YOUR GUIDE TO PRIDE

IU students and Bloomington residents used to have to travel to major metropolitan areas to attend a film festival. But since 2004, the Buskirk-Chumley Theater has been home to the PRIDE Film Festival. \nThis year's PRIDE Film Festival, which will screen more than 30 films celebrating the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community, will feature the increasingly popular PRIDE Dance Party, and two directors' panel discussions will be added to the festival as well.\nThis event puts Bloomington on the map when it comes to GLBT film festivals, said Mary L. Gray, chairwoman of the fourth annual PRIDE Film Festival's steering committee.\n"We really are becoming our own little Sundance in the cornfields out here," Gray said.\n The PRIDE Film Festival draws thousands of people downtown over the course of the weekend. Nearly 2,000 people attended last year, according to a PRIDE Film Festival press release.\nThe festival is able to bring films that premiere or screen at major film festivals and lesser-known work that's generated by regional and local artists together, Gray said.\n"We have the advantage of being able to not only show what's currently playing at larger festivals," Gray said, "but also the opportunity to take some risks in featuring lesser-known work."\nThis year's steering committee chose a variety of documentary, fiction, feature and short films representative of the GLBT community to show at the festival, said IU doctoral candidate Sarah Sinwell, who's also a steering committee member and co-moderator for the panel discussions. Those films will be in competition for three awards: the Kinsey Prize, the Jury Prize and the Audience Prize. The Kinsey Prize is awarded to a film that pushes the boundaries of sexuality and how it's understood in our culture. The Jury Prize is chosen by the steering committee and the Audience Prize is chosen by the audience. Last year "The Agressives" took home the Kinsey Prize and "100 Percent Women" was awarded both the Jury and Audience prizes, Sinwell said. \nSinwell thought it was interesting that both of last year's winners were documentary films.\n"It's unusual, I think," Sinwell said. "I'm interested to see what kind of films will win this year."\nBut the film screenings won't be the only entertainment for the weekend. The directors' forums, along with other events, will give festival-goers an inside look at the GLBT movie industry.\nSusan Stryker, the writer and director of "Screaming Queens," will join Colin A. Weil, who co-produced "Rock Bottom," as they discuss documentary filmmaking and the development of their films during the first of two directors' panel discussions. The second panel discussion will feature Indianapolis-based writer and director Catherine Crouch. Crouch will be joined by the producers and director of the film "The Gymnast." The first session is at 5 p.m. today and the second session is at 12:30 p.m. Saturday.\nThe PRIDE Dance Party will also make its return to the festival following the final screening Saturday night. Anyone who purchases a Saturday evening ticket or a Weekend Festival Pass can attend the dance party, which will "take over the entire theater generating a queer space where creativity, acceptance, vitality and the carnivalesque are available to everyone," according to the release.\n"It's really incredible the way they transform the space in the time between the films screened and the party," Sinwell said. \nThe dance party will feature aerialists from the Bloomington High Flyers, a local circus troupe. Complimentary appetizers and desserts will be available from BLU Culinary Arts, Bloomingfoods, Bloomington Cooking School and Tutto Bene Wine Cafe. There will also be a cash bar. More than 400 people are expected to attend the party, where costumes, masks and erotic attire are encouraged, according to the release.\nThe festival has developed within the last four years and the opportunity to screen multimedia work will be a possibility for future festivals, Gray said. The festival began as a class for two students in the IU Master's in Arts Administration Program interning at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater in January 2004. Gray was asked to speak at one of the festival's opening nights when she joined IU as a faculty member.\n"From that point on, I was hooked," Gray said.\nAfter two years, it became clear to Gray the festival had become a main event gathering together the local lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and allied communities.\n"I joined the steering committee last year with the goal of getting the IU campus more closely involved in this event," Gray said.\nIU student Matt Brunner is planning to attend the festival with some members of the Hoosier Rights Campaign, a student GLBT activist group he founded on campus. The festival will allow people to see films they wouldn't get to see unless they went out looking for them, Brunner said.\n"It provides a place where people can go and watch films that have a GLBT theme," Brunner said.\nIU students have taken part in making the festival happen. Gray said there are more than 10 student volunteers on the steering committee this year.\n"Students should come out to support their peers and see films they won't see anywhere else," Gray said.\nThe festival builds bridges between the campus community and Bloomington, Gray said.\n"It also gives GLBT people and folks who don't necessarily know or understand differences across sexualities and genders some common ground," Gray said.\nGray said she expected the festival to be successful since it began because of the energy of the crowds of people she saw when she first attended.\n"It was clear that this festival offered something unique that's hard to find outside of large cities," Gray said.\nGray said she thinks GLBT people might know that Bloomington is a comfortable place to live, but she said there is an entirely different feeling during the festival.\n"You can walk down Kirkwood Avenue the nights of the festival and see everyone able to hold hands with their dates and soak in the sense of acceptance and celebration that's created by the festival," Gray said.