Queer Cinema(s)

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Serge Gainsbourg’s Je T’Aime Moi Non Plus, the iconic singer-songwriter’s 1976 directorial debut, is on the surface the story of a love triangle. But nothing about this film is conventional. It’s set in an almost postapocalyptic wasteland that’s supposed to be somewhere in the American Midwest, if the signage and the locals’ penchant for fractious roller derbies is to be believed. (There’s even a visual joke that seems to riff on John Boorman’s Deliverance.) Two sides of the triangle are gay garbagemen, while the third is a boyish truck stop waitress. And Gérard Depardieu puts in a glorified cameo as an amorous hayseed who’s just a little too much into his horse.Read More »

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“Prick Up Your Ears” is the story of Orton and Halliwell and the murder. They say that most murderers are known to their victims. They don’t say that if you knew the victims as well as the murderer did, you might understand more about the murder, but doubtless that is sometimes the case. This movie opens with a brutal, senseless crime. By the time the movie is over, the crime is still brutal, but it is possible to comprehend.Read More »

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A sophisticated social comedy directed by Jaime Humberto Hermosillo, one of Mexico’s most daring, original filmmakers.

Dona Herlinda is a wealthy, fantastically manipulative widow living in Guadalajara who quietly accepts her son Rudolfo’s affair with a handsome young music student, Ramon. After she invites Ramon to live with her family (“Rudolfo has such a big bed,” she says) the situation becomes hilariously complicated by Rudolfo’s marriage of convenience to Olga, a feminist and employee of Amnesty International.Read More »

Like a summer in Berlin…

Two Berliners, Maria and Niels, and one British student, Chloë, are drifting libidinously through Berlin, plunge headlong into a carefree and chaotic love affair with each other. Boisterously living life to the full, they grasp everything and anything they please. Their only compass seems to be the pleasure they experience together – which works perfectly well until Chloë unintentionally falls pregnant…Read More »

A documentary by Magnus Hirschfeld, which contains a shortened version of Different From the Others (1919).Read More »

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Luis leaves his partner and flies to Berlin from Spain for a weekend of lighthearted partying, experimenting with drugs and casual physical encounters. He meets Viktor, a mysterious man who holds a fascinating, disconcerting attraction. Struggling with his inhibitions about being overpowered by a stranger, Luis submits to Viktor with a trusting passion. Shortly afterwards, Luis is confused with a missing Greek named Dimitri who is being desperately sought by his sister and cousin. Although Dimitri is Viktor’s ex-partner, Viktor has no explanation for his disappearance. Plagued by nagging suspicions, Luis nonetheless becomes further entangled in Viktor’s capricious and powerful aura of control and submission. This draws him into a quagmire of mysterious signs and dangers where soon even reality itself begins to seem like an illusion.Read More »

Synopsis
The setting is familiar. A Senate subcommittee meets to confirm the President’s controversial nominee for Secretary of State. A TV camera rolls. And the wolf is at the door…Read More »

Synopsis
Somewhat reminiscent of Fassbinder, in particular QUERELLE, with characters appearing as the Angels of Death, this film could be titled HANSEL AND HANSEL. The story comes from the novel by Josef Capek, and is one of Vlacil’s wordiest, more philosophical films, as two young men are caught in the woods by the gameskeeper killing a deer So they kill him as well, still another senseless act, and spend the rest of the film running away, hiding in the woods, plagued by their crimes. The two talk incessantly, pledge to never leave one another, and enter into a homosexual bond which is never actually realized, as they rarely even touch, but they can’t exist without one another. As they get deeper in the woods, memories, fantasies, and hallucinations appear more prevalent.Read More »

The time has come when the warriors of Obitania are once again on the alert. They set out in pursuit of Manjas-Kebir, a bandit who has kidnapped Rixo Lomadis Bron’s daughter. Bron is a wealthy landowner who reigns over the shepherds of the Purple Mountain. The time has come when Rixo Lomadis Bron accuses Manjas-Kebir of killing his daughter and urges all the country’s inhabitants to track down the assassin. It’s the time when Radovan Remila Stoï, the land’s greatest warrior, rises up against this foolhardy act which has every chance of leading to war. The time has come when Fogo Lompla, a warrior whose search methods have no equal, begins to wonder about the untraceable Manjas-Kebir, his struggle in favour of the liberation of the shepherds, the life of perpetual wandering that his warrior existence leads to, and about unrequited love. —Cineuropa.orgRead More »