On January 26 2011 Ugandan human rights activist David Kato, co-founder and advocacy officer of the organisation Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), was murdered in his home – shortly after he had won a lawsuit against a tabloid newspaper called “Rolling Stone”. The magazine had published his name and photograph amongst the ones of another 99 supposedly gay people under the headline “Hang them”. Its makers were sentenced to pay 1.5 million Ugandan shillings plus court costs to Kato and the other injured persons in this case.
The activist, who had left Uganda in 1992 and after spending 6 years in South Africa came back to fight for sexual equality, was amongst the most visible opponents of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, a draconian legislative proposal brought to Uganda’s parliament in 2009. 22-year-old Nsubuga Sydney, who was the prime suspect in the murder case, was sentenced to 30 years in jail in February 2011.
On Thursday, one year after his murder, more than 100 activists have paid tribute to Kato in his hometown Kampala. In honor and remembrance of his live and his achievements Jamaican LGBT and human rights activist Maurice Tomlinson will be the first person to receive the David Kato Vision & Voice award in London tomorrow.
Also, a new documentary entitled “Call Me Kuchu” pays tribute to the live and work of Kato and other Ugandan activists. The film project by US filmmakers Katherine Fairfax Wright & Malika Zouhali-Worrall was started in 2010, shortly after the Anti-Homosexuality Bill had been introduced in Uganda’s Parliament. “Call Me Kuchu” will premiere at the Berlin Film Festival on Saturday, February 11 and will have two more screening dates, which you find on the films website. The directors are currently seeking for support on Kickstarter to professionally finish the movie before the premiere and start a campaign for it. The donations will also cover the flights and visas for one of the Ugandan LGBT activists featured in the film, so that he or she can join the film team in Berlin. In conjunction with the anniversary of Kato’s death the filmmakers have also just released a short film, which gives a first insight on their recordings of Kato. You can watch “The Will Say We Are Not Here” on the New York Times website.
Since April 12 Gallery VeneKlasen/Werner is showing production photographs shot during the shooting of Fassbinder’s last film “Querelle” in 1982. The pictures were taken by Roger Fritz, a photographer, producer and performer, who worked on the film set as an actor and production documentarian. They were published in a book called “Querelle – The Film Book”, which was put out in conjunction with the film release, the exhibition is the first time they are publicly shown in a gallery space.
The 119 photographs are presented in three long “hanging blocks”, each consisting of three lines of photographs – an egalitarianism that makes it kind of difficult to focus on a single picture and doesn’t really take account of the different qualities of the pictures and their compositions. At the same time the show as a whole is a nice reminder of the beauty of this movie and its wonderful color compositions, so stopping by when you’re around the area of Checkpoint Charlie is definitely worth it. The exhibition runs until February 25 and gives visitors also the possibility to see “Querelle” in a little cinema space, where it is shown daily at 14:00. The film is followed by the rare Fassbinder documentary “The Wizard of Babylon”, which not only includes behind-the-scenes footage from the Querelle set, but also Fassbinder’s final interview (he died in Paris in 1982, a few month before the film was released).
Here are some more of the presented photographs, you find more of them on the gallery’s website. All of them are courtesy VeneKlasen/Werner.
Since we first announced the debut of William S. Burroughs: A Man Within, it has gone on to screen at a number of worldwide festivals, earning loads of positive reviews across the lands. In January, nearly two years later, the acclaimed documentary on the Naked Lunch author is finally getting a proper German release. The film — the full-length directorial debut from Yony Leyser — includes previously unseen footage of Burroughs plus new interviews with his friends and followers including John Waters, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and Gus van Sant, as well as Patti Smith and Sonic Youth who contributed the soundtrack. Expand…
Since 2009 my friend Todd and I have worked together on a couple of film projects in Berlin and have noticed that especially alternative and experimental queer films are hard to find in the city. We decided that we want to fill this gap by initiating a Queer Film Archive Berlin (QFAB) where hard-to-find queer films will be collected and available for people to borrow. We’ve now finally brought the idea to kickstarter, hoping that we will get together sufficient donations buy a collection of films, which we want make available for rent at QFAB with payment on a voluntary basis. The money we receive from renters will allow us to buy new films so that the size of the archive is constantly growing. Please check out our kickstarter site and the handmade little video below for more information, and support our project, especially when you’re from Berlin. Donations, re-postings and new films for the archive are highly appreciated!
Junksista is a new electrotrash artist who coos smutty lyrics with a German accent over thick, fuzzy beats (think Garbage and Simian Mobile Disco), plus she’s got an impeccable Cyndi Lauper tattoo. Her digital EP from earlier this year was just given a CD release with two new tracks, retitled (C)LICK ME XXXtended and available thru her site. Check the video for “Fruits”, a sexy reminder to get your 5 A Day:
The artist initiative Überflug Berlin is presenting a group exhibition named “SOLO – A Group Effort” at a new art space called Engels, ehich will open tomorrow. It will show “works about one man, by many artists”, which I suppose means that it is focused on portraits. Amongst the featured artists are a whole bunch of interesting queer photographers such as Paul Mpagi Sepuya (see first picture below), Cathal O’Brien (who shoot pictures for the new Kele E.P. “The Hunter”) or Jay Barry Matthews (see second picture below). Check out the flyer above for the for the complete list of artists and the Facebook page of the exhibition for links to their websites.
Exhibition opening is tomorrow, Friday 25.11.11, 7pm at Engels, Herrfurthstr.21 (live music by Stella Veloce and M.E.S.H.). It will run until the December 16.
Paul Mpagi Sepuya: Jay, desktop, October 21 (2011)
Jay Barry Matthews: Are You My Mother, Alex (2011)
If I would actually believe in the relevance of the album format and acquiesce to the Gregorian calendar, then SSION‘s Bent would certainly make it onto my 2011 list. Here’s my reworking of the bittersweet “Nothing Happens at Nite”, using Cody Critcheloe’s a cappella over a new arrangement that shifts from French filter house and dance-pop into some kind of tropical interlude before unfolding into the cut-up disco closing. Thanks to Electrosexual for mastering my remix, and if you haven’t already heard Bent, you can download the whole album for free at SSION’s official site.
New York/Fire Island-based artist AA Bronson, founder of the artist group (not the fashion label) General Idea and author and editor of numerous books and essays, will be in Berlin this weekend to attend the opening of his exhibition “Queer Spirits and other Invocations” at Galerie Esther Schipper in Berlin-Schöneberg tomorrow evening. He will also present and sign his publication “Queer Spirits”, a collaboration with Toronto-based artist and academic Peter Hobbs at Pro qm in Berlin-Mitte on Saturday evening.
The book documents a series of performances entitled “Invocation of the Queer Spirits”, for which Bronson and Hobbs brought together groups of men to perform a queer group ritual, which Bronson himself describes as “a hybrid between group therapy, ceremonial magic, a séance, a circle jerk, and a quilting bee”. It also features a series of drawings by artist and partner in crime Elijah Burgher. If you’re not in Berlin this weekend you can order “Queer Spirits” via Creative Time.
For more info about the book and the artist check out this interview on the website Creative Times and this tumblr, which collects pictures of Bronson’s work and photographs of him. There’s also a pretty nice interview with AA Bronson on East Village Boys. This is where I found the beautiful portait on top taken by Ryan Pfluger.
The first sequel to A Nightmare on Elm Street gets a bad rap for a number of reasons: The original’s creator Wes Craven wasn’t involved, Freddy Krueger (the only returning character) is onscreen for only 13 minutes, and he inexplicably begins to kill his victims in real life rather than in their dreams. But as a standalone piece, it’s a camp classic! That’s mainly because of the looming homosexual desire that haunts the teenage protagonist Jesse…
I highly want to recommend to all Berliners to take a closer look at the program of this year’s Pornfilmfestival 2011 at Movimento cinema. It is a really good opportunity to see a couple of (festival) films of the past months that didn’t get a proper release in Germany (or anywhere else) or only were shown in cinema for a short amount of time – a lot of them we already mentioned here. Amongst the featured films are Christophe Honoré’s “Man At Bath”, which will be the opening film festival and which I recommend, the porn icon documentary “Sagat” by Pascal Roche + Jérôme M. Oliveira, “Mutantes”, a documentary about the pro-Sex and post-porn movement by Virginie Despentes, “The Family Complete” by Japanese director Koichi Imaizumi, “Uncle David” by David Hoyle, Mike Nichols and Gary Reich, Todd Verow’s bareback documentary “Bottom X”, the Bruce LaBruce documentary “The Advocate Of Fagdom”, as well as the recent work of SF director Travis Mathews, who will present the Berlin edition of his “In Their Room” series and show the trailer to his latest film “I Want Your Love”. And there’s much more to discover.
Here’s the teaser to the short film “Mates” by Antonio Da Silva, who will be shown in the gay short film program. Check out the program here, it is completely in German at the moment, but an English version will follow this week.
Berlin based DJ duo Discodromo has just returned to Berlin after two US gigs in New York and San Francisco, where the guys promoted their single “Mercurio”. The song was released in June as the first output of a new queer electronic imprint called Discaire, which was founded by Ryan Smith and DJ Pee Play from Honey Soundsystem. You can now officially watch the NSFW video to the single by an artist called Gold~n~sour on the label’s website – until recently it was only available to the owners of the 12″ vinyl. The B/W clip was shot on a Sunday morning after the duo’ party Cocktail D’Amore at the now officially closed artspace basso in Kreuzberg (official funeral tomorrow).
To watch it you just need to click here or on the screenshot below and then enter the password FLANEUR in capital letters.
On Saturday evening a huge performance night at Berlin’s HAU I theater will mark the official end of the 7-year dynasty of Kreuzberg’s art institution basso. The event entitled “Funeral Charade of Poses – an evening with friends and basso” will take place in conjunction with the performance festival “Testing Stage – A Window to Performa New York” and bring together around 30 artists who have played an important role in the history of the space. The evening starts at 19:30, but can be joined throughout the whole evening, tickets can be bought via HAU Online. You find the complete announcement and a list of all contributing artists below the jump. Farewell, basso.
“Rolling Stone”. The magazine had published his name and photograph amongst the ones of another 99 supposedly gay people under the headline “Hang them”. Its makers were sentenced to pay 1.5 million Ugandan shillings plus court costs to Kato and the other injured persons in this case.
