Palm Springs Shortfest :: Sensual LGBT Cinema and Summertime Fun

Tickets for the 2014 Palm Springs International ShortFest and Film Market, taking place Tuesday, June 17 through Monday, June 23, may have gone on sale back in April, but the "reel" excitement is just now winding up as the lineup of titles has been selected.

Now all of you aficionados of short-form cinema can grab your sunscreen and your favorite pair of movie star sunglasses and head out to the desert's early summer film fest scene.

In anticipation of ShortFest 2014, The Rage Monthly spoke with two budding directors whose films may be of special interest to LGBT audiences - not to mention anyone who loves love, sex, beauty and finely crafted cinematic entertainment. "I feel like it doesn't matter about gender, race or even sex," says Ping-Wen Wang, director of ShortFest entry "Between Us." Wang's film explores the dynamics of a lesbian affair between an art teacher hired by a woman and her husband to teach the couple's children.

In the 11-minute film, Tara's children and husband come home unexpectedly after a planned swimming outing is canceled - just in time to almost catch her with Ariel, the new art teacher, in the act of impassioned, adulterous lovemaking. Art teacher Ariel gets stuck hiding in a closet, suddenly finding herself privy to the private conversations of her newfound lover and her lover's husband. She soon has a choice to make - a choice between false promises and the promise of true love.

The fact that the two women are indeed two women in love, or in lust as the case may be, is unimportant says director Wang. It's the question - the timeless, universal question - of love itself that matters most. "If real people love each other, those things are incidental," says Wang. "What matters is that people feel the need and the strong desire to experience love. The genders and sexual orientations of characters in a love story should be incidentally demographic," says Wang. "The star of the show should always be 'in love' in a love story."

A second-year graduate student in film production at Loyola Marymount University near Los Angeles, Wang says she is not completely satisfied with her production, "Between Us." "If it's a success, I think it's because of the parts of the production process called casting and cinematography," she told The Rage Monthly. "I was very fortunate to have Kelsey Taylor as my cinematographer and also to have the very good actors that were cast."

It should be noted that Wang's modesty, however endearing, belies the truth of her film's lovely, high-value production aesthetics, sumptuous direction - good luck to any recently-reformed smokers when they see the cigarette scene, which looks better than sex and says more with each cloudy exhale than most people can with a thousand words - and its storyline that is built on the writer-director's genuine convictions about the universality of love.

And get this: "Between Us," which was also accepted by the prestigious New Zealand film festival called OutTakes, is Wang's first short film produced with sound. "In film school, we have to do a silent film first," she said. "This is my first sound-sync film."

Not one to rest on her laurels, Wang is moving on to her next project even as the festival circuits watch her cut her teeth on "Between Us." "I'm preparing my thesis film, which is also an LGBT film and a woman's film, called 'Christmas Dance.' "

If "Between Us" and another film, "Barrio Boy," are any indications about this year's wonderfully long list of LGBT-centered selections among the lineup of film fare at ShortFest, one watch word to describe these productions may be "intimate." In fact, just watching the trailer to Between Us and likewise to director Dennis Shinners' "Barrio Boy" makes the viewer feel like they have covertly pried his or her way into a strictly confidential moment... one in which certain things are understood, though remain unspoken.

" 'Barrio Boy' is a short film that takes place in a barber shop in a macho neighborhood in Brooklyn during the course of a haircut by a closeted barber, who falls in love with a handsome newcomer to the shop and to the neighborhood," explains Shinner. "Yet what is covertly understood is not necessarily that the handsome Latino barber is (possibly) gay, but that there is a seductive tension innate in being attracted to something or someone that is or who is new to you in comparison to your own culture of origin."

The film does depict an Anglo-Latino pairing, and while director Shinners confesses to an adoring fascination with Latin (in this case Puerto Rican) culture, he is quick to say he does not sexually fetishize Latino men. "Being raised in an Irish-Catholic home where we don't talk about things, I admire and am attracted to the more vocal, more expressive, warmer and less-afraid-of-each-other Latin culture," New Jersey native Shinners told The Rage Monthly during a recent phone interview.

"Barrio Boy" is a condensed version of a feature-length film Shinners hopes to complete. For that, he will need investment. ShortFest and other film festivals present opportunities for up-and-coming directors, such as he and Ping-Wen Wang, to attract attention from studios and potential investors. That's partially why Shinners' films, including "Barrio Boy," "Area X" and "Go-Go" have graced the screens of competitive festivals including ShortFest, Iris Prize International LGBT Film Festival in Cardiff, Wales and the Miami Gay and Lesbian FilmFest.

"Yes, the feature film would be a commercial venture," he said. "But I also want people to walk away from it with a better appreciation of the need for tolerance and acceptance in society." Yet Shinners wants to be clear, noting that "Barrio Boy" is entertaining and definitely not preachy. "It's told from the point of view one person's thoughts,"he said."I hope it's a personal experience."

According to organizers, festivals such as ShortFest present rare opportunities for art, commerce and audiences to convene. This year's ShortFest makes that connection more global than ever, according to festival director, Kathleen McInnis. "More countries than ever submitted,"says McInnis. "Eighty-two, to be exact, and we will be screening films from fifty-two. The quality of the work is, as always, outstanding, but in particular we've seen a lot of visual storytelling dealing with topics that speak to our world just now. Stories about relationships, certainly, but relationships with a different sense of place and time - and even urgency."

Be sure to catch "Between Us" and "Barrio Boy," or any of the more than 35 LGBT-themed films at ShortFest 2014, screening at Camelot Theatres, 2300 East Baristo Road in Palm Springs. For more information and to select from an array of diversely priced packages visit psfilmfest.org.