6TH ANNUAL MIAMI GAY & LESBIAN FILM FESTIVAL
April 23 - May 2
Festival winners were announced at the closing film ceremony held at the Regal Cinemas in Miami.
Best Feature
Brother to Brother, directed by Rodney Evans
Invokes the glory days of the Harlem Renaissance through the memories of Bruce Nugent, who co-founded the revolutionary literary journal Fire!! with Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston and Wallace Thurman. As an elderly man, Nugent meets a gay, African-American teenager in a homeless shelter and together they embark on a surreal narrative journey through his inspiring past.
Best Documentary
Paternal Instinct directed by Murray Nossel
Mark and Erik are a handsome, successful New York couple who yearn for the next chapter of their life to begin. They want a baby, and they want to share with it a genetic bond. In this astonishing new documentary, these two men embark on a process that will utterly transform them, a process most heterosexual couples take for granted: the quest for a biological child.
Best Short
Oedipus n +1, directed by Eric Rognard
A ground-breaking gay film set in a futuristic world of sharp contrasts and paradoxes, Œdipus mixes Greek myth and contemporary sci-fi in the vein of Blade Runner and Gattaca.
Audience Favorite
Callas Forever directed by Franco Zeffirelli
Maria Callas, the opera star whose life, on-stage and off, was as romantically grand as a Verdi queen’s. In this sumptuous imagining, Maria (Fanny Ardant) is 53 and planning her comeback in a soaring production of "Carmen." Unfortunately, her collaborator has less lofty ambitions. Larry (Jeremy Irons) is a gay has-been punk rock manager with a bad ponytail to boot, looking for a cash cow. He plans for the performance to be dubbed; a cheesy vehicle to re-release old Callas recordings. But much to his own surprise, Larry has a soul, which first starts peeking through in a steamy romance with a handsome young deaf man. As Larry and Maria plan the production, they find even deeper layers of humanity in each other. Ardant’s Maria is as full and radiant as we want her to be, and Irons is simply a revelation.
04.05.2004 | Editor's blog
Cat. : American literature Arts Brother to Brother Bruce Nugent Callas Forever CDATA Eric RognardA Fanny Ardant Fanny Ardant Films Franco ZeffirelliMaria Jeremy Irons Jeremy Irons Langston Hughes Langston Hughes Maria Callas Miami Murray NosselMark New York Opera Richard Bruce Nugent Rodney EvansInvokes Wallace Thurman Zora Neale Hurston