White boy with attitude: Yung Lenox shows off his work
Of the nine (!) short film programs at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, Be Yourself might just be the most Geeks Out friendly. After all, it opens with American Renaissance, a gorgeous sharp focus treatment of an upstate New York Renaissance Faire with loving close-ups of faeries, lords and ladies, and at least one gay couple. It continues with the buoyant and playful Live Fast, Draw Yung, a tone that fits its subject, seven year old rap portraitist Yung Lenox. We watch the precocious Lenox as he draws everyone from Biggie to N.W.A. with a giant set of markers; meets some of his famous subjects; attends a gallery show with an endless array of adoring adult fans; and in one unforgettable shot, struts to the pool with his father as they carry giant donut and ice cream sandwich floaties. It’s all scored to choice hip hop cuts and touches on Lenox’s father’s concerns about marketing his son’s artwork. But the tone remains light and it’s a fun treatment of an unusual subject. Gay identity comes front and center in Elder, an intimate portrait of a gay Mormon missionary who met and fell in love with an Italian communist while travelling overseas. It’s interesting to watch the missionary today as he looks back on this short lived affair and its importance in his emerging identity, a story brought to life by contemporary location shots and vintage camera footage. What’s also compelling is how this obscure story sheds light on a very different time as well as the conflict between faith and sexuality—and how it still haunts its participant decades later.
Before that entry, there’s Katie Holmes’ debut film Eternal Princess, about real life Strong Female Character Nadia Comaneci, who made Olympic history with a 10.0 score and later fled Romania’s repressive communist rule; and All-American Family, a fascinating look at a mostly deaf small town and its championship winning football team. It’s interesting to see scenes of teenagers and adults at parties, classes, and games, with only background sounds (subtitles translate the sign language for us). The last film in the program, My Enemy, My Brother, concerns an Iranian and Iraqi who implausibly assisted each other on the battlefield and their unexpected reunion twenty five years later.
Be Yourself screens free tomorrow, April 24 at 5:30pm at Regal Battery Park City as part of the Tribeca Film Festival’s Film for All Friday.
Follow me on Twitter: @HeyLockwood
Cos play in American Renaissance
