Queer Cinema(s)

Synopsis:
Dr. John Markway, an anthropologist with an interest in psychic phenomena, takes two specially selected women to Hill House, a reportedly haunted mansion. Eleanor (Julie Harris), a lonely, eccentric woman with a supernatural event in her past, and the bold Theodora (Claire Bloom), who has ESP, join John and the mansion’s heir, cynical Luke (Russ Tamblyn). They are immediately overwhelmed by strange sounds and events, and Eleanor comes to believe the house is alive and speaking directly to her.Read More »

DAMNED IF YOU DON’T is Friedrich’s subversive and ecstatic response to her Catholic upbringing. Blending conventional narrative technique with impressionistic camerawork, symbols and voice-overs, this film creates an intimate study of sexual expression and repression. Featuring Peggy Healey as a young nun tormented by her desire for the sultry irresistible Ela Troyano.Read More »

Synopsis:
In the small frontier mining town of Warlock, rancher Abe McQuown’s gang of cowboy cutthroats terrorize the peaceful community, humiliating the town’s legitimate deputy Sheriff and running him out of town. Helpless and in need of protection, the townsfolk hire the renowned town tamer Clay Blaisdell, as unofficial Marshal, to bring law and order to the town. Clay arrives with his good friend and backup Tom Morgan. The two men stand up to the ranch gang and quiet the town. Johnny Gannon, a former member of the ranch gang is bothered by the gang’s actions, reforms and takes on the deputy Sherrif job while his brother remains part of the gang. The addition of the official lawman to the mix further complicate matters, leading to an inevitable clash of the cowboys, the townsfolk, the gunslingers and the law.Read More »

Quote:

As any cinephile can tell you, there are some directors we love despite the fact they have never made a great film, but rather for the uniqueness of their voice and the hope that one day they will deliver on their potential. In the case of Christophe Honoré, his delightful “Love Songs” landed him on that list, even if no one would argue that the effervescent 2007 ménage-à-trois musical was a masterpiece, while every subsequent film has slightly chipped away at our affection.Read More »

Marcel Spandice, a famous homosexual writer during the sixties in Paris, is trying to make a young Arab into the greatest tightrope walker in the world. Behind the figure of Spandice, author, poet and lover of the circus (“because there one truly risks getting killed,” in his own words)

The story of this film was allegedly based on a true story witnessed by the director Nico Papatakis during his filmmaking collaboration with the controversial and much-lionized monstre sacrée Jean Genet.Read More »

HIDE AND SEEK tells the story of Lou, a twelve year old girl coming to terms with her budding sexuality in the mid 1960’s. Her bittersweet tale is skillfully interwoven with clips from a wide array of scientific and educational films, as well as interviews with adult lesbians who recount their adolescent attractions to girls, how they felt when they first heard the word lesbian, where they fit in the butch/femme continuum, and their thoughts about how they became baby dykes. HIDE AND SEEK is for every woman who’s been to a slumber party and every man who wonders what went on at one.Read More »

Synopsis:
Seeking shelter from a pounding rainstorm in a remote region of Wales, several travellers are admitted to a gloomy, foreboding mansion belonging to the extremely strange Femm family. Trying to make the best of it, the guests must deal with their sepulchral host, Horace Femm and his obsessive, malevolent sister Rebecca. Things get worse as the brutish manservant Morgan gets drunk, runs amuck and releases the long pent-up brother Saul, a psychotic pyromaniac who gleefully tries to destroy the residence by setting it on fire.Read More »

Synopsis
Love doesn’t unfold like a story. Only the first and the last chapter are known. Love starts from Love and ends in letting go. In between there is tenderness and cruelty, waiting and fulfilment, ecstasy and disappointment. If love is a discourse, these are her figures of speech. An adolescent love between two girls. Childish cruelty is mixed with full blown sensuality. Dreams and life reflect and complete each other. The end is known, the story will be told after the love is gone.Read More »

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The power of co-incidence is explored to dramatic effect in The Edge Of Heaven, a Turkish-German production about two deaths that bring strangers together. Once the opening titles warn us of “Yeter’s Death”, we see Turkish prostitute Yeter meeting an elderly client, Ali, in Germany and watch her fate unfold. Shifting to Turkey and Germany and back again, this spirited, beautifully-acted drama follows both Ali’s son and Yeter’s daughter in the wake of the tragedy.Read More »