2014 Red Rock Film Festival

Love Janine Pommy Vega
(USA) 45 min. (2013) Documentary Featurette
DIR Tom Knoff, Kurt Hemmer CAST Janine Pommy Vega
A female poet finding her voice and making her niche among some of the most revered men of the counterculture. Taking refuge with Gregory Corso and other Beat poets in the Village as a teenager escaping the suffocation of conformity. Losing her unwanted virginity to Allen Ginsberg's lover, Peter Orlovsky. Discovering disappointment in the arms of her hero Jack Kerouac. Cherishing the inspiration of other female poets and writers like Elise Cowen, Barbara Moraff, and Bonnie Bremser. Encountering disappointment in Ken Kesey and magic in Timothy Leary. Fighting and loving with Pete Knell and the Hell's Angels. Digging the Diggers in San Francisco. Rambling with Jack Elliott on Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue. Finding hope in the grey wall prisons of America. 'Janine Pommy Vega is one of the most fascinating women I ever had the pleasure to meet,' Herbert Huncke told codirector Kurt Hemmer. Hemmer goes on to state 'It was impossible for her to make someone yawn. I truly enjoyed hearing her regale me with tales of her travels around the world to poetry conferences, of her conversations with fellow artists of various disciplines and nationalities, and of her new political and social insights, which were articulated with the skill of an astute pundit.' Love Janine Pommy Vega is a tribute to this remarkable woman, a friendly voice from the grave, the last testament of a wise woman who was there and now is gone.

Rodelle - I'm Afraid I'm Not
(Netherlands) 4 min. (2014) Music Video
DIR Marcus Moonen CAST Rodelle
A performer's struggle with self-identity while trying to find the courage to confront an audience. But is it really the audience that is most frightening?

The Lives of LaMott Atkins
(USA) 35 min. (2013) Documentary Featurette
DIR Robert Philipson CAST LaMott Atkins
W. E. B. DuBois famous wrote that every Black in America grow up with 'this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others.' But what happens when the double consciousness of being gay is overlaid on that? This self-narrated documentary follows a man of extraordinary talent: running back for the Stanford Cardinal; dancer at Julliard; model, singer, and performer in Europe; the epitome of Black masculinity and grace. And yet he's closeted for the first 40 years of his life. When he finally crashes and burns, his wanderings bring him to the very heart of gay life in San Francisco. And still he won't come out.