 Gay cinema is undergoing a quiet revolution – where stereotypes have been ousted and reality is being truly reflected. Catch the revolution at this year’s Out in Africa Film Festival in Johannesburg at Nu Metro, Killarney Mall from Thursday, 4th September and in Cape Town at Nu Metro, V&A Waterfront from Thursday, 11th September. Over the chequered history of gay cinema and barring sporadic, yet excellent art house films, the widespread acceptance of homosexuality in society has ironically resulted in a dearth of quality gay stories. Mainstream films have relied heavily on media-friendly stereotypes that are all too often used as devices. Sadly, when mainstream cinema introduces a one-dimensional gay character, it becomes a film about the "gay experience" rather than a film about someone who just happens to be gay.
That’s why it is refreshing, and a more than a little heart-warming, to see that many films on the cards at this year’s Out In Africa GLBTI Film Festival are not ‘gay films’ but films with gay characters that are integral to the story and not just a diversion, punch line or an anomaly.
Finally, it seems, gay individuals are being portrayed on their own terms, in their own gritty reality. The tide has been slow in coming, but it’s now well and truly in.
Festival Director, Nodi Murphy, concurs. “What came through strongly for me was that there is more maturity in these scripts. They are intriguing stories. In Affinity, any fragile individual would have been duped by the main character who could just have easily been a malevolent, charismatic male medium. This year the films are not just about falling in love or getting laid. There are a lot of cross-over stories, good stories that feel like normal stories, but are just queer.”
In the 2008 Festival line up every one of the twenty-three features (many of them multiple award-winners) and eight shorts films is a thoughtful story (yes, even the comedies and musicals), that weaves around rich characters who are queer. In each genre – from love story and teenage angst to thriller and documentary – each character wrangles with life questions from individual perspectives.
The opening night Out at the Wedding is the perfect example. Indeed, it’s a comedy about straight Alex, who is in love with Jewish African-American Dana, but is too terrified of the conservative southern family’s expectations to tell them. Attending sister Jeannie’s wedding, best friend Jonathan lets slip that Alex is gay and a whole new world of possibilities and farce ensues. As a light romp through romance, truth and attraction, Out at the Wedding is smart, funny and unexpected in that the queer aspect is integral to the story and not just an added bonus.
Other films, although dealing with entirely different subject matters and diverse genres, are similarly well balanced with genuine characters being caught up in treacherous situations.
Savage Grace is the true story of the demise of a family. In it, Julianne Moore gives a powerful performance as the controlling and unbalanced mother of Tony Baekeland (heir to the Bakelite fortune) who, lost in the vapid life of the idle rich, struggles to cut himself free of her clutches. In You Belong to Me, Jeffery stalks fickle Rene. But when Rene spurns him, he becomes embroiled in the nefarious actions of his new landlady.
25 Cent Preview provides a dramatic contrast with the gritty hyper-realistic red-light world in which tarnished pin-up Marcus and jittery Dot.com hustle curb-crawlers and bustle drug dealers on San Francisco’s mean streets.
On the other side of the Atlantic, this year’s crop of European films is determined to challenge the strength of family and friendship.
The delightful French film Times Have Been Better explores the repercussions on familial and other relationships that are often taken for granted. Another Woman turns the same issue on its head when a father, who has left his wife and children to become a woman, tries to fight the irresistible pull of her deserted family. While in Italy’s Saturn in Opposition a close-knit and sophisticated group of friends must own up to each other’s imperfections, insecurities and secrets when one of them is struck by a fatal illness. From Germany comes Vivere, where over a cab-driving Francesca, along with silent, middle-aged passenger Gerlinda, embarks on a road trip from Germany to Rotterdam to bring her sister back for Christmas.
The documentary component provides thorough investigation into hidden realities – whether it’s how homophobia is alive and threatening South Africans in Beyond Hate Crimes, how the evangelists have incorrectly interpreted the bible for their own aims in For the Bible Tells Me So, how the Aussies battled AIDS and won in Rampant, or what a foreskin means to a filmmaker in Israel in The Quest for the Missing Piece.
For centuries history has been reinvented and reinterpreted to wipe clean any openly gay historical figures. No longer. This year Out in Africa has introduced the Celebrity Choice. The very first celebrity to choose is our very own caped crusader of human, HIV and gay rights, Justice Edwin Cameron.
Justice Cameron selected the multiple award-winning documentary Brother Outsider which reveals the life of Bayard Rustin, a gay man who mentored Martin Luther King. Cameron will attend some of the screenings and engage with director Bennett Singer and Rustin’s life partner Walter Naegel.
Challenging the audience’s perception of gender and sexuality – and what it means to be male or female – is the increased transgender component of Out in Africa. Encompassing both features and documentaries, this section explores a rarely discussed world. A powerful story with gorgeous performances XXY is a tranquil film, set in a sleepy Uruguayan fishing village, that explores the psychological fallout of family anxieties and the confusion surrounding their pubescent child’s gender. The fascinating and often raunchy documentary, Enough Man asks nine female-to-male trans men what life, love, romance and sex means to them. Then, with tongue firmly lodged in the fake bestubbled cheek, the short Bandage, Socks and Facial Hair wittily dissects gender role-play in the spirit of revolution.
All very worthwhile, but really, what is a film festival without love stories?
In The Bubble, the age-old Romeo and Juliet star-crossed lovers story is fabulously applied to the Israeli/Palestine conflict. The film is directed by Eytan Fox, who you might remember directed Yossi and Jagger part of the OIA line-up a few years ago. Gal Uschovsky, who will be attending the festival this year, produced both films.
Tampering with yet another Shakespearean story is Were the World Mine, a musical-of-errors where the dishy schoolboy lead conjures up a love potion to lure the rugby star into his arms, and unwittingly unleashes queer havoc on small-town America.
Shelter is a love story where a surfer, artist and dedicated uncle finally takes a stand for himself, supported by the courage from a new, unexpected love. Breakfast with Scot continues the theme of finding the courage of your convictions. In it a young, orphaned boy shows his adopted parents that it’s cool to be a little unconventional and take emotional risks.
If you want to find out what's happening with queer adults – both real and fictional and find out how they deal with life questions from an older, been-out-longer perspective – then this year’s Out in Africa Gay and Lesbian Film Festival is for you.
Out In Africa hosts its annual premier festivals in Johannesburg and Cape Town. Log on to www.oia.co.za for more information. Must see movies
Compact and feisty, this year’s programme of award winning films has something for everyone. The films, all with strong LGBTI themes, range from searing documentaries to a surf’s up flick and an apartment block suspense thriller. For the boys, we recommend:
25 Cent Preview
A gritty, ‘in the moment’ gallop through the red-light district of San Francisco, this is a journey into the uncensored life, loves and tricks of its street hustlers. Honest, riveting performances and a fast pace ensures compelling viewing that reveals far more humanity and understanding than you would expect.
The Bubble
Hottie Iraelli Noam and gorgeous Palestinian Ashraf drive this captivating ode to transcendental love – sexual, familial, and platonic – that encapsulates the surreal lives lived by young gays and straights, Jews and Arabs, men and women in Israel today. From the director of Yossi and Jagger.
Outing Riley
Laid-back and cleverly crafted, this light amusing coming-out family comedy disarms stereotypes and expectations of what a gay man is meant to be and how he is meant to act.
Times Have Been Better
In imitable quirky French style, the proud liberal parents of thirty-something banker Jeremy descend into crisis when he celebrates moving into a new house with his older, long-term boyfriend by finally announcing to the family that he is gay.
Saturn in Opposition
Gorgeous Lorenzo and older author Davide are the central loving couple of a close-knit sophisticated group of friends who loyally weather each other’s imperfections, insecurities and secrets with sensitivity and joviality. From the director of Hamam and Ignorant Faries.
Savage Grace
Careening from New York in 1946 to London in 1972, via Paris and Spain, this true story with a stellar cast (Julianne Moore, Eddie Redmayne) charts one family’s descent from decadence into a dysfunction that would make Jerry Springer proud.
Shelter
Young, talented artist Zach has sacrificed his dreams of going to art school in order to look after adorable nephew, Cody, which his self-centred sister seems incapable of doing. Then along comes his best friend’s studly older brother. With great surf scenes and sensitive lensing, this summer coming-out and falling-in-love romance elegantly sidesteps clichés.
Were the World Mine
This fun, dazzling and amusing musical-of-errors with a first rate ensemble cast and delicious lead is a magical modern interpretation of Shakespeare set amidst the familiar scenarios of high school angst and adolescent crushes.
You Belong to Me
In the vein of all suspense movies, this uneasy thriller follows the misfortunes of rookie-architect Jeffery who transforms from stalker into victim when he moves into a sinister building and its characters provoke a creeping paranoia.
Documentaries Brother Outsider
This is a thrilling and important story – the life and work of Bayard Rustin, the gay man who mentored Martin Luther King. A visionary crusader, Rustin has been called the “unknown hero” and the “invisible man” of the American civil rights movement.
The Quest for the Missing Piece
A religious rite of passage; a hidden badge of cultural identity; how can cutting a piece of genital skin encapsulate so much and evoke so many conflicting thoughts, feelings and emotions?
For The Bible Tells Me So
In this thorough, positive and ultimately hopeful documentary, the filmmaker presents the complex subject of homosexuality and religion through personal and intellectual arguments that encourages people to examine their beliefs rather than mindlessly accept the preaching of others. |
