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Saturday, February 12, 2011

SEHENSWUERDIGKEITEN
Today at the Berlinale I saw Ingmar Berman’s film version of The Magic Flute (Trollflojten)from 1975 which features the Swedish pepperpot opera star Haekan Hagegard as Papageno and a handsome Josef Koestlinger as Tamino. Of course I couldn't wait for the appearance of the Queen of the Night and she doesn’t disappoint. I first saw Mozart’s The Magic Flute on stage while still in primary school in the 4th grade at the gorgeous Shrine Auditorium across from USC. It was through the MGM(Mentally Gifted Minors Program)of the LA Unified School District that I was able to attend free matinee performances of all the classic operas. Its what influenced my already blossoming theatricality. I wouldn’t say I was a hardcore opera queen in the Klaus Nomi mode, but I sure come close with my fetish for the perfected opera surface in singers like Grace Moore, Katharine Greyson,Jeannete McDonald, Jane Powell and Deanna Durbin. In the audience sitting near at the Cinemaxx Theatre was actors Hamish Linkletter who stars in Miranda July’s new film The Future and German male ingénue Alexander Fehling. Are they lovers? After that screening I had to rush across town on the Ubahn to see the second film in the daily Forum tribute to the great Japanese director Shibuya Minoru at the Delphi with 1953s Modern People about a government official involved in a collegues corrupt activities which leads to a maelstrom of violence and crime. I ended the days movie going pleasures by seeing young humpy Aussie studkin Ryan Kwanten from the hit cable show True Blood playing totally against type as a nebbish masquerading as a vigilante superhero. Was hoping to catch a glimpse of Mr. Kwanten during the Q&A with ganymede director Ryan Ford and the female lead the pretty Maeve Dermody but Ryan had to whisk back to Hollywood.Sitting next to me was one of my Weimar/UDk expat students Miss Darce with her cute posse---all fans of True Blood.Earlier in the day I ran into kJohnny Blue of the world famous Blue Brothers. Caught a glimpse of his big dick older brother Tim yesterday in the Arsenal foyer.
Received a few emugs from my old friend from the 1980s Jean Pierre Boccara who use to run the old Lhasa Club performance space on Hudson & Santa Monica Blvd in Hollywood which also shared space with the late homo celebrity photog Herb Ritts whose studio was above them. Jean Pierre and Anna also ran a large space at the Musicians Union Hall on Vine Street & Melrose called LhasaLand that I performed at with the Afro Sisters and Devo as well as the Café Largo on Fairfax Avenue and a performance venue in the old Studio One/RoseTatoo Backlot space on Robertson Blvd. Jean Pierre doesn’t live full time in LA anymore content to traveling the known and unknown world making art in a relaxed atmosphere. He promises to look me up next time he is in Berlin, and I can’t wait to see him.

Friday, February 11, 2011

A SCENSIEUR POUR L’ECHAFAUD
My first day of the 61st Berlinale Film Festival begins with a nice brunch at the Schwartzer Kafe with Jewish Muslim Daniel Hendrickson and his lover Piero Bellomo. It felt great to fortify oneself with food. Then we were off an running to the beautiful Delphi Theatre in the Old West to see Doctor’s Day Off the first film in a Forum tribute to director Shibuya Minoru of the famed Shochiku Studios, the Paramount Pictures of Japan. Joining us was Canadian baby diaper Joel Gibb of the Hidden Cameras. What a way to start the cine day, with this exquisite film from the early 1950’s. Being the grifter of attractive men that I am it was natural for me to swoon over hunky Mikuni Rentaro playing a mentally handicapped war veteran. Grabbing another bite to eat in Potsdamer Platz Joel and I visited Assaf Hochman who is working in the Berlinale Press Suite at the Hyatt Hotel to see what gossip and intrigues were afloat. To early for that,but I did share a brief flirtation with young blondine teutonic actor August Diehl and later at the opening of Forum Expandeds Guy Maddin Hauntings I(Fragments) at the Embassy of Canada’s Marshall McLuhan Salon I really dug my trenches into the lovesexy MGM president of their motion picture group Jonathan Glickman while watching lovely images of my old LA pal Udo Kier on the video monitor. During this time I wanted to see if Mr. Glickman had the big hoved feet of Satan worthy of shrimping like in Satanas Part 3: Revolution. Chittle chatted with lovely Ela of bbooks collective who will be working in sunny California at USC very soon I am sure, as well as hanging with New York legendina Jon Heys whose 6 minute short in Panarama Section Why Madame Why? Stars the illustrious award winning sexxtress Zazi De Paris. Couldn’t stay to see Mr. Maddin and Isabella Rosselini who were coming to the exhibition later but at the Arsenal foyer which this year is designed by Canadian artist Kika Thorne with the Princess Garden and features stalwarts bbooks kollective. I also ran into the divine grande dame of queer experimental cinema Barbara Hammer and her young collaborator Gina Carducci who are in Forum Expanded with Generations. The lovely Ms. Hammer also has her new film Maya Deren’s Sink showing. Ms Hammer’s posse included the MIX Festival gang. Bumped into Germany’s experimental film guru Wilhelm Hein whose significant other the art photog Annette Frick has a her documentary on Herbert Tobias in the Panorama Section.
In the big Arsenal 1 screening room I saw the incredible Quebecois film En terrains connus by Stephane LaFleur who also is in an indie rock band and looks the part with his scruffy charms. The sound in this film was the driving force for all the action and visuals which were quietly stunning, with the performances of Francis LaHaye and Fanny Mallette as a brother & sister transporting.
By 10:30pm when I went into the screening of Zbigniew Bzymek’s Utopians I was completely knackered, but stayed for almost an hour though I was not enamored of the performance by the films lead Jim Fletcher.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

ASCENSIEUR POUR L’ECHAFAUD
Went to a pre-Berlinale Forum Expanded opening last night called Parallel Worlds at Salon Populaire’s Kunstaele at Buwlowstr 90 just down the street from me in Shoneberg. My companion was Daniel Hendrickson, the Jewish Muslim translator to the academic shtars. As we were arriving Eunice Martin the gifted musician and composer who plays klavier regularly at Rising Stars,Falling Stars was leaving. Chatted with Arsenal Empress Stefanie Schulte Strathaus who has proclaimed that my area of town town is becoming the new hot happening place in Berlin. It does seem that a lot of new art activity is taking place off of the Hauptstr, on my street in Rote Insel and on Postsdamer Str. Of course in the late 70s and 80s this neck of the woods was teaming with jetset shenanigans. David Bowie,IggyPop, Lou Reed, Romy Haag, and Nick Cave all lived here. Blixa Bargeld still keeps a residence nearby as does Hamburg born & bred singer Billy Ray Martin,who lived in my building for a short spell after returning to Berlin from years in London.
I think Miss Stefanie is correct and things are returning to Schoneberg, as KreuzKoelln is getting way too expensive and trendy. Also seen the Hebbel am Ufer triumvirant of perky Anna Muelter, the beautiful and lovesexy Katrin Dodd and HAU big boss Mattias Lienthal, Arsenal Experimentals Nanna Heidenreich looking luscious along with sexy gal pal Djane Olga Damnitz, junior curator Uli Ziemons with his bromantic partner in hetero love Guillaume, Chocolate Grinder Film Kollective boys Little Alex, Tasty Tim and recently married Julian Radelmeier, and rangy filmmaking Frenchman Michel Belague. The crowd seemed mesmerized by James Benning’s 2 channel video installation and Iraeli art star Yael Bartana’s 16milimeter black&white loop. My fav piece was The Story of Milk and Honey by Lebanese video artist Basma Alsharif. Hadn’t eaten since breakfast so I had to cut our early to find some grubb and settled on the late night pizza joint in Nollendorf area that has the most delectable blondine boy tossing the dough. Since there was no flirting going on at the opening, I had to get my eye candy elsewhere.
Oh and tonight at Potsdamer 88 is the first official Forum Expanded Berlinale exhibition opening Blind. from 6pm-9pm.
***
Billy Miller is coming back to Berlin, and I personally can’t wait to see the impish dreamcake. His Bob Mizer exhibit at the new Exile Gallery is going to be the talk of the town. Here is the info that he sent me so you can mark it on your calendaria:

BOB MIZER
Select Private Works 1942—1992
February 19 through March 19, 2011
Exile Gallery
Köpenicker Str 39, Berlin
Curated by Christian Siekmeier and Billy Miller
Opening Reception February 19, 7-10 pm
Music by the Pet Shop Bears
For opening times and info on specific artworks, please
contact Exile Gallery at info@thisisexile.com
http://www.thisisexile.com/project_bobmizer.html
http://www.BobMizer.org

Wednesday, February 09, 2011

AMOUREUSE-LIEBE ZU DRITT
Last night baby diaper Joel Gibb of the Hidden Cameras came by the Cheese Endique Trifecta and we drank some sect and played catchup.He was back in Canada for ages and also took a spirited holiday to the rainforests of Costa Rica with his juicy East German beau Enrico Dallman.
Monday Damon Young the lanky queer Aussie Phd student from UC Berkley who is in Berlina for two years took the Vagimule doll to Santa Maria on Oranianstr for some Mexy food and Margaritas.We got nicely tipsy and were joined by Jewish Muslim Daniel Hendrickson and his handsome ItaloGerman lover Piero Bellomo.
The gorgeous ZacKary Drucker my young LA based gender daughterina is going to be part of what looks like a hot event in New York this Friday along with her mentor Mother Flawless Sabrina of the legendary drag documentary The Queen.Here are the details for all of you Man!hattanites:

The Queen: Then & Now
February 11, 2011
TIME?
Admission: FREE!
LGBT Center
208 West 13th Street

The Queen: Then & Now unreels a full range of perspective surrounding the landmark 1968 documentary The Queen for an evening of screenings, memories, and reflections on the current state of gender subversion in art and culture. Long before Paris is Burning, The Queen is a remarkable pre-Stonewall documentary that captured a raucous drag pageant at New York City’s Town Hall in 1967. Rarely seen The Queen will be screened along with Zackary Drucker’s At least you know you exist and Joe E. Jeffreys’ The Queen: After Party Outtakes.

The screenings will be followed by a public conversation among The Queen’s star Flawless Sabrina (aka Jack Doroshow) and Drucker moderated by Jeffreys along with an audience q&a.
Presented as a part of the exhibition, Living Live, curated by David Fierman and RJ Supa.


About the films:

The Queen (1968, 68 minutes, directed by Frank Simon) was one of the first documentaries to present a mainstream audience with a non-pathologized view of drag and homosexuality. Director Frank Simon’s impressionistic verite film was widely praised by the press, set box office records and screened internationally. The New York Times praised the film as “funny—an inspired—extraordinary” and the East Village Other dubbed The Queen “a stone gas!”

At least you know you exist (2011,15 minutes, Zackary Drucker with Flawless Sabrina) Created inside an archeology of the Uptown apartment that legendary queen Mother Flawless Sabrina has inhabited since 1967, At least you know you exist is a site-specific exploration of a fixed space where everything is in a state of change. In this 16mm film, totemic mystical objects act as a collection of mysterious sculptures in different states of mutation, and rich layers of feverish history interface with a new vision of transgender performativity. Young artist Zackary Drucker weaves a fluid, parallel text of these two divergent lives, exploring a legacy being passed from a lost generation towards the future.

The Queen: After Party Outtakes (2010, 7 minutes) reveals recently discovered outtake footage from The Queen documenting the pageant’s star studded after party with cameos from pageant participants Harlow and International Chrysis as well as Edie Sedgwick, Larry Rivers and Terry Southern among others. Jack Doroshow provides commentary. Created by Joe E. Jeffreys for Drag Show Video Verite 2010 and made possible in part with funding from the Jerome Foundation.

About the people:

Jack Doroshow a.k.a. Flawless Sabrina, is a performer, muse, gender pioneer, tarot reader, and oracle. From 1959 to 1968 Sabrina organized and emceed 46 drag contests a year across the United States. Ms. Flawless' balls recruited the likes of Judy Garland, Truman Capote, Gloria Swanson, Eartha Kitt, and Andy Warhol, as celebrity judges; and legendary ladies, Monique, Dorian Corey, Crystal LaBeija, Mario Montez, Rachel Harlow and International Chrysis as contestants. Repressive masquerade laws, which stipulated that queens wear three pieces of male clothing, landed Sabrina and her girls in jails and escorted to many a state border. Doroshow has worked as a special advisor on such films as Myra Breckenridge, Midnight Cowboy, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Flawless has also worked on both the Hillary Clinton and Al Gore campaigns, and has established various children's programs in the five boroughs, pairing kids with artists.

Zackary Drucker is a misnomer, the birth-name alias of an artist who is actually a fishy bitch. Interested in obliterating language obstacles, pulverizing identity disorders and revealing dark subconscious layers of outsider agency, Drucker disarms audiences using live performance, voice, video installation, and photography. Keeping normative culture on the periphery, Drucker focuses instead on "reading"-- a sub-cultural dialect of resistance, online sexual exploitation vernacular, and uses her body to illicit desire, judgment, and voyeuristic shame from her viewer. Drucker's critical indecision to live above the radar, below definition, and beyond static representation, ultimately aims to teach you about yourself.

Joe E. Jeffreys is a drag historian. He teaches theatre studies at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts Department of Drama and produces Drag Show Video Verite. Jeffreys’ video shorts have screened internationally and his work on The Queen was awarded funding by the Jerome Foundation.

*This performance/variable media art work was made possible, in part, by the Franklin Furnace Fund supported by stimulus funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency and the Lambent Fund of Tides Foundation

Monday, February 07, 2011

LEBEN UND STERBEN IN LA
My body is back in Berlin,but my pussy is still in Lost Angeles.Had a great time in my old city of birth. Wonderous seeing so many old friends and collaborating with new comrades on the piece dejecta/protecta which was a huge hit at the museum of contemporary art in Los Angeles (MoCa). Now I am gearing up for the Berlinale and London to celebrate my womanly birthday with Dominic Johnson, Ron Athey, Love Camel and the rest of my British rocksteady crew.Just found out that actress Maria Schneider, who was so lovely in Last Tango in Paris and The Passenger with Jack Nicholson died age 58.Hung out with her in the late 70s in LA and she was very feisty. She told me a bunch of great gossip of how Marlon Brando was always cruising young guys and how much he loved to digest gobs of semen.
Also the legendary Tura Satana of Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill, Kill also passed. Will never forget being on the same bill with her in a Velvet Hammer Burlesque show in LA at the old Mayan Theatre in downtown Los Angeles.She was still able to wow a decidedly jaded crowd.
Piero Bellomo of the Piero Kolleczione cooked a scrumptious return home meal for the doll at her Lutzoplatz compound. We were joined by Daniel Hendrickson the Jewish Muslim, and Piero gifted Ms. Davis a beautiful winter white blouse and also la Kolleczione’s new line of giant caucasion dildos that go under the name of Very Viking. I am now the proud owner of Gerth and Derth and these monster appendages will be greatly prized.