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Review

Licensed to Kill - Arthur Dong's film is a riveting journey into the minds of men whose contempt for homosexuals led them to murder. Attacked in 1977 by gay bashers on the streets of San Francisco, filmmaker Arthur Dong confronts murderers of gay men face-to-face in his film. He asks them directly: "Why did you do it?"

Probing on-camera interviews with seven convicted killers behind bars propel the narrative drive of Licensed To Kill. These inmates include a wide range of distinct profiles: a young man who claims he justifiably killed as protection from his victim's sexual advances--a defense known as "homosexual panic"; a self-loathing, religious gay man who killed because of his own homosexual tendencies; a victim of child abuse who feared losing his manhood; an army sergeant angry over the gays in the military debate; and a self-described homeboy looking for easy prey.

Family Fundamentals - In his 1997 documentary Licensed to Kill, filmmaker Arthur Dong asked murderers of gay men why they committed their crimes. "Some blamed it on their Christian backgrounds and upbringing," he recalls, a detail that led to the creation of Dong’s new work, Family Fundamentals – a film that tries to understand Americans’ contempt of homosexuality. What binds Dong’s subjects this time is their being members of anti-gay, Christian families. Susan Jester and son David are both gay. Yet Susan’s mother, Kathleen Bremner, is a Pentecostal church leader who collaborates with ex-gay groups like Exodus. The Jesters can only stare agog – like us – as Kathleen reels off her rationalized theories on homosexuality and hypothesize why her brood is queer. Utah-born Brett Mathews’ father is a Mormon bishop, who not only rejects homosexuals but is supposed to administer punishment to them. After Brett came out – and was discharged from the Air Force and stripped of all veterans’ benefits – his parents barraged him with loving letters urging him to change his "condition."

Returning home for the first time in two years with Dong, we witness a heartbreaking attempt at reconciliation. Gay Republican Brian Bennett lived with, and was second-hand man to, former U.S. Congressman Bob Dornan, renowned for his anti-gay rhetoric. But when he came out, their complex father-son relationship turned sour. A truly independent work – Dong shot, directed, produced and edited – Family Fundamentals often infuriates. It isn’t an easy pill to swallow, and offers no painless solutions to rifts between religious fundamentalists and queers.

Coming Out Under Fire - Adding yet another significant chapter in transposing oral lesbian/gay history onto film/video, this entertaining and eye-opening documentary centers on nine lesbians and gay men and their experiences as "undesirables" in the armed forces during World War II. Based on Allen Berube's book "Coming Out under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War II," the film provides both a historical overview of the American government's shifting attitudes towards gays in the military as well as allowing the interviewees to describe vivid personal experiences of the discriminatory practices of their own government. The film comes alive when the often eloquent vets recount both their good times (camaraderie with other gays/lesbians, wartime romances) and bad (arrests and discharges) living as closeted homosexuals in an organization that viewed them as either unfit for service, morally suspect or potentially hazardous to morale. At least 9,000 gay men and women were dishonorably discharged during WWII.