The 2012 Inside Out Film Festival revealed their award winners during Sunday night at the closing gala party and posting those winners online the Monday morning after. Among them are audience awards, like the Best Documentary Film or Video going to Vito and the Best Short Film or Video to Baldguy. Other award winners are for movies I missed during the festival like She Said Boom!: The Story of Fifth Column, and Margarita.
The TIFF Bell Lightbox has been the home to the festival since last year and it’s nice to see familiar and welcome faces in the lines. The hardest movie I had to get into was the English movie Stud Life and with good cause. The audience was laughing it up as the movie shows the awkward encounters of a complex tomboyish lesbian of colour. Most movies in this year’s roster are about HIV or Scandinavia, the movies about the former belonging to the documentary genre. There are also the overlaps between Hot Docs and Inside Out, as Call Me Kuchu is in both festivals’ selection. Fortunately, that’s not the only topics that this festival has to offer. Sunday May 20th was also a good day, having a triple-bill that made my emotions run from optimism to excitement – don’t worry everyone, I know how to control myself – to visceral shock, not that the latter is a bad thing. There are also many selections portraying or capturing young gay men, which are the opposite of the festival’s demographic. Yet I also wish that there were many people of my generation or younger because those groups aren’t exposed to our diverse stories.
But preaching aside, here is my top five.
Boy Scandinavia (Specifically A Day in the Country, and Baldguy)
Entertainment Maven 