LET US HELP you decide how to work your way through the 75 features and 190 shorts of the world's oldest and, yes, largest, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender film festival. See the box on page 41 for venue and ticket information

Blue Gate Crossing (Yee Chih-yen, Taiwan, 2002) Taiwanese writer-director Yee Chih-yen treats teen ambiguity with a light hand. His star is a pouty but charming tomboy who is determined to work out sexuality issues in her own way. She has a crush on her best friend, a pretty fluff ball who in turn has fallen for the school's hottie. In triangle fashion, hottie is of course interested in the charming tomboy. Yee Chi-yen's film is focused on its boyish protagonist's innocent and logical examination of her confusing feelings. All of the characters face their frustrations with repetitive persistence, building emotional intensity in a pristine and robotic way. For instance, our girl who loves girl keeps writing on walls, "I am a girl who likes boys." Meanwhile she rejects the stud's advances, and he follows her around all day, asking, "Why did you hold my hand?" The film, which offers a uniquely optimistic and quaint friendship, is only hampered by its slow pacing and overly simple plot. Sat/14, 6 p.m., Castro. (Laurie Koh)

Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin (Nancy Kates and Bennett Singer, USA, 2002) Recent years have seen a groundswell of interest in the late Bayard Rustin, including an excellent biographical drama by local playwright Brian Freeman. But for much longer – even during the peak of his influence – the African American activist's contributions were ignored or underplayed. A student Communist, then a jailed WWII pacifist, then a key organizer and adviser in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, Rustin was always willing to go the full mile with unpopular issues of conscience. It was he who actually introduced Martin Luther King Jr. to Gandhi's concept of nonviolent resistance. But Rustin was also an admittedly (if discreetly) gay man whose sexual identity was used as blackmail fodder by conservative politicos hoping to discredit (or at least control) the movement; ultimately, King and other leaders were forced to keep Rustin at public arm's length (though they still valued his private input). This well-crafted documentary overview captures a complex individual who was not without his flaws (as a political appointee later on, he shrank from contesting the Vietnam War) but who seldom lacked brilliance or bravado. June 23, 6:30 p.m., Castro. (Dennis Harvey)

Dildo Diaries (Laura Barton and Judy Wilder, USA, 2002) Those looking to introduce a little discipline into the bedroom might want to consider moving to Texas, whose residents are legislated within an inch of their sex lives. This documentary takes a humorously appalling look at what happens in a state where politicians over the years have criminalized just about everything other than man-on-woman missionary-style sex. Results? Presently, those in possession of seven or more dildos can be convicted of a felony (six or fewer qualifies you as a "hobbyist"), and the designation of the anus as a nonerotic zone means butt plugs can proudly be sold by name at sex stores while dildos, vibrators, and other paraphernalia are referred to in code (anyone in the market for a "harness educational model"?). Interviews with people like Molly Ivins, Annie Sprinkle, and the curator of the Museum of Questionable Medical Devices keep things lively, as does footage of a 1993 Texas legislative debate in which Rep. Debra Danburg quizzes butt-sex prohibitionist Rep. Warren Chisum on such thought-provoking matters as "what happens if it slips?" Watching the other legislators stand around snickering is funny until you consider that they stopped laughing long enough to vote to keep same-sex sodomy in the Texas Penal Code, at least. (Note: Watch for an upcoming Supreme Court decision that could change all that.) June 19, 4 p.m., with "Being Human," Castro. (Lynn Rapoport)

Gender Bias (Francis Girod, France, 2001) Early on in Francis Girod's film, a doddering grandmother mistakes her grandson for her daughter. The scene isn't played for laughs, and it isn't Gender Bias's only case of familial mistaken identity – this film is a thriller, and a French one at that, so genealogy, crime, and the genealogies of crime are heavily perfumed by pathos. Among the boys of Paris, Bo Ancillin (Robinson Stévenin, who is Béatrice Dalle-like) is the prettiest girl, but she finds herself trapped at the center of criss-crossing scandalous police investigations: a murder mystery that's claiming the lives of her streetwalking pre- and post-op tranny friends, and an equally upsetting inquest that targets her estranged child-fondling papa. Adding injury to insult, jobless but stylish Bo's scant free time is spent enduring broken bones as she attempts to win the heart of streetwise Johnny (Stéphane Metzger). Everyone is (one sick) family here; the incest at the heart of so much French drama is expanded to a degree that it's all-consuming – yet still defined by the sins of the fathers. Somewhat clumsily paced, the direction lacks the star's grace: Stévenin models '60s Chanel better than Girod models Rear Window-era Hitchcock. Tues/17, 9 p.m., Castro. (Johnny Ray Huston)

Get a Way (Noah Nuer, France, 2003) South Bay resident (but French native) Noah Nuer's debut feature is as Gallic as they come, and one of the festival's best films. A bicycle-minivan collision throws together early-20s Parisians Anne (Agnès Roland) and Didier (Maxime Desmons). Both are already quite addled enough: she's just failed university exams, while he's chafing under the pressure of his mentally unstable mom's imminent apartment move. With little better to do, Anne tags along as Didier runs various errands, all the while promising he'll fix her bike. En route discovering they have much in common – especially a sense of entrapment by familial expectations – the two strangers become fast friends. (But not lovers; she's straight, he's gay.) Soon they're daring one another to confront long-problematic relationships "as if you had just 20 minutes left to live." Which actually turns out to be an idea at least as empowering as (and a whole lot less expensive than) an entire est seminar. Shot guerrilla-style on Paris streets with improvised dialogue, the sweet-natured and delightful Get a Way is a wafer-thin slice of life that ends up feeling more substantial than a dozen more plot-laden movies put together. June 19, 6:30 p.m.; June 25, 1:30 p.m., Castro. (Harvey)

Porn Theatre (Jacques Nolot, France, 2002) Jacques Nolot's sly, wise, and handsome presence has snuck through diva spectacles crafted by François Ozon (he was Charlotte Rampling's befuddled suitor in Under the Sand) and André Téchiné (he was Catherine Deneuve's unhappy husband in My Favorite Season). Here, Nolot steps behind as well as in front of the camera to observe a day in the life of the titular site – a near-extinct type, the kind featuring a film on a big screen. This was John Waters's second favorite movie of 2002, and it's safe to assume that it appeals to his Fassbinder fandom (one drag queen is named "Ingrid Caven" in the credits; there's also a "Nana Moskouri") more than to his eye for shock value. Nolot is at the center of the desultory action, so to speak, playing 50-Year-Old Man, who jots poems about love, loss, and aging in between the occasional blow job. The sole narrative thread can be reduced to a single question: will 50-Year-Old Man, Cashier (Vittoria Scognamiglio), and Projectionist (Sébastian Viala) combine their conflicting desires into a threesome? As a director, Nolot favors long tracking shots that dispassionately survey the scene. If the minimalist observation here isn't quite as resonant as it is in the sadly undistributed Mohammed Mrabet adaptation Beach Cafe and Téchiné's I Don't Kiss – two other films that pair Nolot with a younger man – it's only because this smart portrait covers more surface-level, however sticky, terrain. Fri/13, 10:15 p.m., Castro. (Huston)

Secondary High (Pat Mills, Emily Halfon, and Hazel Bell-Koski, Canada, 2003) If the entire cast and crew of Degrassi Junior High came to work one day and got really, really stoned, with just a pinch of PCP thrown into the doobage for flavoring, the three interlocking stories in Secondary High might be among the outtakes. At Secondary High, it's always winter, though the snow is faux; the class nerd looks even older than Dylan on 90210; the president of the gay club never leaves home without his rainbow flag (happy 25th!); and the school's biggest badasses, Heart, Lizzy Boredom, and Snatch, are in a band called the Six Healthy Fists. John Hughes, it's not – Secondary High's budget could have fit inside The Breakfast Club's janitor's closet, I'm guessing – though the directors clearly sat through a few teen movies in search of material to mutilate. See this one if you like head gear-wearing teenage vampires, Joan Jett, hot butch makeover scenes, fantasy song-and-dance numbers set to "Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover," and horny, potty-mouthed rocker dykes prone to nonconsensual humping and statements like "Brittany makes me flood my basement." June 21, 9:45 p.m., Herbst; June 24, 2:45 p.m., Castro. (Rapoport)

Double 'V'
Two docs visit Vidal and Visconti in Italy

Gore Vidal observing, and smelling, Benito Mussolini: the moment is rich, in more ways than one. Vidal paints the scented picture with words during the new documentary The Education of Gore Vidal. One hot August night at the opera in Italy, the dictator crossed his path, and Vidal "was overwhelmed by the amount of perfume [Mussolini] was wearing.... I thought that was rather decadent."

You don't say. Or, rather, he does. Vidal holds forth throughout Education, but in the context of this year's festival, that particular reminiscence sticks out, thanks to the uncanny way it intersects with a documentary about another aristocratic elder, The Life and Times of Count Luchino Visconti. Visconti also watched Mussolini from a privileged but critical position, and Italian opera figured heavily in his directorial life, both on-screen (1954's overwrought Senso begins in La Scala) and off (he mentored Maria Callas at a pivotal point in her career). No doubt Visconti watched Mussolini at the opera as well.

Not that Life and Times explores the possibility. Of the two docs, it's inferior, a BBC effort replete with ersatz artistry and consistent yet shallow class consciousness. The heir to a fortune dating back to the 13th century (and an aristocracy that "was subject to no rules but their own," plum-voiced narration intones), Visconti formed one particularly purple and large vein in an intimidating bloodline: the family crest features a serpent eating a child, and his surviving relatives sport names and titles such as Princess Miralda Caracciolo di Melito. Faced with this history, veteran director Adam Low is fond of shots that gaze upward in awe at the exteriors of vine-covered castles and villas. (One exception: a sequence that reveals the inspiration behind the Milan Cathedral-rooftop sequence in Rocco and His Brothers). There's little footage of Visconti speaking, his young lover Helmut Berger is laughably described as an "acting sensation," and his symbiotic bond with Callas isn't scrutinized. When Senso star Farley Granger notes that Visconti "liked shouting, throwing china, breaking mirrors," he contradicts the narration's assertion that Visconti's films are "amongst the most subtle" ever made. Breathtaking? Yes (excerpted scenes from La terra trema provide proof). Subtle? No.