Ira Sachs' Keep The Lights On won the the Grand Jury Award for Best U.S. Dramatic Feature as well as the prize for Screenwriting, capping the 30th Outfest, the Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival. Starring Thure Lindhardt and Zachary Booth, the film centers on doc filmmaker Erik Rothman who meets Paul Lucy a handsome but closeted lawyer in the publishing field. What begins as a highly charged first encounter soon becomes something much more, and a relationship quickly develops. As the two men start building a home and life together, each continues to privately battle their own compulsions and addictions.
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Recalling his early years mixed with Sixties feminists and Black Panthers, filmmaker John Waters again charmed and amped an audience at the start of Outfest late last week where he received the Los Angeles LGBT film festival's 2012 Achievement Award. Never one to bore or to deliver a saccharine tale, he implored the audience to take a "Act Bad" and to use humor as a way of social dissent. He told a cheering audience to hail fashion insults outside the homes of anti-gay politicians and told budding filmmakers that if a studio says your story is "too gay," then to get your "gay screenplay friends and go back to the studios and yell out the grosses of all their hetero-flops." He talks about being a Yippie ('to get laid') in the '60s and a hilarious chant in London at a protest against the pope. The 30th edition of Outfest runs through July 22nd in L.A.
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Also in Monday afternoon's news round up, Outfest unveils its 30th anniversary lineup, Ashley Tisdale joins the next Scary Movie, Cannes and Sundance winner Beasts of the Southern Wild is set to open Stateside film festival, Matt Dillon and Brendan Fraser are among the cast set for a new dark comedy, Christina Ricci will join Susan Sarandon in an upcoming project and Christopher Nolan says good bye to Howard Hughes pic.
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