Film Out’s opening night film, Boy Culture, is the tale of “X,” (played by Derek Magyar) a hustler who lets his real emotions collect dust on a shelf while he caters to his 12 clients, whom he refers to as “disciples.” Oblivious to what he’s doing with his life, X seems to be “a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing,” as his Oscar Wilde-quoting disciple, Gregory (Patrick Bachau) points out to him.

But therein lies X’s interesting dichotomy: He is in love with Andrew (Darryl Stephens of “Noah’s Arc”), who is one of his roomates. And he’s in a quasi-caregiver role for Joey (Jonathon Trent, of the upcoming Fashion Victim), his other roomate – a twink who gets by on a wink and a smile, and whose flirtatious nature is in overdrive.

Boy Culture, directed by Q. Allan Brocka, based on the novel of the same name by Matthew Rettenmund, is an examination of modern gay culture, played by a capable cast with interesting insights from its anti-hero.

Brocka, who also wrote Eating Out, its sequel Eating Out 2: Sloppy Seconds (the first-ever gay movie sequel), and who is the brains behind the upcoming animated LOGO series, “Rick & Steve the Happiest Gay Couple in All the World,” which features the talents of such gay faves as Alan Cumming, Margaret Cho, Wilson Cruz and Peter Paige, says he felt little pressure to stay close to Rettenmund’s novel, and so was able to put his own individual stamp on the story for its film incarnation.

“The novel is a collection of 23 stories. In each one is a confession, so there’s a lot of characters and not really a structure of a film, so a lot of stuff had to be changed to turn it into a film. Because I related so much to the book, most of what the film is, I guess, is my voice simply because it was already in the book, if that makes sense.”

The film focuses on a rare on-screen dynamic – the pairing of an older man with a younger one. “One of the things that drew me to the book was the intergenerational aspect of the story,” Brocka says. “The relationship between X and Gregory, this new client that he gets, was really interesting; in that, it was the first time I had ever seen a much older man and a younger gay man connect in a way where I didn’t feel like the younger man was being portrayed as a victim. I feel like I had seen that a lot in gay films, and I don’t see that a lot in real life.”

While X may seem to be a stereotypical, jaded, gay male, Brocka says he’s more complex. “What speaks to me in X is he can see the worst in everything around him. He sees the worst in the gay community, he sees the worst in his roommates, and he sees the worst in himself. But, because he can see that, he can love it, and that cynicism allows him to love something, and know all of the ugly parts of something and love it anyway.”

Boy Culture screens at 7:30 p.m., along with two short films, Feet of Clay, about a straight man with a foot fetish who wants to exercise his special need on his best friend, Clay, and Available Men, which is proving itself a force to be reckoned with on the film festival circuit, garnering prizes and praises. Set in Los Angeles, Available Men features four men searching for what they want in life. For Stephen (Kostas Sommer) it’s fielding yet another offer on his hot property screenplay, for which Rob (Richard Ruccolo), a floundering Hollywood agent, needs to land a client if Stephen is to stay afloat in the shark-infested waters of Tinsel Town. Added to the mix are two gay men set up on a blind date, who happen to be named Steve (Brian Gattas) and Robert (Jack Plotnick, the voice of Xandir on TV’s “Drawn Together”). A case of mistaken identities and hilarity ensues.

The documentary Bob and Jack’s 52-Year Adventure is a charming portrait of the titular longtime lovers’ decades-long relationship. During the 1950s, light years before “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” became a military state of mind, soldiers Bob Claunch and Jack Reavley took a heroic and dramatic stand in the name of love, challenging the system by taking honorary discharges when rumor and innuendo linked them romantically.

Reavley left a wife and children in pursuit of what felt right with Claunch, starting a new life with the specter of charting an unknown destiny before him, and filmmaker Stu Maddux has chronicled the ebb and flow of the couple’s ensuing relationship.

“I have never seen a better case for gay marriage in my life,” Maddux says. “It gave me a whole other perspective on the right-to-get-married debate. Because seeing these guys age together, being each other’s primary caregivers, makes it so clear that not only should we get the same benefits as everyone else, we should get the honor of being married as well.”

Maddux says he made Bob and Jack’s 52-Year Adventure because the couple’s story resonated for him personally. “When I met [Bob and Jack] … I was at an age where I had several long relationships that were long term, four or five or six years; but nothing as successful or as long as they’ve had. So I was curious about them and I make documentaries, and I was looking for a documentary to do on my own at that point, and it seemed like a natural fit.”

Bob and Jack’s 52-Year Adventure is an extraordinary documentary not to be missed; it screens at noon with the short film, Out Running: Stories from the Campaign Trail, which profiles three openly gay politicians and how they are changing the landscape of American politics.

Gypo hails from the United Kingdom and consists of three distinctive narratives told from the point of view of three different characters during a family crisis: Helen and Paul’s 25-year marriage faces a major snag when the couple’s teen daughter makes friends with a refugee girl. The friendship makes the family question the very essence of freedom, which serves as a catalyst to free Helen from the bonds of matrimony that shackle her to a life she desperately wants to change. Helen’s husband Paul isn’t faring any better; he’s just a hair shy of having a complete breakdown, as his home life comes crashing down all around him. Gypo serves as the first official U.K. film from Dogme95, an acclaimed filmmaking movement, and will be shown at 1:45 p.m.

Love Life illustrates the complicated lengths some people will take to keep up appearances. In order to maintain social standing, closeted, former baseball player, Joe, and his bisexual wife, Mary, go through the motions of imitating a conventional marriage between two heterosexuals. But when the past comes back to haunt both parties, the truth must be dealt with, resulting in a fiery collision when hopes and secrets are unveiled. Love Life will be shown at 3:45 p.m. with a rather unusual short film, Sigmund Freud: Professional Psychoanalyst, which was shot with puppet actors on Super 8mm film.

The German film, Keillers Park, has it all: lots of full frontal male nudity, steamy sex scenes and murder! This suspenseful, erotic film noir unfolds with the arrest of a businessman named Peter for murder, and flashbacks provide the clues leading up to the deadly act. A chance encounter with free spirit Nassim at Keillers Park leads Peter away from his upcoming nuptials, forcing him to choose between his newly found dual lives. Keillers Park shows at 5:15 p.m. with the short film Mona Lisa, in which a gay man living with his widowed mother wants to break free for just one night, much to the chagrin of his mother.

In The Blood is not your typical supernatural thriller; this movie combines scare tactics with the very real problem of internalized homophobia. Cassidy (Tyler Hanes) is a jock type attending a New York City university and harboring two secrets. One is the self-loathing of not quite being out, and the second is of a more perplexing nature: Cassidy has the ability to see into the future, but the catch is his premonitions only occur when he’s fantasizing about some man-on-man action! When a serial killer strikes terror into the heart of the student body, Cassidy begins seeing alarming visions of his sister, Jessica, a freshman at the college splattered with blood, signaling that she has been caught in the serial killer’s crosshairs. This intriguing film screens at 7:30 p.m.

When Glenn (Matthew Montgomery) and Adam (Windham Beacham) meet through the personals, neither one is thinking it will turn into a Long-Term Relationship. But when an instant physical attraction mixes with a chemical reaction, they decide to explore being a couple. When their formula for intended bliss runs into complications, both sides of the fence (gay and straight friends) chime in with their two-cents worth, and Adam and Glenn must search their hearts to see if they can make the relationship work.

Betsy Wetsy Time Bomb Effect screens at 9:30 p.m. with Long-Term Relationship, and begs the question, “What would you do if your life was like a television show?” Alistair, the film’s protagonist, faces this very question and must tread lightly in his imaginary realm, so that his “Dynasty” - style verbal sparring matches with his mother don’t erupt into full-fledged cat fights!

Creatures from the Pink Lagoon has all of the trappings of a standard horror movie – a group of friends trapped at an isolated beach house by a marauding band of flesh-craving zombies – but there is one huge distinction, all of the characters are gay, and, as it turns out, so are the zombies!

What kind of mind would come up with this schlock-and-shock hybrid?

“The inspiration actually came from a couple of really weird sources,” says writer/director Chris Diani. “The first was a bad break-up I had back in 2002. That wasn’t so much the inspiration as the catalyst. The actual inspiration didn’t come until later that summer, when I was at a barbecue at a friend’s lake house on Cape Cod, and the setting was so ideal for a horror movie. So, I started to think of what kind of horror movie would work there, and, I don’t know where it came from, but I just thought ‘gay zombies!’ ”

Diani cites George Romero’s original zombie classic Night of the Living Dead and Ed Wood’s magnum opus of movie badness, Plan 9 from Outer Space, as inspiration for Creatures. Yet blending camp and satire is tricky, he says.

“That actually turned out to be fairly difficult. What I was going for was I wanted always to maintain that the characters were invested in the reality of their situation. So even if the situation was patently ridiculous, gay zombies dancing to show tunes, I wanted the characters to be at least invested in that; because that’s where I believe the comedy comes from.”

Creatures plays at 11 a.m. with the companion short, Attack of the Bride Monsters, which combines elements of ’50s monster fare with the type of romantic comedies Doris Day would have felt right at home in.

Cut Sleeve Boys focuses on Mel, an over-the-hill circuit queen with delusions of grandeur as far as his desirability is concerned, and Ash who, in an effort to shuck all of the modern day “straight” sensibilities, decides to strap on a pair of stilettos in order to find his Mr. Right, when he runs into an old college buddy who’s become a transsexual. Cut Sleeve Boys is the first British/Chinese movie and will show at 1 p.m.

Whispering Moon, an Austrian film, continues Saturday’s international flavor, with its tale of two gay film students who go incognito at a circus, shooting an on-the-down-low documentary about circus folk and the adventures they encounter after befriending a woman sensitive to light. Whispering Moon screens at 3:15 p.m. with Guy 101, the BAFTA award-winning, animated short film recounting a bad date.

For 18-year-old freshman Clay (Sam Huntington), college is supposed to be a time of downing beers and banging babes. But when this plan is foiled he undergoes a different sort of Freshman Orientation, feigning being fey in order to get the girl of his dreams. However, complications arise and land Clay smack in the middle of a campus-wide revolution. The short film A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Funeral, co-starring “Saturday Night Live” alum Rachel Dratch and “Roseanne’s” former TV hubby John Goodman, will play with Freshman at 5:30 p.m.

The Girls Centerpiece film, What’s Up, Scarlet? chronicles the meeting of Scarlet Zabrinski and Sabrina Fisser after their cars collide, and the impact they have on each other’s lives as love blossoms between them. The aptly titled Succubus, a film about the measures a lesbian couple will go to procure sperm for the baby they want, plays with What’s Up, Scarlet? at 7:30 p.m.

When a fundamentalist preacher’s son makes life a living hell for his two gay neighbors, a Hate Crime seems to be in the works, until the youth disappears under mysterious circumstances, leaving his tormented gay neighbors marked as the prime suspects. Shows at 9:30 p.m.

The ever-popular Girls Shorts program begins at 11 a.m. and will showcase the films: JO FM; Cosa Bella; Can You Take It? Lesbian Sex & Sexuality – Porn Today: Pushing The Limits; and Outside.

Loving Annabelle has been labeled a controversial movie with its depiction of forbidden love between an adult teacher, Simone, (Diane Gaidry), a younger female student, Annabelle (Erin Kelly), and the passion that Annabelle ignites within Simone, unleashing long suppressed feelings.

Gaidry, who was hired just three days before filming, when the actress originally slated for the Simone’s role fell through, says the short notice didn’t matter because it was easy to “access empathy” for her character.

“I had an immediate image of who she was. I also think that with Simone you see the struggle because she’s the grown up; so she’s struggling with not only her own sexuality, but I think even more so knowing her own responsibility as the adult, as the teacher, and not wanting to do any harm.”

The movie’s script helped her draw the fine line between controversy and sensationalism, she says.

“Katherine [Brooks, the film’s director and one of its writers] really did walk that very fine line successfully. I feel like these two women were very human, and we got to know them and care about them … in the course of the development of the story.”

Loving Annabelle shows at 1:15 p.m. with the 2006 Sundance award-winner Airplanes.

FilmOut’s Boys Shorts is always a crowd pleaser, and the films being spotlighted this year include: Man Seeking Man, First Date, Daddy’s Boy, Waiting, Hunter4Love and Night Swimming.

El Calentito follows the exploits of the all-girl band Las Sioux, whose lead singer Carmen is not only a dead ringer for Joan Jett, but is also a lesbian. When Sara, a young innocent, happens into the nightclub El Calentito, (which is owned by a feisty transsexual) she is thrown into a world of anything goes, as far as sexuality is concerned. The movie screens at 5:30 p.m. with Hustler WP, a short film depicting queer street punks looking to score drugs and sex.

FilmOut’s closing night film, C.R.A.Z.Y., has been called one of the best coming-of-age stories to ever grace the silver screen. This Canadian film won top honors at the Toronto International Film Festival, and garnered multiple nominations and wins at the Genie Awards, which is the Canuck version of the Academy Awards. The story centers on Zac (Marc-Andre Grondin), a teenager who tries to discover who he is, not only in his testosterone-heavy home life among four brothers and a macho Dad (the film is set during the ’70s, incidentally), but he is also trying to eek out an existence in terms of his sexuality.

C.R.A.Z.Y. plays at 8 p.m. with the short film Space Boy, and thus concludes another year for FilmOut.

FilmOut is great way to support the arts. You can buy tickets at Obelisk Bookstore, at 1090 University Ave. For more info on the festival, log onto www.filmoutsandiego.com.