Pansexualist Poet James Broughton Brought to Life on Screen

  To listen to the KUCI Subversity Online podcast of our interview, recorded yesterday at Outfest, with director Stephen Silha,  click on: . 

A pensive James Broughton

A captivating documentary, "Big Joy", screening at Outfest Los Angeles, captures the pansexuality and poetic and cinematic genius of James Broughton, whose involvement in the San Francisco Renaissance predated the period of the Beats.

Stephen Silha at Outfest.  Photo copyright  Daniel C. Tsang 2013

Stephen Silha and his team of directors brings to the screen "Big Joy: The Adventures of James Broughton" and indeed viewers will be able to catch images and sound of Broughton from his marriage to film critic Pauline Kael (who bore him an offspring) to his later entanglements with men and women.  Eric Slade, another co-director, earlier made "Hope Along the Wind,” on the life of gay pioneer Harry Hay.

Subversity Online interviews co-director Stephen Silha, a first-time filmmaker, on the life and impact of the affectionate and fairy-like poet, who continued writing into the end of his life in his eighties.   In his senior years, Broughton is also engaged in a long relationship with another, younger man.  Silha discusses in the interview why he made this film and their use of archival footage, as well as where the Broughton archives are located.



As the Outfest program notes indicate: "His [Broughton's] reverence for unbridled joy through childlike creativity and silliness put him perfectly in tune with the flowering of free-spirited experimentation in the 1960s, of which his film THE BED (1968) is a cultural milestone."

Old and Younger Connect

"Big Joy" screens Monday 15 July at 5 pm at Directors Guild of America, DGA2.

For the entire lineup, see the Outfest LA program guide. See also ticket information. - Daniel C. Tsang.

A Gay Palestinian-Israeli Love Story on Screen

 To listen to the KUCI Subversity Online podcast of our interview, recorded yesterday at Outfest, with director Michael Mayer, click on: .

In the best of times, committed relationships across geographic and political boundaries are daunting and hard to make them lasting. Israel-born director Michael Mayer has made a daring gay love story, "Out in the Dark," involving a Palestinian Birzeit University psych student, Nimr (played by Nicholas Jacob), and attorney Roy (played by noted Israeli actor Michael Aloni).  The film is screening at Outfest Los Angeles 2013.

Michael Aloni (left) and Nicholas Jacob (right) in scene from"Out in the Dark"

Mayer, who also co-wrote the screenplay, tells Subversity Online that the impetus for the film came from his finding out there is a community of gay Palestinians living in Tel Aviv and human rights lawyers helping them. The story is inspired by actual cases.  Mayer suggests that advances in gay rights "never came from the top down" but rather from the struggle of activists.  Gay online groups now serve to link gay and lesbian Palestinians together.  He notes that the security services have for decades been targeting gay Palestinians serve as  potential informants. 



When the state apparatus begins active surveillance of Nimr - who is not out to his family back in Ramallah on the West Bank - his lover Roy, with his underground and above ground connections, helps figure out a way out of this tense situation.

Michael Mayer at Outfest.  Photo copyright Daniel C. Tsang 2013

Both actors, whom Mayer tells Subversity Online are straight, manage to act convincingly as passionate, dashingly handsome, gay lovers even as the state security services lurk in the dark monitoring their politically taboo relationship.

Mayer is to be applauded for making a film where a gay Palestinian is realistically portrayed.  His film points to the contradictions in a state which proclaims its liberalness on gay issues, but ignores its continued repression of the Palestinians oppressed by the Occupation it imposes on them. 

The film screens at Outfest  tonight and next Sunday at the Directors Guild of America -- July 14 at 7:00pm at DGA 1, and July 21, 2:45pm at  DGA 2.

For the entire lineup, see the Outfest LA program guide. See also ticket information. - Daniel C. Tsang.

Filmmaker Laura Poitras, whom NSA whistleblower reached out to, on Subversity in 2010

To listen to Laura Poitras on the first half of the 17 May 2010 edition of the Subversity show, click here: .

Update 1: NY Times on Poitras,

Laura Poitras, the MacArthur Award-winning filmmaker whose video revealed the identity of the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, was previously on KUCI's Subversity show talking about her film, The Oath, on the casualties of the war on terrorism.  She also talked on the show about her own experiences with Homeland Security, which has detained her numerous times in her travels through U.S. airports.  She was named a MacArthur fellow in 2012, with an award of $500,000.  She also made My Country, My Country, on Iraq, which was nominated for an Oscar.  Snowden first contacted her in January this year.

Click on a link to our announcement in 2010 of our interview, which took place 17 May 2010, when she preceded our interview with the directors of the Harvest of Loneliness, a documentary on the bracero program.

Video by Poitras on Snowden at the Mira in Hong Kong:



Poitras also wrote some of the stories on Snowden's disclosures about widespread NSA surveillance on Americans and foreigners for the Guardian and the Washington Post.

She is currently in Hong Kong documenting the Snowden case as part of a documentary on whistleblowers.

She also participated in a Surveillance Teach-in recently:



Here are some of the latest articles on or by Poitras:

Filmmaker Examines US Security Issues
South China Morning Post, Hong Kong

How We Broke the NSA Story
Poitras Interview with Salon

The Woman Behind the NSA Scoops
Salon

Edward Snowden: The Whistleblower Behind the NSA Surveillance Revelations
Poitras co-writer, The Guardian

U.S., British intelligence mining data from nine U.S. Internet companies in broad secret program
Poitras co-writer, Washington Post

Earlier article with later Guardian co-writer:

U.S. Filmmaker Repeatedly Detained at Border
Glenn Greenwald in Salon 8 April 2012

Trailer to The Oath:



Trailer to My Country, My Country

$upercapitalist seeks fortune in Hong Kong and wreaks havoc

To listen to the KUCI Subversity Online podcast of our interview with actor, producer and script writer Derek Ting, click on: .

Derek Ting (as Conner Lee right) finds romance
with Kathy Uyen (left) as Natalie Wang in $upercapitalist

Blasting across the U.S. and into Asia is $upercapitalist, an independently produced drama that is intelligently written, exquisitely acted, fast-moving and fun to watch. It depicts a smart Asian American Cornell graduate and newly minted hedge fund trader, Conner Lee, sent to Hong Kong from New York to orchestrate the downfall of a major Hong Kong shipping conglomerate.

In a world where all bets are off and the only goal is making money, lots of it, in the frenetic global city of Hong Kong, these money makers, or $upercapitalists show contempt for locals while immersed in the the fast-moving expat world of fantasy and pleasure.

Yet Conner Lee (played ably by former CNN International Hong-Kong based producer Derek Ting, who also wrote the tight script and produced the film) finds his match in Natalie Wang (superbly played by UC Irvine Film & Media Studies and Economics graduate Kathy Uyen) who manages to turn this $upercapitalist into a caring human being. Believe it or not, this film offers up a stinging critique of the Darwinism inherent in capitalistic hedge fund trades. Wang ends up reminding Lee that life should not be just about making tons of money.

Uyen in 2009 won Vietnam's Golden Kite award for her supporting role in Victor Vu's Passport to Love. She was interviewed for Subversity two years ago about another acting role, in Fools for Love. In that interview, she recalled her days working in the UC Irvine Libraries as a student assistant in the multimedia resources center.

Derek Ting (Conner Lee) finally gets to meet Richard Ng (as Donald Chang)

For an independently-produced film, it is heartening to see many big name actors involved. Linus Roache (Batman Begins, Law & Order) stars as the evil Wall Streeter Mark Patterson while veteran Hong Kong actors Kenneth Tsang (A Better Tomorrow 2, The Killer) and Richard Ng (Winners and Sinners, Tom Raider) have key roles in the Hong Kong conglomerate Conner is taking on.

Tsang, who is currently working as the lead actor with Ang Lee on the latter's remake of Eat Drink Man Woman, acts as Victor Chang, the congenial yet conniving elder brother of the patriarch of the Hong Kong conglomerate.

Ng stars as the stoic CEO of this conglomerate who tries to keep the family business on a stable course as turmoil erupts around him.

On our Subversity Online interview yesterday, Ting delves into why they were able to make this film, for just around half a million dollars. He didn't charge himself a salary for being the lead actor, and friends of the production were able to line up impressive donations, including the use of a jet, a Bentley, and Macau casino locations (courtesy of mogol Stanley Ho).

One scene actually brought me to tears as I told Ting. So in addition to high finance intrigue there is an emotional side to this otherwise fast-paced film.

Ting conceived the script before the 2008 stock market collapse. According to the production ,notes, for research, Ting "visited the offices of various hedge funds, read a number of books such as, Hedge Hogging by Barton Biggs, Ugly Americans by Ben Mezrich, Hedge Hunters by Katherine Burton, and watched as many different finance movies available. The script draws from some of Derek’s favorite movies including Michael Clayton, Wall Street, Good Will Hunting, Star Trek (J.J. Abrams), Body Of Lies, and The Firm."

The notes also state: "$upercapitalist is one of the most diverse films to date. The film features African Americans, Koreans, Chinese, Japanese, South Asians, British, Easter Europeans, Vietnamese, Australians, Americans, Canadians, and several other ethnicities. And on set a number of small parts cropped up and the team had to pull actors from their own crew. The transportation supervisor Sydney Chan and Art Director Vicky Chow appear in the film."

Ting decided to take on the part of Conner Lee after a Hollywood producer, who happened to be Asian American, told him a Caucasian actor would make the project more viable. To his credit, Ting decided to put the lure of millions in check and took on the role of the lead actor himself, making the film much more interesting and true to the script he had labored on.

The film is directed by Simon Yin, a former MTV and NBC director and founder of the Hong Kong-based Bamboo Star, an advertising campaign company.

$upercapitalist opens in Southern California this evening at 7 pm at the new Laemmle Theater, the NoHo7, 5240 Lankershim Boulevard North Hollywood, CA 91601, with Q&A with Derek Ting & Kathy Uyen to follow the screening. NoHo7 is conveniently located right off the Metro Red Line. Ticket information.

The film opened in New York and Washington D.C. earlier this month. In addition to selected forthcoming screenings in the U.S. (San Diego, Palo Alto, Berkeley, San Francisco) and in Asia (expected openings in Hong Kong and Singapore in October), the film is available for online viewing via VOD on various platforms, including simultaneous USA/CAN Cable VOD, Amazon and iTunes stores in Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, as well as UK, Australia, New Zealand and Scandinavia.

Update 4 September 2012

See also interview on CNTV- Daniel C. Tsang.