Memorabilia

In the immortal words of Michael Bluth - I don't know what I expected.

The longline stated - "A lifetime of sexual encounters is celebrated in this art-porn odyssey, inspired by the late Charles Lum’s cruising diaries."

Truly, nothing more, nothing less - and yet, such an honest and intimate film, by virtue of it's diary-based material, that one feels you live the full and debauched life in real time, seeing what Charles saw, feeling what he felt. Beautiful vistas and full frontal gay pornography can coexist. There is art to the bodies, and eroticism in the sparse landscapes and footages interspersed between them.

I can vouch that the film just barely stays this side of being porn, and quite graphic, kinky porn, even for me - but would I care if it didn't? I don't think so - sometimes the most honest story of a life filled with physical intimacy is to just show that. Lum and his long-time collaborator Todd Verow shot all the Super 8 footage themselves, which makes it all the more documentary in nature, despite it's abstractions. It spans places and decades, corners and nooks that immediately become familiar, eerily so. These feel like the homes you grew up in, the places you too found intimacy or adventure. The stories you too lived through, the landmark moments you remember along with him.

It lingers a lot, this film, and not always with any reason to, especially on the stray egg, or frozen tundra. Now and again you feel some footage was just in there for fun - and has every right to be. It seems the footage comes first (ayo) and the diaries provide some inspiration and context. This isn't a narrative, and this isn't a documentary. It's a project, more than anything. A glittering, flickering project to encapsulate, or maybe just try to capture one part, of a life.