Steve Buscemi played the part of a famous rock singer living with AIDS in the landmark 1986 film “Parting Glances.” |
NEW YORK, N.Y. — A fully-restored 35mm print of the landmark gay film “Parting Glances” had its east coast premiere at Lincoln Center Oct. 29. The 1986 film launched the careers of Steve Buscemi and Kathy Kinney and was one of the first films to address the AIDS epidemic. The screening was presented as part of NewFest, New York’s leading LGBT film festival.
“Parting Glances” is the first film to be restored by the Outfest Legacy Project for LGBT Film Preservation.
In 2005, Outfest, L.A.’s premier LGBT film organization, partnered with the UCLA Film & Television Archive to create the Legacy Project. The only program of its kind in the world, the group works to preserve and archive influential LGBT moving images.
Noted for its nuanced and unapologetic depiction of queer lives, “Parting Glances” was historic for its acknowledgment of the omnipresence of AIDS in mid-Eighties gay life. Already a catastrophe in the gay community, but still poorly understood by most Americans, the disease was granted a fully-dimensional, human face in this wise, quirky and often heartrending story.
The movie is also historically significant for the fact that it was writer-director Bill Sherwood’s only feature film before his untimely death from AIDS in 1990.
“Bill Sherwood’s ‘Parting Glances’ is one of my favorite films I’ve acted in and I am very proud of its place in film history,” said Buscemi. “After seeing a severely distressed print of it a few years ago, I am relieved and extremely grateful to the Outfest Legacy Project for restoring this landmark film and for their extraordinary commitment to film preservation in the LGBT community.”
Robert Rosen, Dean, UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, said, “The groundbreaking restoration of ‘Parting Glances’ is a milestone for the Outfest Legacy Project. We continue working on the monumental task of rescuing endangered LGBT works and making them available to audiences and scholars worldwide.”
info: www.outfest.org/legacy.html |
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