Diverse styles, diverse countries, diverse cultures, diverse conditions... Without doubt, diversity is the word that best describes the movies selected for the XIII Mostra FIRE!!!, because being as diverse as life itself is, homosexuality goes beyond borders and forms and also over any time limits. The stories told in these movies reveal us a rich field and show us that, far from being ghettos or communities, or being the result of deviations or mental illnesses, homosexuality is a synonymous of words such as naturalness and daily life.
From the deep forest of La León with his inhabitants separated from this world, to the pure asphalt of La Mala Noche or Brother to Brother, we can see how unimportant is the place when what counts is describing the sexual identity, although the consequences can be radically different. It’s not the place but the time, the one who separates these lives. In Victim, with a style close to Hitchcock’s and the sixties, the main characters collide with the rigid English society, still authoritarian and frustrated. In the same country, but 40 years later, Tick Tock Lullaby show us the free and poetic doubts of two women on their way to maternity. As diverse as life is, but not banal, these women have something in common, that also shows us Combat or Drifting Flowers: all of them can create great master works out of the emotional experiences.
Director and screenplay: Rodney Evans
Production: Seth Carmichael, Rodney Evans, Marc Henry Johnson, Jim McKay, Yoruba Richen, Isen Robbins.
Cast: Anthony Mackie, Larry Gilliard Junior, Daniel Sunjata
Duration: 90'
Through the enigmatic presence of the already elderly and wayward Bruce, the director of "Brother to Brother" shows us the complex world of a group of black gay intellectuals in 20's New York. Langston Hughes, Richard Bruce Nugent, Zora Neale Hurston and Wallace Thurman are some of the irreverant forerunners of the so-called Harlem Renaissance, who wrote their most vindicative and recreational works in the magazine FIRE!!, to which the Mostra wishes to give homage.
The crux of the union between past and present is the story of Perry Williams, a non-conformist gay whose life reels in the face of society's incomprehension, the rejection of his family and lack of love. However, the discovery of the 1920s' artistic subcultures as he works and studies in New York pushes him to fight for his convictions, and he rebels against mediocrity.
Drifting Flowers (Taiwan, 2008)Director and screenplay: Zero Chou
Cast: Serena Fang, Pai Chih-ying, Chao Yi-lan, Lu Yi-ching, Sam Wang, Herb Hsu, Ma Yi-hang
Duration: 97'
The Taiwanese producer returns after "Ci-Qing" with this strange and fascinating film divided into three intertwined stories with a great emotional depth. No subject escapes his treatment: illness, AIDS, marriage and traditions, jealousy, gender confusion and sensuality, fascination with infancy and blind love.
The protagonists, a little girl, a young woman and an old woman search for the own identity through time and through art, and they offer us a fascinating journey through the ages of women and show us how love affects their lives and their fears, sometimes in a tragic way.
Fremde Haut (Germany, 2007)Director and screenplay: Angelina Maccarone
Cast: Jasmin Tabatabai, Anneke Kim Sarnau, Navid Akhavan, Hinnerk Schönemann and Jens Münchow
Duration: 97'
Fariba, persecuted in Iran for her homosexuality, emigrates to Germany but her request for asylum goes unanswered. Her destiny changes with the suicide of her friend Siamak; she assumes his identity and obtains her residency permit. She is sent to a provincial village where at first her survival seems assured, but in the refugee home she is forced to keep up her disguise as a man. The slightest mistake could throw her strategy away.
To pay the cost of the falsification of her papers, she gets an illegal job in a sauerkraut factory where she meets Anne, who is attracted by the charms of the new foreign boy: Siamak. They spend a lot of time together and their relationship becomes dangerously close. Bit by bit, Anne beings to suspect the true identity of Fariba. The film won the OUTFEST 2006 Best Drama Prize.
The Bubble (Israel, 2006)Director: Eytan Fox
Screenplay: Eytan Fox and Gal Uchovsky
Production: Ronen Ben-Tal, Amir Feingold, Gal Uchovsky
Cast: Ohad Knoller, Yousef 'Joe' Sweid, Daniela Virtzer, Alon Friedman
Duration: 90'
The director of "Yossi & Jagger" and "Walking on Water" returns to one of the most conflictive territories on the planet to present the stroy of three young Israelis who share something more than an apartment in Tel viv. Lulu works as a costmetics shop assistant, Yali is the owner of an urban café and Noam serves in a music shop as well as in the National Guard at weekends. When Noam falls in love with a young Palestinian man, they all co-operate to keep him illegally in Tel Aviv, baptizing him with a Hebrew name, giving him a job in the caf é and dressing him as one of them. However, reality and violence put his own utopia in question.
Eytan Fox puts into perspective the consequences of commitment over comfort, running away from reality and living in a "bubble".
La León (Argentina, 2007)
Director and screenplay: Santiago Otheguy
Production: Pablo Salomón
Cast: Jorge Román, Daniel Valenzuela, José Muñoz, Daniel Sosa
Duration: 80'
Lost in the depths of the jungle, surrounded by mist and humidity, the inhabitants of a small village live looking at each other. Álvaro has a solitary and silent life, fishing and cutting bullrushes, and has to live his sexual desire in secret. His passion for book restoring leads him to board the León (Lion) from time to time, the communal launch driven by El Turu. But this violent character, the leader of the activities of the few inhabitants of the village, has Álvaro in his sights..... The black and white of the film and the disquieting tranquility of the wild forest in this corner of Argentina add tension to the relationships between characters incapable of expressing their love.
Tick Tock Lullaby (UK, 2006)Director and screenplay: Lisa Gornick
Producer: Valliant Doll
Cast: Joanna Bending, William Bowry, Jake Canuso, Raquel Cassidy, Lisa Gornick.
Duration: 73'
Tick Tock Lullaby, Londoner filmmaker Lisa Gornick’s second work, is one of the most tender, sincere and impressive films of the Mostra 2008. It tells, in an intimate and amateur fashion, the different stories of three couples pursuing motherhood. The film shows directly, with sense of humour but without concessions, the physical, mental, sexual and legal difficulties to have a baby.
Throughout those three stories, which are connected by the film director (and also the main character)’s delicate watercolour pictures, love, sex, desires and needs are dealt with from the viewpoint of four apparently very different women.
Victim (UK, 1961)Director: Basil Dearden
Screenplay: Janet Green, John McCormick
Producers: Michael Relph, Basil Dearden
Cast: Dirk Bogarde, Sylvia Syms, Dennis Price, Anthony Nicholls
Duration: 90'
TNot everything was so sweet in the London society during the sixties, when the Victorian era was still deeply rooted, and the moral limits of the previous century were fully alive, especially regarding homosexuality. This outstanding thriller, which reminds Hitchcock’s style, shows that situation through a story that is both exciting and surprising, because the subject was not usual at all at the time. Melville Farr (Dirk Bogarde) is a respectful lawyer and a gentleman of the City, married and distinguished. Nothing indicates that he is being blackmailed (as so many other men) due to his sexual identity. However, he will fight, not to avoid scandal, but to avenge his ex-lover’s suicide, with a great courage which would be said "pride" today.
Combat (Belgium, 2006)Director and screenplay: Patrick Carpentier
Producer: Bauw de Geneviève
Cast: Léo Joris, Tomas Matauko
Duration: 57'
Patrick Carpentier is becoming one of today’s most outstanding filmmakers, due to his ability to combine, in a very convincing way, visual and textual poetry and conceptual experimentation. In this work he speaks about loneliness, lack of communication and absence of love.
In "Combat", two young men meet in the forest to love each other and fight hand to hand, in a disturbing game of desire and violence. Images of the night and the river, hugs and fights, everything is mixed in battles and races among the trees, where there are neither weapons nor winners.
Winner of the 2006 Teddy Award, in the section "Queer" of the Berlin International Film Festival, is a powerful and aggressively visual film. In "Combat", there is pleasure, tenderness and emotion, within a surprising game of experimentation and rhythm.
La mala noche (USA, 1985)Director and screenplay: Gus Van Sant
Producer: Gus Van Sant
Cast: Tim Streeter, Doug Cooeyate, Ray Monge, Nyla McCarthy
Duration: 78'
Director Gus Van Sant’s first work is an independent, low budget movie, based on Walt Curtis’ autobiographical novel, where humour and seriousness alternate. Without pretending it, Van Sant achieves one of his most outstanding works, thanks to an expressionist, raw and fascinating visual language.
Shot in black and white, it tells the story of Walt, who owns a food store in Portland and falls in love with Johnny, a Mexican teenager and illegal immigrant who does not even speak English. Walt’s out of control infatuation with Johnny will drive him to lose his own way and be ready to do anything to get his object of desire.
Director: Jen Heck
Screenplay: Jen Heck
Producer: Shilpa Mankikar
Cast: Rachel Perry-Keifer, Arista Russo
Duration: 10'
Airplanes is the story of a passionate romance, of a day between two adolescent girls at carnival time. While a voice in off explains the flight instructions, the protagonists take off as if they were aeroplanes themselves, they struggle to keep on their feet and finally they must land. A simply and poetic allegory.
Al buio (Italy, 2005)Director: Fabio Mollo
Screenplay: Josella Porto, Fabio Mollo
Producer: Scuola Nazionale di Cinema
Cast: Giuseppe Forli, Daniele GrassettiBrian
Duration: 13'
Antonio and Marcello share the same room and the same secret. Love, however clouded, is still love.
Antoine et Elisa (Belgium, 2005)Director: Mikhail Bouchler
Screenplay: Mikhail Bouchler
Producer: Laurent Gross
Cast: Sandrine Blancke, Mikhail Bouchler, Sylvain Honoré
Duration: 10'
Antoine is a young man of about 20 years of age, who debates between what he has and what he really wants.
El rosario de la Aurora (Spain, 2007)Aurora receives a divine call revealing the unknown whereabouts of a very close member of the family. The old lady enters a brothel frequented by folkloric and religious transsexual prostitutes. At the end of the premises the loved one is found and after a persecution an argument begins in which religion and sex with join together.
Elle (Belgium, 2004)Director: Ania Lemin & Bruno Segers
Screenplay: Ania Lemin
Producer: Geneviève De Bauw
Cast: Magali Michaux, Ania Lemin
Duration: 5'
It isn’t easy for a girl to be in love and even worst if the object of her desire is another girl, her school’s best friend.
Le lit froissé (France, 2006)Direction: Myriam Donasis
Screenplay: Myriam Donasis, Carolina Dubreuil
Producer: Pop up
Cast: Carolina Dubreuil, Daphné Favreliére
Duration: 13'
After a night full of complicity games between two girls, they end up having sex. The following morning, this experience creates real complications.
Les 9 mardis (Bélgica, 2006)The solitude, poetry, and confinement. An experimental short film with beautiful and seducing distorted images and no storyline. A pure exercise of visual impressionism.
Peking turkey (Canada, 2006)Despite his parents disapproval, Chris Wong brings his French-Canadian boyfriend to the Christmas Dinner. With the cacophony of three languages, English, French and Chinese and the lack of communication drama. Pierre tries to create a connection with his family and finds their blessing that he was looking for to marry the man he loves.
Scarred (U.K., 2006)Director: Damien Rea
Screenplay: Damien Rea
Producer: Damien Rea, Anthony Fabian
Cast: Chris Anderson, David Dirham, Lara Cazalet
Duration: 10'
A short thriller where the face of a young man betrays his past, influences his destiny and the dynamics of his new relationship, where he will get more than what he had bargained for.
Spinning (Norway, 2006)Director: Heidi Arnesen
Screenplay: Heidi Arneses, Cjan P. Solberg
Producer: Heidi Arnesen
Cast: Kristin Zakariassen, Rudy Claes, Vanesa Borgli
Duration: 8'
A shower is humid, intimate and very private, but everything changes when the lights go off. The boundaries change and three women don’t feel so naked in the dark.
The last day (Canada, 2007)Director: Jacob Owens
Screenplay: Jacob Owens
Producer: Jacob Owens, Paul McCurdy
Cast: Dave Cantwell, Dawn Boyd, Holly Winter, Noella Murphy
Duration: 6'
A young women will find out how far her girlfriend’s father will go to have a "normal" family in this horrifying movie from Jacob Owen about love a sacrifice.
