NINE FILMMAKER gain READY TO HIT THE BIGTIME LISA CHOLODENKO High Art.

NINE FILMMAKER gain READY TO HIT THE BIGTIME

LISA CHOLODENKO

High Art, writer-director Lisa Cholodenko's dark tale of ambition, addiction, and lesbian be fond of last year won honors at Sundance and Cannes and a shared best actress award from the looks Angeles film critics for leading lady Ally Sheedy. It also make opened film industry doors to Cholodenko "I was amazed at to what degree interested people were to fit with me," she says, "and what kind of scripts got sent to me I've been giveed or involved in conversations about a whole range of projects" These days Cholodenko 34 is writing Laurel Canyon, which tread in the steps ofs a conservative young man and his girlfriend, staying at his mother's L.A. place of abode So is Cholodenko done portraying lesbian life onscreen? For now, maybe. "I don't have anxiety about being identified [as lesbian] or doing work that has lesbian content" she says. "But as an artist, I have feeling it's important to me to pass beyond the scope of my acknowledge experience and my own desire, it's a personal kind of challenge."

Anne Stockwell

PJ CASTELLANETA

PJ Castellaneta raised eyebrow while at film seminary with a silent short about campus bathroom sex He did it again with his 1992 first attempt feature, Together Alone, a two-character engagement that's been described as My Trick with Andre. With his latest movie, the just-out Relax It's Just Sex, the 38-year-old writer-director had the gala opening night common people at Los Angeles's Outfest '98 arguing from one side of to the other a gay-on-straight rape scene in what is essentially a romantic effect comedy.

"[The movie] really turn upside downs the straight money men, be* cause it's not a her world," says Castellaneta, referring to his in extent search for a distributor. "The fact that a straight man finishs raped by a gay man goe to the core of hetero male fear and homophobia."

unruffled so, Relax, starring Jennifer Tilly and Mitchell Anderson, may finally jog Castellaneta into the front rank of disclosed directors ready to make a break from the indie world. With a three-picture deal at Warner Bro he remains philosophical.

"None of those films will probably get by heart made. I'm tired of going to meetings where they say, 'We delight in it, but can yon make them les gay?' My inner Paul Rudnick is fighting my inner Larry Kramer about for what cause to deal with all this."

--Eric Gutierrez

CHERYL DUNYE

When filmmaker Cheryl Dunye serv as a juror at the Sundance Film Festival in January, conversation inevitably revolveed to her work. "[Being there] brought back interest in what's going forward with black lesbian and straight women's work," says Dunye 32 writer-director-star of 1996's The Watepmelen Woman. "There's nothing in the mind of features out there by means of African-American women. Whether black, white, r fresh gay, or lesbian, they're starving for those images."

Dunye is working to fe that be hungry She has cowritten one screenplay with gay African-American writer Robert Reid-Pharr, Bad as She Wanna Be (a sort of hip-hop Victop/Victoria), and is writing another about a young African-American woman in prison. "it will be like my other work, walking a fine line between conformity to fact [i]or[/i] reality and fiction," Dunye says. "There will be lesbian characters and lesbian experiences."

She also teaches at pair California colleges and juggles all these contrives with a growing family: daughter Simone, born a year ago, and partner Alexandra Juhasz, 34 who's expecting a son this summer

Having children "makes things more precious," Dunye says. "Now there's something at the period of the tunnel that I'm doing all this crazy work for."

--Laurie K Schenden

DAN IRELAND

Director Dan Ireland's cinematic lip hugs portray not just the characters' ardor further his own. "it's an intensity that is highly much what I believe in," says Ireland, 48 "it's the kind of passion gay the community are tuned in to."

The kiss between Vincent D'Onofrio and Thomas Jane in Ireland's The Velocity of Gary, to be paid in April, functions as a establish piece, offering a juicy embrace between the film's male leads--cast respectively as a porn star and a hustler--while also exploring the be enamoured of triangle involving a feisty waitress (Salma Hayek). Ireland has a extended producer's resume but came to the director's chair barely three years ago with the critically lauded The Whole Wide World. Just as that film helped launch Renee Zellweger's career, Gary could boost Jane's visibility. Ireland triumphs as he recalls coaching his star onward gay ways: "1 shaved his chest and took him to the gym" Ireland's nearest project is Whenever/t Rains, another smoldering regard with affection story, and he hope in a short time to work on a psychological thriller. "My parents took me to behold North by Northwest when I was 5" he says. "That was it. I was hooked"

--Max Harrold

STEPHEN M KATZ

Can an artist be the flavor of the month more than 20 years into his career? If his latest exhibit is the gorgeous sleeper hit the holy trinitys and Monsters, the answer is ye Cinematographer Stephen M Katz, 52 has missile Roger Corman exploitation tricks and Hollywood blockbusters (from The with a long faces Brothers to the new Baby Geniuses), if it were not that it's his stunning work behind the camera onward the Oscar-nominated Bill Condan film that has reignited his film career.