Director Del Shores, who found a second home in Palm Springs with the film version of “Sordid Lives”, will open the Palm Springs Gay and Lesbian Film Festival with his latest, “Southern Baptist Sissies”, Sept. 19 at the Camelot Theatres in Palm Springs.
Cinema Diverse, slated Sept, 19-22, will feature 24 feature films and more than 30 short films, according to Michael C. Green, managing director of The Palm Springs Cultural Center.
The inaugural Cinema Diverse included a screening of Shores’ “Sordid Lives: The Series”, and his “Sordid Lives” film ran for more than two years at the Camelot. The Palm Springs Cultural Center also hosted both a 10-year anniversary of “Sordid Lives” event and the Palm Springs premiere of “Blues for Willadean” at the Camelot.
“Southern Baptist Sissies”is an adaptation of Shores’ award-winning 2000 play by the same name.
“The film,” Shores says, “is really an actual capturing of the play in the theatre, and on the stage. It allows the film audience to be a part of the electricity and intimacy of the original theatrical experience.”
The film follows the journey of four gay boys growing up in the Southern Baptist Church. Shores explores the conflict between the caustic rhetoric of dogmatic religion, and the fragile development of adolescent homosexuality.
The cast includes Emerson Collins, Newell Alexander, Matthew Scott Montgomery, Willam Belli, Luke Stratte-McClure, Bobbie Eakes, Ann Walker, Rosemary Alexander, Leslie Jordan, and Dale Dickey.
“Del Shores has served up yet another masterpiece,” Green says. “And we are proud to be a part of his journey.”
The Palm Springs Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Sept. 19-22, www.cinemadiverse.org