| Barry Purves
Hot Homo Puppet Action: The Films of Barry Purves
(SAN FRANCISCO)—Contemporary British master of puppet animation Barry Purves has been imagining surreal worlds on film for nearly 25 years. He has worked on films for children, commercials (including a Rice-a-Roni ad), pop videos, Hollywood films (Mars Attacks), and his own films. On Friday, June 2 at 7 pm, NQAF presents Barry at the Womenšs Building, 3543 18th St, in an event aimed at changing preconceptions about animation being primarily a children's medium. Admission is $15.
In the evening-long program Plays of Passion/Passion Plays, he will screen and discuss five of his short animated films: Next, Screen Play, Rigoletto, Achilles, and Gilbert and Sullivan. Lavish and operatic, the films are full of out-and-out passion, dealing with some very dark adult themes. Of particularly interest is Achilles, an erotic retelling of the relationship between Achilles and his male lover Patroclus. In a revolutionary treatment of a mythic tale, the film pushes animation into new, and definitively queer, territory. Purves studied drama and Greek civilization at the University of Manchester before he started experimenting with animation.
The films, full of role-playing—sexual roles, gender roles and creative roles—use some of the voices of Britainšs greatest actors and singers. Purves is currently working on an adaptation of Benjamin Britten's Noye's Fludde in a TV series for Channel 4 UK called Gilbert & Sullivan. In this NQAF event, Barry will speak about how, as a gay man, hešs been able to express things about himself and his views using a medium usually only associated with the cute and cuddly.
More Barry Purves is at: http://www.staytooned.com/profiles/profile_purves.html.
The National Queer Arts Festival is a series of cultural events, exhibitions, performances and interpretive programs organized by The Queer Cultural Center and Harvey Milk Institute. For further information on any Festival event, please contact the National Queer Arts Festival at 415.552.7709 or visit the Web site at www.queerculturalcenter.org.
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