FFDFF: Same Sex America and A Touch of Greatness
But what about the children?
With divisive domestic issues, it always comes down to "the children." Not actual kids, mind you, as much as defenseless, symbolic enfants. The children are forever in danger, and only social conservatives can save them from libruls and homosexuals who support civil rights initiatives like gay marriage. In the documentary Same Sex America, you meet no "children". Instead, the filmmakers follow seven same-sex couples and their sons and daughters from November 18, 2003, when the Massachusetts supreme court ruled that prohibiting gay marriage was against the commonwealth's constitution, through May 17, 2004, when marriage licenses were first made available to same-sex couples, and then on to their weddings.
The sound design of this film artfully captures the clamor surrounding this issue. It comes at you from all sides. The directors make certain to include the voices of those who oppose gay marriage [many of them Catholic], shouting and praying in protest, but they don't show their children. We do, however, meet Al and Keith's daughter Kayla; and Jon and Paul's adopted son from Russia and their Chinese daughter, who knows all about wedding cakes; and Corey and Jonathan's new baby; and Audrey and Robin's Annie-loving daughter Phoebe. Well-adjusted kids one and all, they make it hard for anyone to believe that gay marriage might somehow endanger them.
But what about the other children, these gay adults finally able to marry just like anyone else? One woman's mother admits in the car on the way to her daughter's wedding that she'd felt sad when her daughter came out that she would never see her marry. Al can't bring himself to tell his father that he's taking Keith's name and seems stunned when his dad actually comes to the ceremony. And then there's Lea, a gay-rights activist who avers that "marriage is everyone's dream" in an interview at a State House protest. Her parents are there, too, but on the other side. "God made me, too," she insists, with tears welling up in her eyes. Over the course of the filmmaking, they reach a fragile repproachment. It's a tear-jerker. The whole film is.
To be fair, the cinetrix is a Massachusetts native, and far from impartial about this issue. The sequence of the all-night party at Cambridge City Hall the first day marriage licenses became available, especially, made her homesick and verklempft. [That's where she got her marriage license. Who wouldn't want other people to feel that joy?]
Same Sex America shows next at the Independent Film Festival of Boston and then at Tribeca. At both fests, the couples from the film, and their families, will be present. I predict few dry eyes.
The final film I saw at Full Frame, A Touch of Greatness, has nothing to do with the current war or any other, but it is no less concerned with winning hearts and minds. It's simply the portrait of a remarkable teacher, Albert Cullum, whose amazing influence on his elementary students in Rye, NY, continues to this day. Before the screening began, the MC, a teacher in the Durham public schools, asked everyone, "Can you remember your fifth-grade teacher?" I do, do you? Ah, but did he or she build Pike's Peak out of folding chairs piled so high they crashed to the ground? Or have you picket at a "literature convention" in support of Shakespeare, or Sophocles, or Shaw? These are elementary school children, remember.
Albert Cullum did that, and much more. Imagine Corky St. Clair and a grown-up Max from Rushmore and you'll get a little sense of the joy and boundlessness he brought to his teaching. In addition to covering every subject, Cullum coached afterschool sports, was the advisor for the literary magazine, and even ran the ballet club [which under his direction turned out interpretive spectacles that would put Martha Graham on notice].
On Fridays, each class at Midland Elementary would present a play at assembly. Cullum chose Julius Caesar. He later took a year-long sabbatical to mount a Shakespeare festival that included even kindergartners [he fed them marshmallows so they could play fairies in A Midsummer Night's Dream and be light as air]. Always, he tried to find the success level of each child.
Perhaps the most striking aspect of this fond memoir is the archival footage. Cullum's pedagogical approach in Rye was chronicled at the time by CBS's Camera Three, and he later went on to Stonehill College to teach teachers how to reconnect with children the way he did naturally. Cullum also published many books about teaching, but for the film world, perhaps his biggest contribution was asking a twentysomething filmmaker, Robert Downey Sr., to come up from the city to film his students' productions of Shakespeare and Shaw's Saint Joan. The resulting shorts are extraordinary. They resemble Welles circa The Trial. Really.
Buy A Touch of Greatness, watch it, and then send it to a teacher you know. So many of them are discouraged right now because of the No Child Left Behind act. [During the post-screening Q&A, one English teacher burst into tears.]
So, do you remember your fifth-grade teacher? And did you ever have a teacher like Albert Cullum? I did. In sixth grade. Thank you, Paul William Kreiter Freeland.
