Bear Run (2009)

Directed by Dan Hunt
Run Time: 52 minutes
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
www.bearrunthemovie.com

“Woof!” Meet Louie, Mike, and Mikhael, three typical bears who, Dan Hunt’s documentary reveals, embody an astonishing diversity within this seemingly monochromatic subculture within the gay/queer men’s community. In a brief quarter century, self-identifying bears have grown from rag-tag assortments of socially and sexually marginalized men—typically of preponderant beard, belly, and body hair—to an internationally embraced, gay-mainstream lifestyle, resplendent with a full-fledged bear circuit and all which that implies.

The film is set in the Northeast US and Quebec province, where documentarian Dan Hunt turns a practiced eye and camera on his three subjects, constructing a carefully observed group portrait of ethics and manners. Louie, 34 and from New Jersey, is a stereotype of the circuit and sash queen, aggressively gregarious, ensconced in a tight circle of gay male friends who are his family, and the holder of two gay beauty contests. He repeatedly reminds the audience he is the reigning titleholder of International Cub.

After many years of being the 800-pound gorilla in the room that no one in the gay community seemed capable of noticing, bears have burst forth onto the gay-mainstream scene and into mainstream media. With gay bears and their sensibilities ever-present today, it is hard to imagine anyone who has not at least heard about the bear community. The knee-jerk question remains, however: What is a bear?

Mike, an African-American gay man, escaped the homophobic church of his childhood, and became, with his male partner, the founder of a bear club in the Albany, NY region. The daddy bear of the film’s triumvirate, Mikhael (also formerly known as Dancing Bear), hails from rural Vermont and remains married to his biologically female wife of twenty years, even as he seeks community among the gay bears of Vermont, New York State, and Quebec.

As the three personally intimate bear coming-out stories unfold, Hunt unpacks the rich and dense bear community—a sampler of the language, the attire, the festivals, and the values of this gay, bi, transgender, and queer tribe. The paths of these three cross at Sugar Shack, a winter gathering of bears in rural Quebec, and all go on to attend the king of all bear events, the annual International Bear Rendezvous in San Francisco, AKA Bear Mecca.

Along the way, the audience learns that Louie has come from very humble roots in a visit to his loving Italian grandmother’s home, in a trailer park in south New Jersey. Mike, the black bear, slowly finds his way back to the greater world and his life-long practice of music, formerly shamed out of him by his homophobic, fundamentalist congregation and family.

Most moving of all, and the story which takes center stage, is the complex personal growth of Mikhael, formerly a butch lesbian, who has found his true self as a gay man among the bears. He had been sexually abused by his own father, who was by default the original image of the bearish men Mikhael most loves and what he has grown into himself. The quest for deep healing, the spiritual paths that each of these men, consciously or unconsciously, is on, make this documentary far more than a mere anthropological expedition. Deeply moving and deeply humbling, Dan Hunt’s Bear Run is a beautiful and exemplary piece of documentary filmmaking.

Les K. Wright

les@leskwright.com