Twin Cities Pride

June 25, 2010

7:00 – 9:00 PM
Admission: $5
Event Location: Lagoon Theatre, 1320 Lagoon Avenue, Minneapolis, MN

After Party at Barbette!

The Film

The story is minimal; love lost, love regained, love destroyed.  Our characters are Caleb and Rin. Caleb lives comfortably in his upper/middle class lifestyle as a columnist and blogger. Rin is a prominent student filmmaker in the gay community at his college. Their lives intertwine when Caleb’s wife is killed in an accidental hit and run, and Caleb’s only memory of the accident is a bumper sticker for the café in which Rin works. The two develop a relationship that opens up Caleb’s world to a new meaning of love, but transcends into dangerous and destructive when he begins to suspect Rin had something to do with his accident.

The film is told in four intertwining storylines, shot in four different film styles respectively; Melodrama, French New Wave, Mumblecore (or ‘Indie’), and Documentary which will actually feature real interviews from notable members of Minnesota’s GLBT community.

FAUX is in fact the second part of an implied trilogy of human existence: 2008’s FADE, now readily available on amazon.com, was an Orwellian drama focusing on cultural and philosophical concepts of freedom; FAUX provokes debate over the economization of sexuality and love; a proposed third FRAY will be a surrealized take on Guantanamo Bay, and deal with the darker shades of human psychology. All three carry themes of existentialism, death, and the dialectic of the human creature as a part of nature or culture. And all three challenge characteristics inherent not with Hollywood ‘mainstream’ films, but what has become of the independent class of filmmakers.

Agenda

FAUX takes place during America’s current perceptions of sexuality; specifically, the gay rights movement.  It will center on Minneapolis’s own GLBT community, and shall offer insight as well as provoke thought. But as this is the focal point, it will also embody a broader philosophy, disseminating ideologies of narrative time and history, as well as cultural concepts of sexuality and ‘humanism’ in the modern American capital. The film aims to approach sexuality in cinema from a typically untouched agenda. This isn’t a movie about gays, straights, blacks, whites, bad guys or good guys; this is a movie about people; this is a movie about human beings.

The Production

With a grass roots mentality, funded strictly by donations from caring individuals in the GLBT communities here in the Twin Cities, this is a film defying what has become the ‘normative’ independent cinema, being shot for only 2,000 dollars but mimicking the looks of every sort of budgeted project. The film has survived by the various donations from those who are interested in bringing about change through aesthetic expression. It is driven by a talented group of local individuals, Andrew Sass and Jemar Rovie-Frenchwood at the helm, with Nicole Kruex, Landyn Banx, Derek Dirlam, and Matthew Feeney supporting. It features a soundtrack by cult hit The Microphones/Mount Eerie, and local favorites Dark Dark Dark.

Christopher Michael Beer

The writer and director graduated summa cum laude  in cinema theory from the University of Minnesota, and completed a film practicum at the prestigious FAMU film school in Prague, CZ.  He cites Gus Van Sant, Robert Bresson, and Jean-Luc Godard as his biggest influences. His first film, FADE, received a small theatrical run in Minneapolis before being released on Amazon.com and used in a graduate philosophy course at the U of M. It now makes appearances all over the world, most recently in the theology department at Boston University, and alongside teachings of Althusser at Istanbul University in Turkey. Professionally, Christopher has worked on various film sets in a variety of roles, as well as a critic and writer for a number of publications, including the Mpls/StPaul Intl Film Fest and as a judge for the 48hr film festival.