Still from Damned If You Don’t
Underground Film Series curator Justin Bonthuys gives a brief introduction to the three shorts by Su Friedrich and Paula Gauthier that comprise the upcoming program Catechism-ically Flawed.
Catechism-ically Flawed explores two different approaches to how cinema can be used to explore and express queer experiences and identities.
Su Friedrich is one of the foremost figures in American avant-garde filmmaking. She uses a lyrical and experimental style to explore the roles of women, homosexuality, and family in contemporary America. Damned If You Don’t (1987) and First Comes Love (1991) serve as bookends to Friedrich’s autobiographical magnum opus Sink or Swim (1990) which was selected for inclusion in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. Whereas Sink or Swim was structured after Greek mythology, these two films focus instead on religion and marriage, two formerly integral pillars of American female identity.
In Damned If You Don’t, Friedrich explores how religion — meant to provide structure and moral certainty for its followers — does the opposite for LGBTQI+ individuals, causing them shame and doubt. Friedrich questions whether the emotional cost of defiance and self-liberation is worth the loss of order and a sense of belonging in an otherwise chaotic world.
First Comes Love explores relationships, and how they too can provide both a sense of belonging and a kind of captivity even when experienced within a paradoxically queer context. As ever in Friedrich’s work, this includes personal reminiscence and self-reflexive storytelling.
Paula Gauthier’s film Which Is Scary (1991) takes a “ from the ground up” approach instead, presenting seven deeply personal perspectives on fear of the unknown and how people act and react in the face of uncertainty. This includes the search for companionship, with queer people having fewer models and structures to guide their expectations, and more potential for danger once they express their feelings. Ultimately, Gauthier’s film explores the tension between wanting love and feeling fear and asks the audience to draw their own conclusions.
The films in this screening illustrate the struggles that queer people face living in a world full of social structures which demonize, negate, or obscure them. While the LGBTQI+ community is gradually gaining more positive media representation in the present day, the auto-ethnographic, avant-garde, and experimental modes presented in these films capture the living, breathing, and ever-evolving nature of queerness in ways that can never be matched by conventional means. That these films are decades old but remain relevant is both sorrowful in illustrating how little society has changed, and joyful in affirming that while queerness may feel isolating, there were and will always be others out there who feel the same way that we do.
The program Catechism-ically Flawed will be screened at IU Cinema on November 16 as part of the Underground Film Series.
Justin Bonthuys is a Cinema and Media Studies PhD Student at IU. His eclectic tastes mean that he is as likely to enjoy a ’70s exploitation film as he is a melodrama starring his favorite actress, Bette Davis.