Chris Derek Van | Afterglow / 2024 || Princess Grace / 2024

sex and its benefits

by Douglas Messerli

 

Chris Derek Van (screenwriter and director) Afterglow / 2024 [4 minutes]

Chris Derek Van (screenwriter and director) Princess Grace / 2024 [2 minutes]

 

Suddenly light appears all over this individual’s apartment, clearly after he has engaged in sex. The kitchen, the halls, even the bathrooms appear to suddenly be all aglow in golden light. And the city itself, Van’s Chicago has come alive, with even large billboards upon the city high rises calling to its citizens “Out Now.”

 

   There is a quick click through other gay websites. Is our unknown “hero” suddenly now seeking out yet further meetups to provide him with that “afterglow” high. It is now night in the same city landscape. A new morning. Fresh coffee brewed up for someone still in his bed. The pictures on the wall seem to show childhood snapshots of our “central figure,” who we gather was much loved. He tosses oddly processed monotone photos in various off-colors of blue, green, and red to the floor, all of males, some fragmented nudes. Is our mysterious love a photographer like Van himself.

     He holds the leg of his bedroom friend. He pets his dog and drinks his coffee. Suddenly the halls and the kitchen appear in fluorescent white light, almost like a medical clinic. And we see a figure waiting for the subway. It is time to leave the glowing world he has just experienced and remembers so well.

     There is no logical narrative here, simply visual clues to the feelings the central figures, a pleasure in the autumnal light of the city, it the city’s own energy, in his pleasure of another man (we presume) in his own bed or he in someone else’s bed.

*

 

 

 

The second related film, a shorter variation of the first, using images from Afterglow is far more confusing given its title. This short begins at night with the same early morning awakening, the brewing and shaking of coffee, the same legs of another being in bed, and the same photographs, this time laid into a pile on a tabletop. Again, we get a glimpse of family photos from the either the central figure’s or the still bedridden man’s childhood photos.

      But the light in this film, one of the notable differences between the two short films, seems neither fluorescent nor golden as in the other, but bright white, presumably referencing Princess Kelly, who as a Hollywood actress was often described as the “ice princess.” Once more, after opening a drawer of T-shirts the central male tosses the photos to the floor as if displaying them or perhaps discarding his art, something, of course, that Princess Kelley did upon her marriage.

      Our handsome hero once again holds the same knee close to his face, drinks his coffee, and pets the dog.

       And again we see him waiting for the subway. But this time we don’t observe him getting on it.

Los Angeles, August 20, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (August 2024)