LAUGH PROUD: Nine diverse LGBTQiA+ comics each perform a short set connected by a hostess with the mostest in an orgiastic one-night stand starring fresh comics to veteran comic Jason Stuart and the world’s first intersex comic, Seven “7G” Graham. LAUGH PROUD is the first LGBTQiA+ stand-up comedy feature film of its kind.
The effervescent joy of being in the room fully translates from the screen. You’ll find yourself smiling until it hurts. LAUGH PROUD features multigenerational comics. The sets range from serious to hysterical. Many comics discuss childhood trauma, coming-out stories, dating, technology, patriarchal structure, aging, and everything in between. A loving and supportive energy is beaming between the performer and the audience. It is an inviting and celebratory special.
Director’s Quentin Lee’s (LAST SUMMER OF NATHAN LEE) LGBTQiA+ stand up comedy concert feature film,
LAUGH PROUD releases in LA at Laemmle NoHo on May 17th and VOD May 30th
Check out the trailer below!
Director Quentin Lee
Biography
A 2024 Canadian Screen Awards nominee, winner of the 2020 Roddenberry Foundation Impact Awards for TV creators, a member of the Producers Guild of America, Canadian Media Producers Association and Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (Directors and Producers Peer Group) and a two-time recipient of Canada Council Media Arts grants, Quentin Lee is a multimedia creator and has directed and produced over ten feature films and created over three TV series. His first feature Shopping For Fangs (co-directed with Justin Lin) premiered at Toronto International Film Festival and became a cult classic as part of the Asian American New Wave Class of 1997. His subsequent features Drift, Ethan Mao, The People I’ve Slept With, White Frog and The Unbidden have all been sold and played festivals worldwide such as AFI Fest, Vancouver International, Hawaii International, Sao Paulo, Turin and Cardiff.
As a producer, Quentin has produced Big Gay Love, #1 Serial Killer (aka Chink) and Gay Hollywood Dad. In 2018, he created, produced and directed Brash Girls Club, the limited TV series now streaming on Tubi. The TV series Comedy InvAsian that he co-created, directed and produced was streamed as a Hulu Exclusive in 2018. In 2020, Quentin produced three stand up comedy specials including the first gay male comedy special Brash Boys Club for Comedy Dynamics, directed and produced a Zoom feature titled Comisery and a Zoom TV series titled Boy Luck Club. In 2021, Quentin Lee directed and produced a feature film titled Last Summer of Nathan Lee and the second season of the TV series Comedy InvAsian 2.0, now streaming on Peacock. In 2022, he has created a science fiction comic book Mystery Brothers, launched at 2022 Comic-con, and a spin-off TV series, Comedy Invasion, the first all diverse Canadian stand up TV series, has received a 2024 Canadian Screen Awards nomination for Best Comedy Special. In 2023, he produced and directed Laugh Proud, the first LGBTQ+ stand-up comedy feature documentary of its kind, and is in preparation for Rez Comedy, the first all Indigenous and all Canadian stand-up comedy feature film.
Born and raised in Hong Kong, China, Quentin went to high school in Montreal, holds a B.A. in English from UC Berkeley, an M.A. in English from Yale University, and an M.F.A. in Film Directing from UCLA.
Founded in 2004, Big Beach is a Los Angeles-based
As of today’s Halloween launch day, the platform will feature over thirty titles, including those from indie distributors Oscilloscope, Dark Star, Dark Sky, Dekanalog, Utopia, Yellow Veil Pictures, and others. Titles include Jane Schoenbrun’s 
Don’t Tell Larry
Dot-Marie Jones and Ed Begley Jr. serve up pro performances that most certainly elevate DON’T TELL LARRY. Kiel Kennedy has a genuine Will Ferrell energy. His portrayal of Larry is cringe, uncomfortable, and entirely unhinged. It’s wild and wonderful. I won’t say more because seeing is believing. Kennedy gives Larry a larger-than-life persona, mastering the comedy and terror. 
Kenneth Mosley is Patrick, Susan’s work bestie and equally fabulous sidekick. Do yourself a favor. Watch Mosley’s reel on IMDB. You will wonder why he isn’t on every screen in your home. His performance as Patrick immediately catches you off guard in the best way. He’s magnetic. Patty Guggenheim is unforgettable as the hyper-ambitious Susan. Guggenheim is a star. She has a similar energy to Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Her comic timing and charisma pull you in. Her chemistry with Mosely makes me want a sequel/spin-off/whatever!
In EMPIRE V, the two primary notions of Vampirism are Glamour and Discourse. They essentially break down to look and influence. Blood holds all the memories of the human it comes from and arrives differently than we’ve become accustomed to. 
The CGI transition pieces serve as history lessons and sexy vampire propaganda. I’ve never seen anything like it outside of high-tech, immersive video games. Even the closing credits have an elegance and visual splendor akin only to Netflix’s The Crown. 
The fight choreography is Matrixlike. The entire film echoes Neo’s training. It holds equal complexities, no doubt captivating a similar audience. If I didn’t know any better, EMPIRE V would fit perfectly into the list of films featured in the new doc 
LAST STRAW
Beginning in Shakespearean fashion, the chaos and bait-and-switch screenplay of Claude Schmitz‘s THE OTHER LAURENS earns your attention. Private investigator, Gabriel gets contacted by his niece to look into the recent death of her father and Gabriel’s estranged twin brother, François. 
Loise Leroy wows in her feature debut as Jade. The emotional turmoil she endures puts Leroy through the wringer, and she handles it like a pro. She is a star. Olivier Rabourdin plays dual roles as Gabriel and François. His ability to shape-shift will captivate you. THE OTHER LAURENS is an epic film, brimming with twists and turns, and is a real stand-out from Fantastic Fest 2023.
Les Dents Du Bonheur (Sweet Tooth)
Utterly fascinating, this documentary horror hybrid effectively puts the fear of God into the audience. The film begins by sharing the history of each incarnation of what we now refer to as the “Ring” security camera, each inspired by a recurring nightmare. Historical recounting gets the creepy treatment with a random subject’s security footage playing in its fisheye lens version behind the storytelling text. There is no formal dialogue. This voyeuristic nightmare is unlike anything we’ve seen before, featuring videos of everything from natural disasters to doorstep theft and animal encounters to delivery people behaving badly and creatively.
The score is bone-chilling, with its piano cords striking. It’s something straight out of hell. But, the film is even scarier than it initially appears when we learn the global and societal impact of advancing technology. Cinematic tropes alone reflect the world’s potential terror. Fantasia 2023 audiences get a taste of a film that would be a perfect Fall statement at MoMA. HOME INVASION is exceedingly disturbing. If anything, it reminds you how quickly the scales of good and evil tip. It will haunt you.
It’s the year 2041, and humanity has reached the point where it can cheat death. Anyone who dies an unnatural death has the right to be brought back to life. All you have to do is to create a backup of your personality – a restore point – at least every forty-eight hours. But there exists a movement of people who try to sabotage this concept. “Agent Em” finds herself drawn into a case that is not as simple as it first seemed and the consequences of which reach to the highest levels of politics.
Matej Hádek plays David with an intentional glitchiness. The physical and emotional choices draw you into the mystery. Andrea Mohylová brings humanity that grounds her performance. You can see the gears turning, the struggle between the personal and principles of the case. Mohylová is badass, effortlessly carrying the action. She is extraordinarily watchable. As a duo, they are inarguably compelling.
Both films also ask complicated questions surrounding the way ideals or symbols exist or endure once they are exposed to the whims of the broader world. When Barbie and Ken leave Barbieland, they quickly learn that what they believed to be universal truths no longer apply. The way they see themselves may not be how others see them. Similarly, an initial vision for how the atom bomb might be leveraged quickly shifts when the weapon rolls out of the lab and into the hands of the US military. Both Barbie and Oppenheimer are forced to realize that intention doesn’t necessarily translate to reality.
The narrative flips when Katya becomes entangled with the son of the laptop owner. Her online sleuthing would put the cops to shame. It is millennial cyberstalking at its best. Liza Zaitseva gives a heart-stopping performance as Katya. Her relentless emotional investment is a rollercoaster ride. She is simply magnificent. 
Paiffe
THAT’S A WRAP
Award-winning director Marcel Walz’s upcoming horror/thriller THAT’S A WRAP is scheduled to release on digital platforms on August 25th, 2023 from Quiver Distribution. Cerina Vincent (Cabin Fever), Monique T. Parent (Jurassic City), Sarah French (Space Wars: The Quest for Deepstar), Gigi Gustin (The Retaliators), and Dave Sheridan (The Devil’s Rejects) star in a film written by Joe Knetter and Robert L. Lucas.
The cast of a film arrive to a wrap party, but someone has dressed up as the slasher in the film, and begins to stage their own kill scenes. One by one, the cast disappear until the true nature of the evening is revealed.
Joe Knetter, Marcel Walz, and Sarah French produce, with BJ Mezek, Andreas Tremmel, Justus Heinz, Yazid Benfeghoul, Tina Limbeck, Robert L. Lucas, and Kai E. Bogatzki executive producing.
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