Opening Night of Outfest: LA Gay and Lesbian Film Festival

At the 27th annual Outfest's opening night, writer-director Don Roos said it is no longer enough to make gay movies. While accepting the LGBT film festival’s achievement award from presenters Lisa Kudrow and Christina Ricci last night, he told the crowd at Los Angeles’s Orpheum Theater that the movies now need to be good.

The 1992 documentaryChanging Our Minds: The Story of Dr. Evelyn Hooker“changed what it means to love someone,” he said, and other organizing members echoed his notion that movies can have transformative effects on both individual and cultural levels.

In his opening remarks, Chaz Bono said films like Southern Comfort, Hedwig and the Angry Inch,and Boy Named Sue gave him the courage to make his well-publicized transition.

Outfest executive director Kirsten Schaffer added that in the age of LGBT equality, films that represent community members in truthful and empowering ways create “cultural change that is the force behind political change.”

The festival’s opening film, La Mission, starred Benjamin Bratt and Jeremy Valdez and centered on the cultural change to which Schaffer alluded. Bratt plays a hardened, recovering alcoholic -- a model of redemption in the Mission neighborhood of San Francisco. But his life run by routine is rocked when he discovers his son (Valdez) is gay.

The neighboring districts of Castro and Mission serve as the film’s central metaphor. Valdez works to find his place on the border of Mission and Castro while fighting for acceptance from Bratt.

Co-president of the festival’s board of directors Craig Dorfman said the film was one of his favorites in the festival. Then again, he said he would enjoy watching anything with Bratt in it. While one day shorter this year, Dorfman said this year's festival possesses a more concentrated quality.

Following the film, festival attendees were ushered to Club 740 -- the former Globe Theater -- for the after-party catered by dineLA and hydrated by Absolut and Stella Artois. 

The pre-party

Lisa Kudrow and Benjamin Bratt

For more photos from opening night, click here.