Queer Cinema(s)

Quote:
Praunheim’s film is at once a pedagogical caveat and political manifesto. Following naïve country boy Daniel after he moves to Berlin and encounters a thriving gay community, It Is Not The Homosexual is a provocative look at the lives of gay men in 1970s Germany. The film follows Daniel from heteronormative behaviour to finding a sugardaddy to a job in a local gay bar, making him the most eligible bachelor in town. Through Daniel’s journey Praunheim comments on everything from the shallower tendencies in gay culture to cruising for sex in the early ‘70s until Daniel meets a group of revolutionary gays who introduce him to the gay rights movement. Like many of Praunheim’s films It Is Not The Homosexual caused a scandal in both the liberal and conservative establishment as well as in homosexual circles after it was first shown on German state television in 1973. What makes Praunheim’s work so provocative as a queer director is his fearlessness, what others call audacity, to not only point the finger at society, but also at the gay community itself as guilty of homophobia.Read More »

Under the authoritarian rule of charismatic ballet impressario Boris Lermontov, his proteges realize the full promise of their talents, but at a price: utter devotion to their art and complete loyalty to Lermontov himself. Under his near-obsessive guidance, young ballerina Victoria Page is poised for superstardom, but earns Lermontov’s scorn when she falls in love with Julian Craster, composer of “The Red Shoes,” the ballet Lermontov is staging to showcase her talents. Vicky leaves the company and marries Craster, but still finds herself torn between Lermontov’s demands and those of her heart.Read More »

Set during a “beautiful summer” in Turin in 1938, against the backdrop of Fascist-era Italy’s subsequent entry into World War II. sees the 18-year-old Cassell as the uninhibited model Amelia. She introduces her younger friend Ginia to a world of bohemian artists where she will fall in love for the first time.Read More »

Quote:
A collection of Super 8 films shot by Derek Jarman between 1972 and 1975, edited to the music of Throbbing Gristle.

Derek Jarman used some of his 70s home movie footage to produce this wonderful piece of exploitational avantgarde cinema. Actually the original material has been slowed down to a speed of 3-6 frames, then Jarman added colour effects and the pulsating, menacing score by Industrial supergroup Throbbing Gristle

The result is a piece of art not to dissimilar to Jarman´s painting work in using found footage as elements of memory and mind that resemble ideas reflected in the Cabala and in C.G. Jung`s writings about an archetypical past that is hidden in everyone of us.Read More »

Quote:
Employing a documentary treatment with a fictional script, Atlas presents a time capsule of London in the spring of 1985. Michael Clark, hailed as the rock star of British contemporary dance, is cast as a successful young choreographer. The film charts a half-typical, half-imaginary day in Clark’s life, beginning with a dream sequence.

Clark’s vigorous day includes an interview with a dance critic in a surreal skit featuring members of The Fall; a cemetery filming for an underground featurette; an erotic encounter in a mirrored bedroom; a nightclub scene; and dancing to exhaustion at home alone. The heart of the film centers on 12 principal dance sequences set in rehearsal, photo session, performance, and nightclub scenes.Read More »

Tough ex-con Corky and her lover Violet concoct a scheme to steal millions of stashed mob money and pin the blame on Violet’s crooked boyfriend Caesar.Read More »

Der sensible Träumer Laid lebt in der algerischen Mittelmeerstadt ‘Bejaia’. Er verbringt seine Tage in einem Fotostudio und am Strand mit seinem Freund Nadir. Eines Tages wird er von seiner Schwester aufgefordert, nach Timimoun zurückzukehren und als Ältester die Ehre der Familie wieder herzustellen. Nadir bietet ihm an, ihn auf der abenteuerlichen Reise ins algerische Hinterland zu begleiten…

Der Spielfilm ‘Timimoun’ (2010) von Michael Roes, der zu den bedeutendsten deutschsprachigen Autoren der Gegenwart gehört (‘Rub’ al-Khali – leeres Viertel’), erzählt von der Freundschaft zweier Jungen als Utopie in einem zerrissenen, von religiösen und politischen Spannungen gezeichneten Land. Auf Grundlage des Films entstand auch der Roman ‘Weg nach Timimoun’.Read More »

SYNOPSIS
A collage of images, a metaphor for love in the time of AIDS, a personal reading of Jean Genet’s influence on gay culture and queer aesthetics. Put together like a palimpsest of images and sounds, the film brings Genet’s words to the foreground…Read More »

A group of Pontian Greek immigrant teenage dreamers dwelling marginalised in the notorious and lustreless wild suburbia, witness the city’s repulsive face and an unrelenting world defined by prostitution, drugs, and inevitably, loss.Read More »