Coming Up Short

Shorts programs are a mixed bag. Out in Philly is no different.

by Ashlea Halpern

screening

Shorts programs are a mixed bag. For every keeper, there are two throwaways � the kind of shit biscuits that make YouTube videos of zany cats look Oscar-worthy. Throw in a no-budget, local bent and chances are you've plunged your oars deep into an immovable sea of manure.

I wish I could say it's hats off to this year's "Out in Philly" bill and its terrifically lower ratio of swill to spoils, but alas � our formula is sound. Here, eight locally made shorts are packed into Philadelphia International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival's screening, some two-thirds of which may leave you wondering why you didn't just see Hairspray.

At the top of the totem pole is Carolina Roca-Smith's Members Only, starring Theater Exile's Amanda Schoonover as a clueless lesbian determined to score a date in the Gayborhood. There's a sly poke at Sisters, a hilarious turn by "vagitarian" Elaine DiFlavis, and the hells-yeah declaration that college girls playing kissyface does not constitute lesboism. Cute, funny and meaningful if you're willing to fish, Members makes breeder types twitter with envy.

Mark R. Jackson's 28-minute Night Falls Fast is the most polished of the bunch, its cuts so glossy you could eat off the screen. The flick follows a crystal meth addict and his put-together partner on an inexplicable journey to visit crabby ol' gay-hatin' pops. There's a lot of fucking and smoking, smoking and fucking � so much fucking and smoking, in fact, that when the sex is great or the high is heavenly, we don't feel a thing. Presumably the characters don't either.

Meanwhile, Andy Medeiros' Oh, Little Lark cruises a cam through the 50-year-old hang spot right before it meets the Reaper. The film is shot in black and white, and edited with the kind of abominably cheesy techniques seen only in high school video yearbooks. Not that we can't forgive some tragic lo-fi cameramanship when said cameraman seems sincere. But the tender moments are eclipsed by the narrator's oversexed needling. Have you ever had sex at the Lark? No? Maybe a blowjob? It's not too late, you know! Take off your pants! On and on and on. By the time the queen dressed as Joan Crawford hits the stage, we can only pray she'll beat us into a coma with her wire hanger.

Sex, drugs and BJs aside, sometimes it's the little things that carry the most heft. In Julianne McCartney's three-minute Uncle Mike, local activist Suzi Nash sings a ditty to accompany a cartoon about a young girl's beloved Uncle Mike transitioning into her Aunt Michelle. She's adoring of Mike/Michelle, no matter what s/he looks like. What a happy way to learn about TG folks! Now how can we get that screened in every elementary school in Philly?

(a_halpern@citypaper.net)

OUT IN PHILLY

Sun., July 22, 2:30 p.m., $10, Philadelphia Arts Bank, 601 S. Broad St., 267-765-9700, ext. 4, www.phillyfests.com