman, Tigr (Tigr Mennett), who becomes obsessed with a beautiful porn star, Sharon Mitchell. From their first meeting Tigr is mesmerized by "Mitch" - by her joie de vivre and flamboyant sensuality. Tigr's life is changed forever when she is drawn under ground into Mitch's world, a world of strip joint rock and roll, mainlined cocaine, and high-paying commercial sex. Filmed on location in San Francisco, notorious home of the XXX film industry, where North Beach provides an existential backdrop to Tigr's dark odyssey. Stylistically, Kamikaze Hearts is best described as a dramatic documentary. But this is not a "docu-drama" in the made-for-TV-movie sense, with actors portraying "real people" in "real situations. " Tigr calls it a docu-dreama, an intensely personal narrative with real people playing themselves in scenes from their lives. Additionally, a documentary camera crew followed Tigr and Mitch through the produc tion of Gerald Greystone's ill-fated sex opera version of Bizet's Carmen. Into the fabric of this eccentric footage, director Juliet Bashore and editor John Knoop have woven a bizarre drama by turns absurd, ironic, ridiculous and simul taneously brutal, disturbing, even tragic. Kamikaze Hearts resists easy classification. The film draws freely from both documentary and dramatic conventions. It is complicated, stirring and controversial. DIRECTOR: Juliet Bashore PRODUCER: Heinz Legler, Sharon Hennessey, Bob Rivkin WRITTEN AND CONCEIVED BY: Juliet Bashore, Tigr Mennett DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: David Golia EDITOR: John Knoop CAST: Tigr Mennett, Sharon Mitchell, John Martin, Sparky Vasque, Jerry Abrahms 16mm, 80 minutes