When you think of summer movies, you usually think of big budget blockbusters laced with explosions and special effects with huge A-list stars. The 2011 summer line-up is filled with movies like HANGOVER 2, TRANSFORMERS 3 and X-MEN - FIRST CLASS. If you’re tired of seeing the big studio sequels, here are QUEERVINE picks of the "5 must-see indie films of Summer 2011" that you may want to check out.
1. CIRCUMSTANCES
First-time feature writer/director Maryam Keshavarz registers a rare glimpse of forbidden love in today’s Iranian youth culture. Teenagers Atafeh, and her best friend, Shireen, are experimenting with their burgeoning sexuality amidst the subculture of Tehran’s underground art scene when Atafeh’s brother, Mehran, returns home from drug rehab as the prodigal son. Battling his demons, Mehran vehemently renounces his former life as a classical musician and joins the morality police. He disapproves of his sister’s developing intimate relationship with Shireen and becomes obsessed with saving Shireen from Atafeh’s influence. Suddenly, the two siblings, who were close confidants, are entangled in a triangle of suspense, surveillance, and betrayal as the once-liberal haven of the family home becomes a place of danger for the beautiful Atafeh.
2. THE BULLY PROJECT
This year, over 18 million American kids will be bullied, making it the most common form of violence young people in the U.S. experience. Directed by Sundance- and Emmy-award winning filmmaker, Lee Hirsch, The Bully Project is a beautifully cinematic, character-driven documentary—at its heart are those with the most at stake and whose stories each represent a different facet of this bullying crisis. Following five kids and families over the course of a school year, the film confronts bullying's most tragic outcomes, including the stories of two families who've lost children to suicide and a mother who waits to learn the fate of her 14 --year-old daughter, incarcerated after bringing a gun on her school bus.
3. Last Night
Last Night is a movie about a couple [Keira Knightley and Sam Worthington] that is apart for the night. The husband goes away with a colleague he’s attracted to [Eva Mendes], and while he’s away, the wife runs into a man from her past [Guillaume Canet], the one she left behind, with whom she could have built a life. It’s about the different temptations in it that both of them face.
4. WOODY ALLEN’S – MIDNIGHT IN PARIS
A romantic comedy about a family traveling to the French capital for business. The party includes a young engaged couple forced to confront the illusion that a life different from their own is better.
5. !Women Art Revolution
In the 1960s, women artists formed the Women Artists in Revolution (WAR), a coalition to cope with exclusion from museum exhibitions, art journals, educational literature, and historical documentation. The cost of this exclusion is still felt today. !Women Art Revolution is a seminal and groundbreaking documentary excavating the evolution of the Feminist Art Movement in America. Director Lynn Hershman Leeson was an active participant in this movement and has spent 42 years documenting it. Through intimate interviews, provocative art, and rarely seen historical film and video footage, she illuminates what many historians feel is the most significant art movement of the late-twentieth century.
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1. CIRCUMSTANCES
First-time feature writer/director Maryam Keshavarz registers a rare glimpse of forbidden love in today’s Iranian youth culture. Teenagers Atafeh, and her best friend, Shireen, are experimenting with their burgeoning sexuality amidst the subculture of Tehran’s underground art scene when Atafeh’s brother, Mehran, returns home from drug rehab as the prodigal son. Battling his demons, Mehran vehemently renounces his former life as a classical musician and joins the morality police. He disapproves of his sister’s developing intimate relationship with Shireen and becomes obsessed with saving Shireen from Atafeh’s influence. Suddenly, the two siblings, who were close confidants, are entangled in a triangle of suspense, surveillance, and betrayal as the once-liberal haven of the family home becomes a place of danger for the beautiful Atafeh.
2. THE BULLY PROJECT
This year, over 18 million American kids will be bullied, making it the most common form of violence young people in the U.S. experience. Directed by Sundance- and Emmy-award winning filmmaker, Lee Hirsch, The Bully Project is a beautifully cinematic, character-driven documentary—at its heart are those with the most at stake and whose stories each represent a different facet of this bullying crisis. Following five kids and families over the course of a school year, the film confronts bullying's most tragic outcomes, including the stories of two families who've lost children to suicide and a mother who waits to learn the fate of her 14 --year-old daughter, incarcerated after bringing a gun on her school bus.
3. Last Night
Last Night is a movie about a couple [Keira Knightley and Sam Worthington] that is apart for the night. The husband goes away with a colleague he’s attracted to [Eva Mendes], and while he’s away, the wife runs into a man from her past [Guillaume Canet], the one she left behind, with whom she could have built a life. It’s about the different temptations in it that both of them face.
4. WOODY ALLEN’S – MIDNIGHT IN PARIS
A romantic comedy about a family traveling to the French capital for business. The party includes a young engaged couple forced to confront the illusion that a life different from their own is better.
5. !Women Art Revolution
In the 1960s, women artists formed the Women Artists in Revolution (WAR), a coalition to cope with exclusion from museum exhibitions, art journals, educational literature, and historical documentation. The cost of this exclusion is still felt today. !Women Art Revolution is a seminal and groundbreaking documentary excavating the evolution of the Feminist Art Movement in America. Director Lynn Hershman Leeson was an active participant in this movement and has spent 42 years documenting it. Through intimate interviews, provocative art, and rarely seen historical film and video footage, she illuminates what many historians feel is the most significant art movement of the late-twentieth century.
