Events
A Tribute To David Kato / “Call Me Kuchu” Premieres At Berlinale
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.
Here’s the trailer for “Call Me Kuchu”:
http://callmekuchu.com/
Great blog about the African LGTB rights movement: http://www.mask.org.za/
William S. Burroughs: A Man Within
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.
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“24 DAYS OF MATTER PRINTED” Curated by J.Morrison @ Printed Matter, NYC
Artist J.Morrison, the designer of our amazing Catch Fire shirt, is the curator of “24 DAYS OF MATTER PRINTED”, a live screenprinting project presented by NYC’s Printed Matter, a bookshop and non-profit organization dedicated to arts publications. By tomorrow until the December 24th there will be daily screenprinting sessions with a rotating cast of 20 (collaborating) artists in the Printed Matter storefront in support of the project – prints on various materials and objects will be sold for affordable prices between $10 and $100. On the long list of contributors are artists such as AA Bronson, Michael Magnan and Grant Worth, as well as Brian Kenny and Slava Mogutin, who have already published their contributions to the leitmotiv “Self-Portrait” in advance on Brian’s blog. For more detailed information check out the press release below the jump or join the event on Facebook.
Brian Kenny, Self Portrait
Slava Mogutin, “Lizard Boy”
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“SOLO – A Group Effort” @ Engels, Berlin
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)
24th MIX New York Queer Experimental Film Festival
If you live in New York City or happen to be there between the 15th and the 20th or November, you should check out the programm of the 24. edition of MIX festival, a festival for queer experimental film and art. The event takes place at 45 Bleecker St. theater in Manhattan and offers a impressive variety of films and arts stuff. Core of the festival are several curated short film screenings with promising titles such as “Using My Sexual Energy as a Tool to Fight the State is as Good a Tool as Any Other” (devoted to David Wojnarowicz, who said this), “Secret Identities” or “Noise: Trans-Subversions in Global Media Networks”, as well as screenings of feature films, while the theater will also be used as a space for installations and free performances. MIX also cooperates both with the MoMA, which will screening brand new restored 16mm prints of Jack Smith’s films and The Museum of Arts & Design, will show a François Sagat retrospective.
Check out www.mixnyc.org for the whole program or download the program right here.
Queer Spirit: AA Bronson in Berlin
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.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: The Gay One
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…
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Posted by Joey ON October 25, 2011 |
CATEGORY: Berlin, Film |
TAGS: A Nightmare on Elm Street 2, Crazy Bitch in a Cave, Dickey Doo, Expatriarch, gay horror, Halloween, Hanin Elias, Joey Hansom, †DRESSER
|
6th Pornfilmfestival Berlin 2011 (Oct 27-30)
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.
Pornfilmfestival Berlin, Oct 27 to 30, Moviemento Berlin-Kreuzberg
www.pornfilmfestivalberlin.de
Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970-1990 @ V&A London
The blockbuster exhibition for this season at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London (the institution dedicated to craft, fashion and style throughout the ages) comes with a surprisingly queer influence, although not as much as it truly deserves.
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“Funeral Charade Of Poses”: basso Says Bye-bye
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.
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Starlight
Film by Kate Kunath and Sasha Wortzel
“Founded on a principle of non-discrimination in 1959, the Starlite Lounge was a cherished meeting place for people of all walks of life and famous for being the oldest Black-owned bar in the heart of Brooklyn. Throughout enormous social change over five decades from civil rights to gay liberation to AIDS activism, the Starlite Lounge has been a fixture and central space in these movements. Just as the Starlite community has been deeply affected by these waves of change, the bar has also felt the impact of rapid gentrification in central Brooklyn. By following the eviction of Brooklyn’s oldest black owned non-discriminating establishment, Starlite illustrates the importance of social spaces in marginalized communities, examines the complexities of gentrification, and demands that the needs and desires of these communities are represented in the redevelopment of their neighborhoods.” From their website where you can also donate to the project (still in development): www.thestarliteproject.com
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One Flaming Day In A Rented World: An Evening With Mario Montez
No expert on Jack Smith or Mario Montez, I thought I’d share my take on a recent event at the Arsenal in Berlin in honor of Mario Montez and his career (http://www.arsenal-berlin.de/en/arsenal-cinema/current-program/single/article/2819/2803.html). Apparently Mario and representatives from the Arsenal – where you can find a full collection of all of Jack Smith’s films – have recently appeared at least in Poland and New York, so keep your eyes out for an appearance near you.
The evening opened on the building’s roof with a small but excited group of starlets – Mario Montez, Zazie de Paris and Vaginal Davis, among others – and their friends, groupies and fans singing a round of “happy birthday” over a multi-layered chocolate cake to Mario Montez who, it was announced, celebrated a birthday 10 days earlier. Mario’s age became a popular albeit de-emphasized conversation topic throughout the festivities, although in the end nobody cared enough to ask. From the party’s opening till its close, Mario sat – elegant and reserved – in a love seat in the corner awaiting a line of guests, all anxious to get her autograph for the minimal – perhaps ironical – fee of 2 Euros.
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