It read like a documentary, and I assumed that's what it was. Yea!
But then I began to have my doubts. So, was it just the wishful thinking of this perverse activist queer which so easily cooperated with Scott Treleaven's great and very lefty-homo style to make his reel world so real? "THE SALiVATION ARMY," shown here this month at the New Festival, is a very good film, but it's fictional. Or is it?
Ed Halter writing last November in the Village Voice, when the 22-minute Canadian short was shown at the Lesbian & Gay Experimental Film Festival:
A more earnestly touching heroism emerges in Scott Treleaven's The Salivation Army, a rantumentary about his wannabe-revolutionary homocore faux-gang. DIY grungy and surprisingly subtle, Salivation smartly links world-changing ambitions to perverse desires for purity and innocence. "I have seen the new face of radicalism," Treleaven narrates, "and it is cute." Like Dennis Cooper with a heart, he keeps outsider fires burning. In your face, Will & Grace.For more thrills, see the SALiVATION ARMY website, and come by D'Amelio Terras Gallery July 1 (until August 1) to see tomorrow's worlds today, including the Queers that are us.
Leaving you with Treleaven's words:
Once And For All: There Is No Scene: There is no membership activity. We've all done our time with the punks, the Goths, the crusties, club scenes, art scenes. Galleries, grebos & factories. You name it. We've done the tattoos, the hairdos, the scars, and the steel till we all looked alike. Communist meetings, Anarchist rallies, potlucks, back rooms, witch circles; all the underground credentials you could want...Having now safely returned to the helm we can report: there wasn't really anybody there...We are the new circus. We are the envy of the fucking world.
(Excerpt from the last missive from the Army)