Family Farm (2004)
I once wrote a pretentious and arty
short autobiography that began: "Lodger was born on
the 13th day of the 63rd year of the 20th Century
in Keokuk, Iowa. He was immediately given his father's
name. Growing slowly in the midst of the cornfields,
he felt particularly singular." I still love this
paragraph.
I thought of it when I saw "Family
Farm" at Agliff this year. Especially the line about
growing up "singularly." When I lived on a farm in
Iowa as a boy, I felt nothing but singular. Not lonely
or bored or even sad. Just uncommon, separate, unique.
Apart.
And that was why it was so easy
for me to understand and appreciate "Family Farms,"
a documentary about gay men who live in rural areas
and find themselves far out side the perceived norm
for males with their sexual orientation. Most of these
men are into their thirties or forties, or beyond,
a few have lived in urban centers before returning
to the farm.
We met a plethora of rural types
here, from the typical to the ridiculous, much like
you might meet if you interviewed straight people
who live in rural areas. There are guys on dairy farm
milking cows, a gay couple who live in a rural town
and have adopted three kids, a horse rancher and his
Asian partner with a penchant for Western men. We
visit a gay rodeo and meet some of the participants.
We go to a Wyoming gathering of gay men in a State
Park and hear their thoughts on living in the state
that has come to considered a state of hate crimes,
thanks to the incident with Matt Sheppard. We meet
some of the Radical Fairies, including one opening
a bed and breakfast. We meet gay country and western
star Mark Weigle. And we meet The Hermits, two gentleman
who take the term "back to nature" far too literally
and live a modest, seemingly Amish lifestyle (although
I think they are actually using the model of the original
Pennsylvania Dutch). We even watch them spinning flax
into linen while they talk about homophobia and a
witch hunt conducted by the local ministry and the
local citizens. These are some off and interesting
stories. Although one thing we don't meet are any
lesbians; this film is strictly about men.
In fact, this film is so honest
in its depiction of farm life, lesbians, sensitive
persons, PETA members and the politically correct
might be aghast at seeing what seems like animal cruelty
appearing in the film. Things like the - castration
of bulls are described. We see pig in tiny nurseries
giving birth and feeding their young. We see cows
with hormonally increased udders being used as milk
making machines. We have the insemination of cows
described to us. It is often quite unpleasant.
"Farm Families may have a lot of
information in it, but it includes most of it by its
unfocused, meandering approach to telling its story.
Tom Murray is obviously an amateur filmmaker and this
film is more labor of love than professional movie.
The production is obviously cheap and done using consumer
computer programs. Murray's narration is loud and
obtrusive but he does a pretty good job of making
sure we can hear his filmed participants at a decent
sound level, which is more than can be said of some
of his contemporary amateur documentarians. And although
the film is rough in spots, including a lot of bad
jump cuts, overall this lack of production value is
not distracting.
We live in an time when openly gay
people are everywhere. Hell, if you wanted to do a
film about gays being anything, living anywhere, doing
whatever you might imagine, you could probably located
enough of them via the Internet to make a documentary
about them. Hell I bet that even if you wanted to
do a film about gay guys who fuck women, there are
probably enough of them out there that you could find
plenty to be in a documentary. The need for a film
like "Family Farm" is next to non-existent at this
point. We're here. We're queer. We raise crops and
cattle. I don't think anyone is really surprised.
Notes:
Full title: Family Farm: In Search
of Gay Life in Rural America. As most of you know,
"Family" is a euphemism for "gay." Used in a sentence:
"Is he family?" meaning "Is he gay?"
The film has been playing film festival
since April of this year. Viewed
in August, 2004, during Agliff.
