What:			Bette Midler clips talk at the Fourth Annual Miami Gay & Lesbian Film Festival
When:			Clips Talk: Saturday, April 27, 2002, 4:30pm Festival: Friday, April 26, through Sunday, May 5, 2002
Where:			Clips Talk: Colony Theatre & Lincoln Road Closing Night screenings:       Gusman Center For The Performing Arts,       174 E. Flagler St., downtown Miami All other screenings & panels:       Colony Theatre, 1040 Lincoln Rd., Miami Beach
Tickets:			$11 general; special prices for special events
	Tickets for all screenings & events go on sale April 1 via: Festival Office:     Telephone: 305.534.9924 (credit card only)     FAX: completed order form to 305-535-2377 (credit card only)     Mail: completed order form to Miami Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, Attn: Ticket Sales     1521 Alton Rd., #147, Miami Beach, FL 33139     (check, money order or credit card) must be received by April 19th     on-line: www.mglff.com (credit card only) Gusman Center box office Tickets are available here only for Opening & Closing Night tickets, in person at the box office,174 E. Flagler St., beginning April 1, from 12-2:30pm and 3-5:30pm Mondays-Fridays (cash, Visa & Mastercard). Colony Theatre box office: 1040 Lincoln Rd., Miami Beach, beginning April 1st, (cash only) from noon-5pm Tues.- Sat.. The Colony does not sell opening and closing night tickets. TicketMaster: 305.358.5885, 954.523.3309 or www.ticketmaster.com (credit card only); or in person at TicketMaster outlets. Rush Sales: A limited number of tickets will be available for films sold out in advance. Special Rush Line will form beginning one hour prior to screening at Festival Ticket/Will-Call Table. Rush tickets sold for $11 on first-come, first-served, cash-only basis; no complimentary or discounted rush ticket sales.
For information: 305 534 9924 or www.mglff.com.

Bawdy. Bold. Buxom. Brazen. Bette.

Big words for a tiny person with a huge personality. The 1980s portrayed the Divine Miss M as a humorous hetero housewife and mom against the backdrop of her Beverly Hills husband's coffers (Ruthless People, Down & Out in Beverly Hills), and a power ballad pop star (Wind Beneath My Wings). But just a decade before, "the Jewish Tinker Bell" dazzled the demimonde of New York City with her special brand of camp - playful, political, ethnic, feminist and thoroughly queer.

Bette Midler's early years will be the topic of a unique clips talk entitled Dirty Girl in a Bathhouse at the Fourth Annual Miami Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, which runs from Friday, April 26, through Sunday, May 5, 2002, at the Colony Theatre in Miami Beach and Gusman Center in downtown Miami.

This clips presentation, scheduled for Saturday, April 27, 2002, at 4:30pm at the Colony Theatre, not only pays homage to Miss M, but also critically examines why gay and Jewish audiences perceive Midler as a celebrity icon.

Vintage video from 1971 to 1982 will include amateur video from the Continental Baths, Bette's appearance at New York's Gay Pride Rally in 1973, her outrageous stunt to score a $5,000 pledge at the 1975 UJA telethon, and an excerpt from her 1971 debut film The Divine Mr. J (aka The Greatest Story Ever Overtold).

The program, a lecture illustrated by film clips, will be led by Andrew Ingall, Collections Manager of the National Jewish Archive of Broadcasting and Media at The Jewish Museum, New York.

"I want to articulate the resonance Bette had on gay people, women and Jews in the early '70s," Ingall explained. "This was a time when women's lib was starting, the civil rights movement was in full swing and the early gay lib began. Here was an icon that people could get inspiration from."

Ingall himself became inspired by Bette through his work at the Jewish Museum, where his curatorial duties brought him into contact with several Jewish superstars of song. As he puts it, "at a time when VH1 was producing endless and mindless divas' life programs, where anyone with big lungs could be dubbed a diva, I began to consider the question: What does the word 'diva' mean?" Like any good intellectual, he carefully researched the origins of the word and how it developed over music history. To his great pleasure, he found that Midler [Ingall, Andrew] possesses several qualities shared by other divas, including among the pantheon of Sarah Bernhardt, Maria Callas, and Aretha Franklin.

According to Ingall, who is 30-something, Dirty Girl in a Bathhouse is "a homage to Bette, but focusing primarily on her early years, before she became a Disney star - a Bette that I didn't know. This is a Bette that my generation doesn't know, who was quite 'out there' in the early '70s, when she sang at the Continental Baths in the Upper West Side of Manhattan. My opinion of her quickly changed. I fell in love when I found out how raunchy she was and how so teeny a woman could be such a bundle of energy on stage."

Midler's appeal to the gay world had as much to do with her outcast roots as it did her out-there raunch. She didn't look like a traditional diva. In fact, growing up in Hawaii as the only Jewish girl in a class of Asian-American kids, Bette didn't fit in. In a 1971 interview published in the gay magazine Afterdark, Midler disclosed she was "miserable as a child. I guess it was because I look like I do. The media have told us we have to look a certain way. They really do a job on you. It would have been one thing if I had been a beautiful child, but I was a plain, little, fat Jewish kid. I had to find my own style, or I was going to get screwed."

Midler took in the gay community the way the gay community took her in. She has long been involved in gay rights activism, evident in a clip in Ingall's program from a 1973 gay pride rally in New York City, where she makes a surprise appearance. One of the most touching aspects of the clip to Ingall is that "you don't just see Bette. The camera pans out to the audience, and you see the young gay liberation movement in its early years. A lot of people kind of forget how far we have come. It's just incredibly moving to see these young people getting up on their feet and bravely applauding their friends."

"This lecture is for everyone who maybe hasn't always fit in," said Ingall, who has already presented his program at gay events in New York City and Washington, D.C. "It's for those who might have grown up like Bette. Those who are different and revel in their differences. There are fans out there who love Bette so much, they will see anything with Bette. But even hardcore fans - the ones who raise their hands and say, 'You forgot to mention...," the ones who know everything - even those people will learn something new and find a new meaning behind her persona."

A writer and curator with special interests in music, television and other aspects of popular culture, Ingall has presented lectures and video programs for the International Association for Media and History, the New York Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, and the Washington Jewish Film Festival. This summer at the Jewish Museum, Ingall has organized the series Big Apple, Small Screen: TV Treasures from the National Jewish Archive of Broadcasting in conjunction with the exhibition New York: Capital of Photography.

The line-up for the 4th Annual Miami Gay & Lesbian Film Festival is even more global and wide-ranging in form and content than ever before, including the North American premiere of Spain's Sagitario (Friday, April 26, 7:30pm), a film about a group of 30 & 40-somethings, gay and straight, looking for love and happiness amidst the comic urban madness of contemporary Madrid. It features a slew of veteran Spanish actors whose credits include between them Carne trémula (Live Flesh), La ley del deseo (Law of Desire) and Martín Hache; Julieta Serrano, a long-time Almodóvar favorite; and Mirtha Ibarra, the internationally acclaimed star of Cuban cinema, whose credits include Fresa y chocolate (Strawberry and Chocolate) and Guantanemeraa; the North American premiere of Festival closing night film The Trip, a love story that looks back at the fabulous '70s from a gay perspective, touching on Anita Bryant and other historical events along the way, and starring Alexis Arquette and Jill St. John, among others; the East Coast premiere of Festival Centerpiece The Cockettes, a fresh-from-Sundance feature documentary about the legendary gender-bending theater company, with interviews and performance footage from such icons as Divine, Sylvester, John Waters and Holly Woodlawn; the North American premiere of Sugar Sweet, from Japan, a wild and in-your-face comedy about a group of women who get together to make a lesbian adult film; the North American premiere of Guardian of the Frontier, the first female-helmed feature from Slovenia that tells the story of three college friends who embark on an innocent kayak trip that becomes an unsettling tale of sexual awakening; the North American premiere of Bob and Rose, the new British TV series from the creator of the original U.K Queer as Folk, with the programs' creator Russell T. Davies in attendance; the East Coast premiere of the groundbreaking Hong Kong film Lan Yu, a gay male love affair set against the backdrop of the Tiananmen Square massacre - shot in part surreptitiously in mainland China; from Germany, the East Coast premiere of Journey to Kafiristan, a kind of lesbian The English Patient set in 1939 that follows two women adventurers on their way across Europe to Afghanistan; the South Florida premieres of Metrosexuality, another groundbreaking television series from Great Britain, and the clips-talk program, Bette Midler: Dirty Girl in a Bathhouse, a presentation highlighting the early years of Bette Midler's career along with her relationship to the gay community and her own Jewish identity.

Additional Latin films include the North American premiere of Spain's I Love You Baby (Monday, April 29, 9:30pm), starring Jorge Sanz (Belle Epoque) and Veroníca Forqué, another Almodóvar regular; Argentina's Vagón fumador (Smokers Only) (Sunday, April 28, 10pm), the story of a male hustler who picks up men at ATM machines in Buenos Aires, and the woman who becomes obsessed with him; the U.S. premiere of Food of Love (Wednesday, May 1, 9pm), based on the novel The Page Turner by award-winning writer David Leavitt, the first English-language feature from Spain's Ventura Pons; and the North American premiere of Sexto Sentido (Sixth Sense) (Sunday, May 5, 3pm), the first telenovela or soap opera ever produced in Nicaragua that deals with a range of controversial topics such as homophobia, violence against women and AIDS; the South Florida premiere of De Colores (Wednesday, May 1, 7pm, in English and Spanish with subtitles), a U.S.-made documentary about the lives of lesbian and gay Hispanics; and the North American premiere of Historia de amor en baño público (Love Story in a Public Toilet) (Saturday, May 4, 5pm), a short from Argentina. Director Vicente Molina Foix and actor Eusebio Poncela (Sagitario), Ventura Pons (Food of Love), Virginia Lacayo and Liz Miller (Sexto Sentido) and Pablo Oliverio (Historia) will be attending the Festival.

Competitive awards are given in a number of categories, including Best Dramatic and Documentary Features, and Audience Favorite. The MGLFF has also teamed up with PlanetOut.com, a leader in gay Internet content, to present the PlanetOut.com Short Movie Awards, sponsored by HBO. Participating filmmakers are eligible for competitive awards given in a number of categories, including Best Dramatic and Documentary Features, and Audience Favorite. Twenty-five finalists will be selected by a jury that includes an HBO executive to compete for online Audience Awards determined by visitors to www.planetout.com, the PlanetOut.com website, during the month of March. The prize-winning films will be screened at a special PlanetOut.com program and awards presentation at this year's Festival, where $7,500 in cash awards will be given out. Jenni Olson, PlanetOut.com's Director of Entertainment, commented that, "The Miami fest has quickly become one of the most prestigious stops on the gay film festival circuit, and this is a wonderful opportunity to showcase the best GLBT short films and to support the filmmakers themselves."

History
The Miami Gay & Lesbian Film Festival began a short three years ago after South Florida had well established itself as a gay-friendly place to live and visit. The Festival was the area's first regularly scheduled arts programming specifically geared toward showcasing works by gay and lesbian artists and catering to gay and gay-friendly audiences. After the first edition of the Festival drew more than 5,000 attendees and the following year's event attracted 7,000 attendees, Rosenberg and the Festival Board decided to expand the Festival from 6 to 10 days in order to accommodate both growing audiences and the increasing amount of solid material the Festival had been receiving from filmmakers from across the globe. Last year's Third Annual Festival sold more than 11,000 tickets and featured more than 70 feature and short works from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, England, France, Germany, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Puerto Rico, Spain, Thailand and the U.S.

Sponsors
The Presenting Sponsor of this year's Miami Gay & Lesbian Film Festival is Southern Wine and Spirits of South Florida.

Other sponsors include Abbey Hotel, Absolut, Advanced Radio Systems/ Motorola, The Advocate, American Express, Burstein Family Foundation, Cabana Boy Run, Corazon Tequila, Dade Human Rights Foundation, Party 93.1 WPYM-FM, Design Center of the Americas (DCOTA), Express Gay News, Ferraro Family Foundation, Florida Department of State and Cultural Affairs Council, Genre Magazine, HBO (Presenting Sponsor Of The Planetout.Com Short Movie Awards), Hotel Nash, Indian Creek Hotel, Laurent Perrier Champagne, Miami Beach Cultural Arts Council, Miami Beach Visitor & Convention Authority, The Miami Herald, Miami New Times, Miami-Dade County Cultural Affairs Department, Miamigo Magazine, Passport Magazine, Planetout Partners, Planetout.Com, Regal Cinemas, Robert Mondavi Wines, Rubell Hotels, Savoy Hotel, Tangueray, TWN, and Voss Water (sponsor list as of March 19, 2002).

The Festival's Honorary Board supports the organization financially and with their expertise. Members include Executive Producers Harvey Burstein, Stephen Herbits; Kent Karlock, Raben & Feldman, Rene T. Rodriguez, Lee Brian Schrager, Jacques Soukup & Aaman Crane; and Bruce Weber & Nan Bush.

Directors include Jerry Chasen and Mark Kirby, Desmond Child, Scott Dansky & John Dawson, Dwina Gibb, Rick Hanley & Paul Kahn, Marc Levin, Sheldon & Myrna Palley, Mayda Perez & Simone Mayer, Alan Randolph, Robert Schafer, Michael Toomey & Dr. Patrick Ward.

Ticket Information
General tickets to the Fourth Annual Miami Gay & Lesbian Film Festival cost $11; there are special prices for special events. Tickets for all screenings and events go on sale beginning April 1, 2002, via:

Tickets: $11 general; special prices for special events

Tickets for all screenings & events go on sale April 1 via:
Festival Office:
    Telephone: 305.534.9924 (credit card only)
    FAX: completed order form to 305-535-2377 (credit card only)
    Mail: completed order form to Miami Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, Attn: Ticket Sales, 1521 Alton Rd., #147, Miami Beach, FL 33139 (check, money order or credit card); must be received by April 19th
    on-line: www.mglff.com (credit card only)

Gusman Center box office Tickets are available here only for Opening & Closing Night tickets, in person at the box office,174 E. Flagler St., beginning April 1, from 12-2:30pm and 3-5:30pm Mondays-Fridays (cash, Visa & Mastercard).

Colony Theatre box office: 1040 Lincoln Rd., Miami Beach, beginning April 1st, (cash only) from noon-5pm Tues.- Sat.. The Colony does not sell opening and closing night tickets.

TicketMaster: 305.358.5885, 954.523.3309 or ticket master.com (credit card only); or in person at TicketMaster outlets.

Rush Sales: Limited number of tickets will be available for films sold out in advance. Special Rush Line will form beginning one hour prior to screening at Festival Ticket/Will-Call Table. Rush tickets sold for $11 on first-come, first-served, cash-only basis; no complimentary or discounted rush ticket sales.

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