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Ellen Huang’s Queer Lounge

Film buffs know that mid-January in Park City, Utah, is about more than great skiing – it’s the home of the Sundance Film Festival. Since 2004, LGBT Sundance participants have had a hub of their own with Queer Lounge, created by former film executive and out bisexual Ellen Huang.

Celebrating its fifth anniversary this year, Queer Lounge provides a place for LGBT filmmakers and actors to connect with each other and with mainstream film industry movers and shakers. It’s also a place for audience members and the press to get the scoop about all the LGBT offerings at Sundance and the other film festivals happening concurrently in Park City.

Ellen Huang’s vision for Queer Lounge came about after attending the Cannes Film Festival, where the international pavilions offer spaces where guests can get online, read papers in their own languages, and network with others. She thought that a place like that would be great for queers in the business at mainstream festivals, and Sundance was a logical place to begin.

“Sundance is known for launching some of the most seminal LGBT films, the most cutting-edge stuff, the best filmmakers,” Huang said. The first Queer Lounge was the result of only eight weeks’ worth of prep time. “The first year we didn’t know what we were doing, and I didn’t know whether I was going to have lawn chair furnishings for the lounge.”

The hard work at the beginning paid off, as Queer Lounge was an instant success. In subsequent years, Huang and her crew became more savvy about what kind of events to hold and how to market Queer Lounge. Then in 2006, a film about two cowboys in Wyoming, starring Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Anne Hathaway and Michelle Williams, broke big.

Brokeback Mountain was a really big factor in our having visibility in 2006,” Huang says. “I became an expert on [it], is how my publicist pitched me, and it was fun, because I did have some expertise on how films are made and how films are marketed. … But it also brought a lot of momentum to the aspects of Sundance that were gay/lesbian that year.”

Around the same time, Rolling Stone published an unprecedented (for them) two-page article about the LGBT films at Sundance and mentioned Queer Lounge. That kind of visibility was invaluable for Queer Lounge.

The momentum continued when Huang brought Queer Lounge to a different venue for the first time, the Toronto International Film Festival, in September 2006. “There is something to be said for doing these film festival hubs, and Toronto was big PR success for us, but it was extravagant to do,” Huang explained.

She said she would love to bring Queer Lounge to other festivals as well, but that may depend on its new relationship with GLAAD. Last fall, Queer Lounge was added to GLAAD’s media programs portfolio, and this January it will host GLAAD’s special event to announce the nominees for the 19th Annual GLAAD Media Awards.

Queer Lounge was a more-than-full-time gig for Huang during its first four years. She worked 80 to 100 hours each week, leaving her little time for any personal life. “I really had to think about how am I going to be sustainable, how is Queer Lounge going to sustain itself, how is it going to grow and evolve to the next level,” she said, “so I started looking at macro solutions. I thought, why not be part of a larger nonprofit which has similar values, outlook and mission, and GLAAD immediately came to mind.”

Huang believes their alliance will be mutually beneficial. “I hope we can help transform each other,” she said. “For me and Queer Lounge, having more of a foundation and an infrastructure. And on the other hand, I hope to help them transform to reach a different audience than they have in the past, which is generally older. I find it rare to find an organization that draws from the energy of youth and artists. I hope that helps bring a different vibe to GLAAD.”

Both Queer Lounge and GLAAD share a vision of supporting LGBT filmmakers and bringing greater visibility to their films. Huang has ideas for doing this beyond the walls of Queer Lounge as well: “I’d like to see if GLAAD might be interested in helping me form a think tank from the Hollywood community that draws from both gay and straight influential directors, producers, and talent, and draw from organizations like SAG and WGA, to see how we can get ourselves on screen and on TV more.”

Until then, Huang is looking forward to spending more time seeing films at this year’s Sundance rather than being at the Lounge most of the festival. In her pre-Queer Lounge days, when she worked with production companies for Helen Hunt and composer Hans Zimmer, among others, Huang often saw five movies each day at Sundance. Since Queer Lounge began, she’s seen as few as three some years, up to a maximum of 10.

There are several filmsshe’s particularly interested in this year. “I’m very excited about a film called Be Like Others, a feature-length documentary about gays and lesbians in Iran,” she said, “and how many opt to go through gender reassignment surgery because it’s easier to change your sex in that society than it is to live as a gay or a lesbian.”

She’s also excited by The Guitar, the directorial debut of Amy Redford, daughter of Sundance founder Robert Redford. “Her feature is about a woman with a few more months left to live, and she decides to be freer with her love life. She experiments with both men and women. Saffron Burrows is starring as the lead.”

Huang also mentioned Sunshine Cleaning. “I don’t know exactly how deep the lesbian content goes, but it certainly has some beautiful women in it,” she said. “It’s about these two sisters who turn their lives around and start a crime-scene cleaning business. Emily Blunt and Amy Adams, who’s coming off Enchanted, are in it. She’s going to be a huge star. And Emily Blunt’s character becomes sexually obsessed with this woman who’s a blood bank technician.”

Also of note at the festival is the premiere of lesbian playwright Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, redone for the screen by gay producers Neil Meron and Craig Zadan, starring Sanaa Lathan, Audra McDonald and Phylicia Rashad.

At this year’s Sundance, as has been true in the past, there is more lesbian/bi content in the shorts than in the features. Huang particularly likes Pariah, which she saw at Outfest. “It’s just fantastic,” she said. “It’s about a lesbian teen who lives a dual life. She’s not out to her parents, so she’s a very feminine daughter at home, but when she goes out, she becomes very butch. It’s very well-done.”

Huang mentioned that Slamdance, a festival that runs concurrently to Sundance, is having a particularly good year for queer films. The Queer Lounge website contains a list of all films with LGBT content and/or by LGBT filmmakers at both festivals.

Besides bringing attention to LGBT films and filmmakers, Queer Lounge also has a well-deserved reputation for throwing the best parties in town (including the annual Homos Away From Home party on Jan. 24). Artists such as Cake and the Scissor Sisters have performed in the past, and guests have included everyone from Jared Leto and Naomi Watts to Alan Cumming and Jenny Shimizu.

This year will be no different. The Donnas will appear at the Queer Lounge Kickoff Party on Jan. 19, which honors the film Derek, a documentary about Derek Jarman that is narrated by Tilda Swinton. Swinton is also expected to attend.

Though Queer Lounge is definitely Huang’s baby, she does miss her days of being more hands-on in film. A graduate of USC’s film school in its production program, Huang cast out actor Cathy DeBuono (Out at the Wedding) in one of her first lesbian films. “I remember her resume, a junior Olympian volleyball player,” Huang recalled. “I made a psycho-lesbian drama with my Super 8 camera.”

Queer Lounge allows Huang to stay connected with the film industry and continue her vision. “I’m kind of doing what I’ve always been doing in film, which is supporting filmmakers, but I’m just doing it in a different way,” she said.

And with Queer Lounge in particular, Huang has created something that is personally significant as well. “I’m bisexual, and I think that really reflects why I’ve created a lounge that bridges communities,” Huang explained. “There’s a part of me that wants to reconcile my own identities within me, and I think it’s interesting that Queer Lounge has become that. … It’s an interesting frontier for me, and not just as a bisexual woman. [I’m] someone who’s at the intersection of being Asian and a woman and bisexual, leading this organization.” Huang, who is single (“Yes, very, like beyond”), hopes that the new alliance with GLAAD will allow her to have more of a personal life in addition to the benefits that the partnership will have for Queer Lounge.

“I’ve been married to my job for so long, and anytime you’re an entrepreneur, a company is like a baby,” she said. “It never leaves you alone, it never lets you take a vacation. You’re always worried about it, and it doesn’t allow me to make a lot of space for somebody in my life. That was part of making choices about going under a larger organization, because I just wanted to get my life back in balance.”

For someone who has done so much work toward creating a balanced playing field for LGBT representation on screen, she certainly deserves some balance for herself.

Queer Lounge can be found in Park City, Utah, from Jan. 18—24, 2008, during the Sundance Film Festival. For more information, visit Queer Lounge’s official website.

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