The ensuing makeover montage - as Matt molds Aaron into his ideal (read: sterotypical) Asian - is amusing, but the line is drawn when Matt chastises him for using a fork to eat Chinese food. Too discriminating, he rejects anyone with a hint of “rice queen.” He finally lucks into Matt (Brett Donahue), a handsome man with an increasingly apparent Asian fetish. Geoff (Adamo Ruggerio) prefers men of a bearish nature, and Steve (Ben Lewis) freely admits he’s a “sexual racist” who “only sleeps with White, middle-class, Anglo-Saxon guys.” While their sexual appetites are well-defined, Aaron (Richard Lee) is undergoing a bit more of a crisis. WHAT’S IT LIKE to be the subject of a fetish? That’s the question posed - and humorously explored - in Austin Wong’s brisk, frisky comedy. With 20 films from across the gay spectrum, it’s three hours of LGBT cinema that won’t leave you feeling shortchanged. No matter how you digest these shorts - in bitesize nuggets, or one long session, on iPad, computer, or even via Chromecast - it’s an experience worth having. Yes, short films are sometimes easy to figure out - when the genre is specifically LGBT, it can be hard to truly surprise your viewer - but look beyond that and, in the fleeting moments you spend with each film, absorb what the filmmaker is trying to impart.Ĭanada Lifts Blood Donation Restrictions On Gay And Bisexual Men So, when a filmmaker gets it right - such as Carlos Molina with the unnerving thriller Red or Lance Larson with the emotionally raw Bloom or Arnaud Lalanne with the blissful La Princesse - you have to admire the craftsmanship at work. It takes a special gift to craft a cogent narrative, to capture a powerful emotion, to convey an idea in a film whose average length is 9 minutes. The beauty of a short film - most of which range from 2 to 20 minutes - is that even if they’re not perfect, they can be easily endured and then you’re onto the next. Gann (see profile, page 20) unearthed 20 LGBT nuggets for us to review, and while, as with any collection of shorts, the quality varies considerably, the collection as a whole captures the entire gamut of the LGBT experience. And who better to curate our mini-festival for us than Gann, executive director of DC Shorts, which, every fall, stages a massive, citywide shorts festival. Since 2009, just prior to the Oscars, we’ve occasionally put together lists of “25 Gay Films Everyone Should See.” When it came time for this year’s list, we thought we’d give feature films a break and turn our attention to an oft-neglected, but much beloved category - the short. In some of the stories, the LGBT portion is very small, but the LGBT component is really critical to how the story unfolds.” Illustration by Christopher Cunetto I like them because they are about the entire community. “I’m not sure that these are the greatest LGBT films ever,” says Jon Gann.