The best movies and stories do two things, says Rachel Jacobson, director of Omaha’s nonprofit art house movie theater Film Streams.
One, she said, is to show us what we have in common, especially in our emotional lives — what makes us human.
The other is to show our individuality, the uniqueness of the human experience.
“These two reminders make the best art,” Jacobson said last week in her office at 14th and Mike Fahey Streets.
As Jacobson and her staff chose artfully made movies for Omaha’s first gay-themed film retrospective, they had these things in mind.
“Out in Film,” which continues Friday with the groundbreaking 1977 documentary “Word Is Out,” includes nine movie titles that will play between now and July 1 in conjunction with Gay Pride Month.
Homosexuality, long a taboo subject, has proved to be divisive in American culture since it emerged from the shadows in the late 1960s.
Jacobson said people are often more open to watching a story unfold on the screen than to participating in an intellectual discussion on a hot topic.
“There’s something passive about watching a movie,” she said. “It’s not asking for a reaction from you. You’re just experiencing it. It’s a great way to walk in someone else’s shoes or live a different lifestyle, an opportunity to imagine what it must be like to be someone else.”
Movies are the premier art form of contemporary culture, Jacobson said. And among the art forms, film is unique in how close it comes to re-creating the human experience.
“You’re watching people in their lives, hearing them talk, seeing how they interact with one another. Movies are engaging on so many levels.”
In the process of watching, she said, people may discover that the lifestyles of others are not so different from their own. The commonality comes across especially in small human stories that feel real.
Jacobson said some of the most important directors in international film today have made fantastic movies about alternative lifestyles.
That means she can show Ang Lee’s “The Wedding Banquet,” June 4-10. The 1993 movie focuses on a 20-something man of Chinese ancestry who agrees to a sham marriage to please his parents, though he’s in love with another man. Lee went on to direct “Sense and Sensibility,” “The Ice Storm” and “Brokeback Mountain.”
Gus Van Sant’s “Mala Noche” follows June 11-17. His gritty debut film, set in Portland, Ore., is based on the novel by beat poet Walt Curtis. Van Sant later made “Drugstore Cowboy,” “Good Will Hunting” and “Milk,” among others.
Chinese director Wong Kar Wai, three times nominated for the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival, made “Happy Together,” a 1997 movie about a young gay couple who relocate from Hong Kong to Buenos Aires. It will play June 18-24 at Film Streams, as will Pedro Almodovar’s “Law of Desire.” That 1987 movie stars a young Antonio Banderas as an obsessed and dangerous lover. “Broken Embraces,” “Bad Education,” “Talk to Her, “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” and “Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down” are other Almodovar movies.
Besides “Word Is Out,” the retrospective will include another documentary June 25-July 1, “The Times of Harvey Milk,” an Oscar winner in 1985. The documentary preceded the movie for which Sean Penn won best actor, titled simply “Milk.”
Also June 25-July 1 is the ensemble AIDS drama “Longtime Companion,” considered groundbreaking when it arrived in 1989. It stars Campbell Scott, Dermot Mulroney, Mary-Louise Parker and Bruce Davidson. Davidson earned an Oscar nomination.
“High Art,” playing June 11-17, is the story of a magazine editor pulled into the world of a drug-addict photographer. Ally Sheedy and Radha Mitchell star in the 1998 melodrama.
The series got an early kickoff with the new documentary “Prodigal Sons,” in which director Kimberly Reed shows how family ties and a search for identity are universal themes, even when one son is gay, another has mental-health issues and a third (Reed) has switched genders. “Prodigal Sons” concludes tonight.
Jacobson said a number of friends and patrons have suggested running a series of gay-themed movies, and it’s something she’s wanted to do for some time. She said there’s no shortage of great films for a follow-up series.
“If it’s really popular and goes well, we could do it every year, or every other year,” she said. “Whether we do it regularly depends on the turnout and response.”
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