When Micro-Wave Cinema presents See You Next Tuesday on Sunday, audiences attending the microbudget film series can expect an affecting if somewhat vulgar portrait of a young New Yorker who hasn’t matured enough to care for herself — let alone the baby she’s carrying. Even if if he claims it’s by mere coincidence, director Drew Tobia shows a propensity for the female-centric story in See You Next Tuesday, and his willingness to “go there” with bodily functions and aggressive characters makes for two strong notches in his belt.
That same cavalier attitude is display in Tobia’s “Leperfuck,” aptly titled in that it features a missionary (Lauren Jacquish) who returns home from a leper colony only to find her husband (Toney Palumbo) has contracted the disease. Employing ample gore makeup for the faces of the more severely afflicted, Tobia sidelines Palumbo’s would-be breadwinner in the most agonizing fashion. Honoring the short’s title, Jacquish takes control in deliberate and extreme fashion, though “Leperfuck’s” greater victory might be the empowerment of its woman in 1940-whatever:
A collection of video portraits — dubbed a “secretion” via multimedia project Mommy Kamikaze — redoubles Tobia’s interest in reproducing old film formats with shots of motley women photographed through Vaseline-smudged lenses. As varied as “Ladyfemmes'” stylistic digressions can be (from the meditative to 60s Flower Power), Tobia crafts a unified restatement of women despite their clearly different personalities. Absent father figures and a teasing treatment of the female form toy with an absent male gaze when it’s not being erased altogether:
- See You Next Tuesday plays at 7:00p on Sunday, Sept. 21 in 4070 Vilas Hall. Drew Tobia will appear via Skype following the screening. FREE.