Queer history cannot escape its own evanescence. Neither can queer spaces, really. To judge by the conceit behind Georden West’s fabulous, if oblique, “Playland,” such ephemerality is precisely what makes such a history and such spaces so ripe for memorializing. In this case, West has turned his attention to the Playland Café which, over its storied tenure from 1937 to 1998, became a fixture of the Boston gay scene. Rather than narrativize the bar’s own story, West opts for a collage-like approach, conjuring up figures from the bar’s many pasts in intersecting vignettes that together capture the spirit of the Playland Café, both at its glory and now following its demise.
At the center of “Playland” is an interdisciplinary sensibility. West’s film builds itself out with the use of archival images, historical audio clips, choreographed numbers and glittering tableaux vivants. This is an excavated history that requires collapsing and colliding worlds and words.
At the center of “Playland” is an interdisciplinary sensibility. West’s film builds itself out with the use of archival images, historical audio clips, choreographed numbers and glittering tableaux vivants. This is an excavated history that requires collapsing and colliding worlds and words.
- 2/2/2023
- by Manuel Betancourt
- Variety Film + TV
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