You know that saying, “truth is stranger than fiction”? I never really believed it… then I heard this story. There’s so much to it, I’ve got to give it to you in bullet points.

- A set of twins, boys, born minutes apart in rural Montana
- A picture-perfect Americana childhood, complete with holidays, summers at the lake, and supportive parents
- Cut to age 14: their parents are divorced, the boys have both come out as gay and they’ve attempted joint suicide.
- Today, one twin attends art school on one side of the country, whilst the other is living as a woman on the other.

Their story is told in “Red Without Blue”, a tender and beautiful documentary that won the Audience Choice Award at this year’s Slamdance. It’s also playing this weekend at the Silver Lake Film Festival. Details after the jump...

Have a beer with Fear! Slam at the Cuckoo’s Nest! Grab an Oki Dog with Pat Smear!

Thursday night at 7:30 pm., The Silver Lake Film Festival will be screening Dave Markey’s seminal punk rock film, The Slog Movie.

The Slog movie isn’t an outsider’s documentary of punk rock as a movement. It isn’t a bunch of grainy, archived clips edited into interviews with punk rock legends reminiscing about the Masque. When you are watching the Slog movie, you are literally looking through the eyes of Dave Markey, teenage punker - seeing everything he saw, and hearing everything he heard. Markey came of age in the 80s, along with LA’s hardcore punk scene. He played drums in Sin 34, and co-founded fanzine and record label “We Got Power!” with Jordan Schwartz.

The movie was shot on Super-8 over a period of two years, 1981 and 1982. It includes early live footage of the Circle Jerks, Redd Kross, and Circle One, among countless other Los Angeles punk bands.

Starting this Thursday May 3rd, our little bohemian neighborhood that could, Silver Lake, will be holding its nine day long, 7th annual Silver Lake Film Festival, complete with indie movies, indie music, and even indie darling Parker Posey accepting the “Spirit of Silver Lake” award. Right in the shadow of the bright lights, doctored scripts and smarmy agents of Hollywood, SLFF, dares the big studios to F with them.

2007’s SLFF kicks off tomorrow night with a screening of Fay Grim starring Posey at 7:30 at Barnsdall with an awards ceremony to honor the film's director Hal Hartley to follow. Simultaneously, at EchoPlex, The Slog Movie will be screened followed by Music Fests performances by Circle Jerks and 400 Blows. Venues for the film showings are peppered throughout the lovely neighborhood, from King King and the EchoPlex, to The Jensen Recreation Center and even MusicPlusTV’s studios. After parties and concerts accompany most of the screenings - the most anticipated one coming up this Friday May 4th at EchoPlex featuring Seawolf, Dengue Fever, The Bird and the Bee, and The Little Ones. Other festival programming includes Sustainable LA, Music Fest, Fringe Fest, Indian Film, Conspiracy Theory, and Artrotica.

Tickets are available online, and to check out the full schedule of events and screenings go here.

Photo by victoriabernal