Wednesday, March 16, 2016, 8:00 pm, $7-$10
Based on the legendary 90’s lesbian memoir Valencia by Michelle Tea, this film takes us on an adventurous journey through Michelle’s tumultuous love life as told by 20 different filmmakers, including noted filmmakers Silas Howard (BY HOOK OR BY CROOK), Cheryl Dunye (WATERMELON WOMAN) and recent Sundance award-winner Jill Soloway (AFTERNOON DELIGHT).
Valencia the novel put the experiences of an entire generation of lesbians on paper through the lens of one hard-loving and hard-drinking dyke. Punk rockers, riot grrls, and simple, artsy freaks suddenly had a heroine to look up to and a mecca to head toward. This highly anticipated film adaptationof Valencia gives a whole new generation of fabulous, artsy, genderqueer folks an opportunity to reinterpret and reinvent the tales of this iconic novel one chapter at a time.
Valencia the film lives on the same edge as its characters, by taking an anthology structure; each chapter is told by a different director and cast, and each “Michelle” conveys a different element or feel of the story and the community. The “Michelles” come in every shape, race, style, and gender—and by the end of the film, the wide swath of performances come together showing how “Michelle” and the stories of Valencia itself represent a universal experience. From falling in love to bonding with your exes’ exes, the film captures the universal experience of being young, heartbroken, and ecstatic, and discovering the magic of who you are — all at once.
Taking the story of one young woman coming of queer age in San Francisco’s thriving Mission District and making it Universal, the filmmakers alternately re-create the lesbian bohemia of the 1990s and set it in contemporary Brooklyn, Austin, Portland; they cast ‘Michelle’ as an earnest 20-something female, or instead bring in trans men, drag queens, Claymation buffalo, and blow-up-dolls. Weaving documentary of the era’s radical politics with fantastical love story elements, embracing the recklessness of youth culture via sex and drugs and riot grrrrrl, Valencia ingests the classic text and gives back to you a kaleidoscopic vision of wild, joyful queerness, utilizing a thriving community of contemporary filmmakers to offer a vision of queer community buzzing with love, art, poetry and revolution.
An innovative community film endeavor, Valencia was brainstormed by the author Michelle Tea while hanging out with her filmmaker friends at San Francisco’s Frameline queer film festival. Rather than waiting for a production company to option her seminal 90s memoir, why not summon the talents of the many film artists in her community – gutsy, dogged and brilliant artists skilled in turning out work on a shoestring.
Under the auspices of RADAR Productions, the queer-centric literary arts organization Tea founded a decade ago, Tea went to work gathering filmmakers and seeking the help of a skilled producer to help manage the project, handle its unique tech needs and help shape 18 visions into one coherent film. She found this partner in Clement Hil Goldberg, not only the first filmmaker signed onto the project but a long-time collaborator: Tea and Goldberg have worked together on many projects, including Goldberg’s short in the Spotlight, her web series The Deer Inbetween. The two brought on visual artist Amanda Verwey to create graphic, iconic portraits of the film’s 18 different ‘Michelles’, and Goldberg, self-taught in stop-motion animation, created the dynamic and enchanting opening credits. Employing RADAR’s staff and grant consultants as Executive Producers, the project was awarded funds from The Creative Work Fund, the Horizons Foundation, and a completion grant from Frameline.
The 18 filmmakers who created Valencia are an array of some of the best emerging queer filmmakers in the underground, studded with experienced indie champs such as Cheryl Dunye, Jill Soloway and Silas Howard. From the world of queer porn comes Nofauxxx.com’s Courtney Trouble; from the crew of Portlandia, Aubree Bernier-Clarke. Alexa Inkeles is a video editor for Wired magazine and worked on the film About Cherry. In addition to her shorts work, Clement Hil Goldberg directed the classic documentary Render:Spanning Time with Ani DiFranco. Sara St. Marin-Lynne directed the acclaimed feature Night Flyers, and Michelle Lawler the beloved documentary Forever’s Gonna Start Tonight. Cary Cronenwett’s Maggots and Men was an international festival favorite, and Chris Vargas and Greg Youman’s video project Falling in Love . . . With Chris and Greg has shown in galleries and museum spaces from NYC’s MoMA to London’s Tate Modern. They are joined by up-and-coming filmmakers and video artists Sharon Barnes Rubenstein, Bug Davidson, Peter Anthony, Samuael Topiary, Jerry Lee, Lares Feliciano, Dia Felix and Olivia Parriott.
Valencia features music from 90s grunge and punk stars such as Lungfish, The Need, Team Dresch and Bikini Kill, as well as original music from Jen Schande and Jen Turner. It features cameos by many queer underground cultural fixtures – authors Camille Roy, Michelle Tea and Lynne Breedlove; porn actors Jez Lee and Quinn Valentine; performance artists Annie Danger, Erin Markey and Fufu Bustamante (the film star dog of Nao Bustamante), drag queen Lil Miss Hot Mess, musicians Jenna Riot and Nicky Click; and re-purposed footage of Winona Ryder, Lili Taylor, Brittany Murphy and Rose McGowan.
Taking the story of one young woman coming of queer age in San Francisco’s thriving Mission District and making it Universal, the filmmakers alternately re-create the lesbian bohemia of the 1990s and set
it in contemporary Brooklyn, Austin, Portland; they cast ‘Michelle’ as an earnest 20-something female, or instead bring in trans men, drag queens, Claymation buffalo, blow-up-dolls and Angelina Jolie. Weaving documentary of the era’s radical politics with fantastical love story elements, embracing the recklessness of youth culture via sex and drugs and riot grrrrrl, Valencia ingests the classic text and gives back to you a kaleidoscopic vision of wild, joyful queerness, utilizing a thriving community of contemporary filmmakers to offer a vision of queer community buzzing with love, art, poetry and revolution.