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Straightlaced: How Gender's Got Us All Tied Up

• $10.00
  • online closed. tickets available at box office
• Director: Debra Chasnoff
• 2009, USA, 66min

Filmed in the same intimate style as ‘That’s a Family’ and ‘Let’s Get Real’, the heart of ‘Straightlaced’ is candid interviews with more than 50 teens from diverse backgrounds.  Filmed by Oscar winner Debra Chasnoff, this film is another in her highly popular and candid series of documentaries about youth and the future of the queer community.

With a fearless look at a highly charged subject, ‘Straightlaced’ unearths how popular pressures around gender and sexuality are confining American teens. Their stories reflect a diversity of experiences, demonstrating how gender role expectations and homophobia are interwoven, and illustrating the different ways that these expectations connect with culture, race and class.

From girls confronting media messages about culture and body image to boys who are sexually active just to prove they aren’t gay, this fascinating array of students opens up with brave, intimate honesty about the toll that deeply held stereotypes and rigid gender policing have on all our lives.

‘Straightlaced’ includes the perspectives of teens that self-identify as straight, lesbian, gay, bisexual or questioning and represent all points of the gender spectrum. With courage and unexpected humor, they open up their lives to the camera: choosing between “male” and “female” deodorant; deciding whether to go along with anti-gay taunts in the locker room; having the courage to take ballet; avoiding the restroom so they won’t get beaten up; or mourning the suicide of a classmate. It quickly becomes clear that just about everything teens do requires thinking about gender and sexuality.

Coming of age today has become increasingly complex and challenging; ‘Straightlaced’ offers both teens and adults a way out of anxiety, fear and violence and points the way toward a more inclusive, empowering culture.

Opening Film

Claiming the Title: Gay Olympics on Trial

• Directors: Jonathan Joiner and Robert H. Martin
• 2009, USA, 30min

‘Claiming the Title’ explores the additional homophobic hurdle on the already arduous road to athletic excellence. When a gay athletic group started the Gay Olympic Games in the mid-’80s, the U.S. Olympic Committee sued for use of the Olympic name and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court.

festival key