This article appears in the November/December 2023 print issue of Boston Spirit magazine. Subscribe for free today.
It’s no surprise that stellar LGBTQ films are featured in the always thoughtfully curated Boston Jewish Film Festival, which has for 35 years celebrated quality films that reflect the full scope of Jewish identity and experience.
After all, movies as diverse as Emma Seligman’s edgy queer comedy “Shiva Baby,” Eytan Fox’s gay war romance “Yossi & Jagger” and last year’s queer romance/horror/mother-daughter story “Attachment” have all been featured in the BJFF, which this year runs November 1–15 at various local cinemas with virtual screenings available November 13–15.
Not to be missed is “Queen of the Deuce,” which profiles the colorful and unconventional Chelly Wilson, whose story might seem incredible if “Queen of the Deuce” were not a documentary.
The Jewish Wilson fled the Nazis and World War II, but the Holocaust claimed nearly her entire family in Greece. She settled in New York City, where she sold hot dogs from a truck before buying her first theater, the Cameo, and screening Greek films for the immigrant community. By the 1970s, Wilson owned six X-rated theaters around Times Square and 42nd Street, aka “The Deuce.” Author and activist Jeffrey Escoffier credits her as “one of the first, if not the first, to show gay porn in New York City.”
Wilson bought the posh Tivoli theater on 8th Avenue, renamed it the Adonis and in 1975, turned it into the premiere gay porn theater in Manhattan. It even inspired its own porn film, “A Night at the Adonis,” in 1978.
Wilson lived in a walkup above another of her Eighth Avenue porn theaters, the Eros I. Her grandson, David Bourla, describes her kitschy lair as a “mélange of strangeness,” where Wilson sat on a sofa next to piles of cash and held court, like Mama Rose crossed with a Mafia don, over a constant stream of friends that included mobsters, porn stars, artists, gays and lesbians, some of whom were Wilson’s lovers.
Wilson’s daughter, Bondi Wilson Walters, and her husband Don Walters, who both worked at producing and distributing the adult films that played at Wilson’s theaters, give lively and revealing interviews. But Wilson, who died in 1994, gets to tell much of her own story thanks to an audio recording she made about her youth in Greece and her colorful life in New York. Director Valerie Kontakos blends the audio and video interviews, photographs, playful animation, historical imagery of Greece and archival footage of 1970s and ’80s New York, all seamlessly and stylishly edited by Rob Ruzic.
“Queen of the Deuce” is memorable both as a time capsule of the long-gone Times Square when it was packed with porn, peep shows, strip clubs and pulsating neon, an era mourned by some but not all, and the unforgettable LGBTQ pioneer who presided over a piece of it.
The dinner party trope is used to great effect in “Perfect Strangers,” Israeli actor Lior Ashkenazi’s feature directorial debut. Ashkenazi starred in last year’s “Karaoke” as a bon vivant living in a Tel Aviv penthouse and who becomes the conduit for the late-middle age blossoming and sexual reawakening of a married couple in his building.
“Perfect Strangers” is a sharply written and well-acted ensemble made up of some of Israel’s top comic and dramatic performers. It’s about seven longtime friends who gather to watch a rare lunar eclipse. As they drink and dine in the spacious home of their hosts, one suggests that they all put their ubiquitous cells phones in the center of the table, allowing the group to see texts and hear voice messages. Some are reluctant, even nervous; they give in when others ask whether they have something to hide.
Turns out, many do, including one who is gay and, once he’s inadvertently outed, confronts his friends about their passive homophobia in a riveting scene. As the night wears on, half-truths and outright lies are exposed and secrets are revealed. There are betrayals, arguments and too many twists to give away. Suffice it to say that “Perfect Strangers” is a smart, scathing and entertaining dramedy at how modern communication divides more than it connects and how cell phone culture allows us to hide our identities from each other and ourselves.
The documentary “Finding Light” captures the artistic conversation and collaboration between gay choreographer Stephen Mills, who is the artistic director of Ballet Austin in Texas, and Holocaust survivor Naomi Warren. Her story of survival and hope is at the heart of the full-length ballet “Light/The Holocaust & Humanity Project,” which debuted at Ballet Austin in 2005. One of the ballet’s original dancers, Paul Michael Bloodgood, now a filmmaker, captured the production when it was restaged in 2012.
In “Finding Light,” Mills shares his story of enduring homophobia as a boy and the inspiration he drew from Warsaw-born Warren, who speaks eloquently about the transformative experience of art to express the unspeakable. Through movement, music and light, the ballet attempts to understand and illuminate universal themes of hope and the importance of defending human rights in the face of hatred and bigotry. It’s an experience that resonates with timely urgency. [x]
More: bostonjfilm.org
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