Out at Sundance

Yes, it's true: This year has to be the queerest Sundance on record, with the best batch of new queer films in years, the offscreen action of the packed eighth annual Queer Brunch, and the Queer Lounge, a drop-in canter with snacks and fast Internet connections.

Rodney Evans's Brother to Brother didn't disappoint: He revived th0e Harlem Renaissance, literally, as its ghosts come to life in black and white to haunt the film's ambivalent (but cute) gay protagonist with their brave and sexy shenanigans.

"A lesbian Spy Kids" is what one pundit already dubbed D.E.B.S., but I prefer "a Kill Bill for dykes." With pop chops to spare, first time feature director Angela Robinson turned Buffy inside out and even snagged a PG-13 rating.

Christopher Munch (The Sleepy Time Gal), an eminence grise of the New Queer Cinema and a Sundance favorite, was back with Harry and Max, a twisted tale of two pop-star brothers with the hots for each other. Wow--did this film ever divide the audience. But, previously undisclosed sibling fantasies sat there all misty-eyed.

Touch of Pink from Canada offered up a hapless Ismaili Canadian hero whose mother arrives to find him a nice Muslim girl, oblivious to the boyfriend already on the scene. Ion Iqbal Rashid's casting of Kyle MacLachlan as the ghost of Cary Grant thrilled audiences.

Cinephiles, meanwhile, swooned over the romance and heartbreak in Mexico's A Thousand Clouds of Peace, Julian Hernandez's feature debut; I want the soundtrack album. Tarnation, in the experimental Frontier section, was another favorite, with first-timer Jonathan Caouette triumphing with his stylistically groundbreaking autobiography. And in the World Cinema section, while Ruthie Shatz and Adi Barash got up-close heartbreaking views of Arab and Palestinian hustlers in Garden, Bernardo Bertolucci drew snarls for dropping the boy-on boy action from The Dreamers that was originally in Gilbert Adair's book The Holy Innocents.

That movie, alas, will be the first one to hit theaters, but keep an eye peeled for all these cool new queer films.

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