North of Vortex

A bisexual junkie poet (Stavros Zalmas) driving coast-to-coast first picks up a hunky hitchhiking sailor (Howard Napper) and then an androgynous waitress (Valda Drabla) as companions. They form an uneasy erotic triangle that will finally implode in a fateful desert episode. Greek director Constantine Giannaris' moody short black-and-white feature, set to British trumpeter John Eacott’s old-school jazz combo score, is very much in the mode of the New Queer Cinema movement of its era. It unfolds almost entirely without dialogue (although with the voice of Kevin Graal as an all-seeing narrator) as the photogenic protagonists’ classic convertible travels west across a timeless America of diners, pool halls and prairie landscapes.