`Forbidden Love' Personal, Funny Look At Lesbians In '50S

The Varsity is holding a mini-festival of gay films for the next nine days, beginning tonight with "Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives," a genre-stretching production of the National Film Board of Canada.

Part talking-heads documentary, part campy dramatic re-creation of the lesbian pulp novels of the 1950s, the movie is funnier, more authoritative and more personal than most nonfiction attempts to deal with the subject.

Interviews with aging, feisty lesbians from Vancouver to Montreal are pointedly interwoven with a series of tongue-in-cheek seduction scenes starring shy blond Stephanie Morgenstern and more aggressive brunette Lynne Adams.

The result is a unique mixture of homosexual fantasy and the reality of the 1950s, when just locating a lesbian bar could be more trouble than any pulp fiction would acknowledge.

The movie is the result of a four-year collaboration between Lynne Fernie, a lesbian-history specialist based in Toronto, and Aerlyn Weissman, a prize-winning filmmaker who co-directed the grimly funny 1989 Jackie Burroughs vehicle, "A Winter Tan."

"Forbidden Love," which continues through Thursday night, was previously shown at the Seattle International Film Festival. So were three of the six short films ("Resonance," "Dead Boys Club," "R.S.V.P.") that make up "Boys' Shorts: The New Queer Cinema," a two-hour program that plays next Friday and Saturday at the same location.

Around town

The Seven Gables Theater will hold its annual Movie Poster Sale from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. tomorrow. . . . Seattle artist Antero Alli's feature-length video "The Oracle" will get another screening at 8 p.m. Wednesday in Rm 608, 608 19th Ave. E. Also on the program is the world premiere of Alli's "Imaginary Times and Places." Tickets are $5. . . . The Pike St. Cinema, at Pike Street and Boren Avenue, is showing two early Roman Polanski movies tonight through Sunday: the 1966 black comedy "Cul de Sac" and the 1963 thriller "Knife in the Water." Tickets are $5. . . . A benefit screening of "Six Degrees of Separation" is scheduled at 7:30 p.m. Monday at the Harvard Exit. Tickets are $8.50, or $20 for the screening and a reception at Cafe Cielo. Proceeds go to the Seattle Rep's Arts Training Program. . . . Soundtrack Cinema, at 9 p.m. tomorrow on KING-FM, features Bernard Herrmann's score for "The Day the Earth Stood Still" and Franz Waxman's music for "The Invisible Ray". . . . The "Documentaries Northwest" series returns to 911 Media Arts Center at 8 o'clock tonight with a program by Thomas Lee Wright, who will screen the full-length version of "Eight-Tray Gangster: The Making of a Crip." A shortened version recently played on The Discovery Channel; the movie and its genesis are discussed in the current issue of The Atlantic Monthly. Next Friday's documentary: Melissa Young and Mark Dworkin's "Retooling America," which deals with the change from a military-based to a civilian-based economy. Tickets are $3 for 911 members, $5 for others. . . . The Seattle Art Museum's film-noir series ends at 7:30 p.m. Thursday with the 1958 thriller "Cry Terror."

Out of town

The Rialto Film Guild is showing a wide-screen Robert Altman double bill, "The Long Goodbye" and "McCabe and Mrs. Miller," at 6:45 tonight at the Rialto Theater in Tacoma. Coming next: "King of the Hill," Dec. 11-12, and "Like Water For Chocolate," Dec. 17-18. Tickets are $5. . . . Another chance to see "King of the Hill": it's at the Lincoln Theatre in Mount Vernon this week, where it plays with a cartoon, serial and organ prelude at 7:15 tonight through Sunday, and at 2:15 p.m. tomorrow and Sunday. Tickets are $6 for evening shows, $5 for matinees, with discounts available for senior citizens, students and children.

Future file

ACT III Theaters is developing a seven-plex, the Redmond 7 Theatres, at the intersection of Northeast 87th and Highway 202 in the Bella Bottega Shopping Center in Redmond. It will open in late 1994. . . . The 66th Academy Awards ceremonies will be March 21 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles. Nominations will be announced at 5:30 a.m. Feb. 9. According to New York magazine's William Goldman, one of the prizes is already a sure thing: "Tom Hanks wins the Oscar next year for `Philadelphia.' A performance for the ages." . . . The Seattle Art Museum's next Thursday-night series, "Isles of Smiles: More Classics of British Comedy," begins at 7:30 Jan. 13 with "The Ghost Goes West" and continues with "Major Barbara," "I Know Where I'm Going," "Green For Danger," "Lady Godiva Rides Again," "Laughter in Paradise," "The Love Lottery," "The Man Who Loved Redheads," "Hobson's Choice" and "Expresso Bongo." Series tickets are $35 for museum members, $40 for nonmembers. For information, call 654-3121. . . . The Seattle Institute for Psychoanalysis will hold a film/discussion series, "The Mind in Movies," beginning at 7:30 p.m. Dec. 17 with David Lynch's "Blue Velvet." It will be followed by "Orphans," Jan. 14, and "Europa, Europa," Feb. 18. Screenings will be in the auditorium at Providence Hospital Medical Center, 500 17th Ave. Tickets are $10 per show, $25 for the series. For information, call 328-5315.