Free Film Screening: Big Eden | Oakland

Submitted by the Event Organizer

Frameline Encore screenings are free & open to the public. They are revisiting old favorites from the San Francisco International LGBTQ Film Festival each month.

Thomas Bezucha’s “Big Eden” drove the audience wild back in 2000 at the SF International LGBTQ Film Festival, bringing down the house at the Castro Theatre and garnering the audience prize for favorite feature.

It’s easy to see what the cheering was all about: Writer-director Bezucha created a gay fantasy that rings amazingly true. On one level it’s a story many of you know firsthand: a story of a gay man forced to leave the safety of his big city ghetto to return to his less cosmopolitan and possibly less tolerant hometown. But in Big Eden, that small town turns out to be an Eden indeed — a place where a frazzled gay guy from New York can find acceptance, fulfillment and even true love.

As prodigal son Henry, Arye Gross captures viewers’ hearts as a lost soul who is a stranger in his own hometown. Struggling to come out to his family and to his old high school flame Dean (Tim DeKay), and now a divorced dad with two sons, Henry fails to notice that Pike (Eric Schwieg), the Native American who runs the town store, has fallen head over heels in love with him. But everybody else in Big Eden soon figures out what’s going on, and before you know it the townsfolk (including Oscar winner Louise Fletcher as Grace) are pitching in to assure a happy ending for all.

Disclaimer: Please double check event information with the event organizer as events can be canceled, details can change after they are added to our calendar, and errors do occur.