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.
There are good reasons to believe that 2012 could become the year in which Wakefield Poole, one of the pioneers of (post-)porn cinema and the sexual revolution of the seventies, is celebrating another well-deserved comeback. The revival is due to filmmaker Jim Tushinski, who since 2007 has been working on a documentary about the ex-Broadway dancer and choreographer Poole, who in 1971 decided to start over and shot “Boys in the Sand”, a low-budget gay hardcore feature, which became an instant porn classic. Tushinski’s “Dirty Poole” is completely financed through private donations and according to the movie’s website and will premiere at a couple of festivals this spring. Here’s a teaser for the movie (which I liked a little more than the official trailer):
For a little taste of Poole’s work I recommend the “Clips” section on the “Dirty Poole” website, which contains remastered scenes from legendary Pooley films such as “Boys In The Sand” and the beautiful “Bijou” (see picture on top via Flickr/mixnycqueerfilm), as well as the trailer and some clips from his beautiful bible adaptation.
“United In Anger” is a new documentary about the era of the AIDS activism movement in New York City and its battles, 30 years after the discovery of HIV. The film has been finished this December after 10 years of production and is supposed to premiere at this year’s Berlinale. More about “United In Anger” on the movie’s website (where you can also still donate for it) and on its Facebook page.
A few days ago the NY Times has published this article by author Nelson George, who tries to outline a new black movement in cinema, that especially embraces “thorny issues of identity, alienation and sexuality”. George characterizes this “mini-movement” by taking a closer look at the movie “Pariah” by director Dee Rees, which celebrates its official US release next week. “Pariah” premiered at Sundance this year and portrays the adolescence of a 17-year-old African-American called Alike (pronounced ah-lee-kay), who has just started to embrace her sexual identity and has to deal with family pressures. You find the trailer for Pariah below, as well as the one for “Gun Hill Road” by Rashaad Ernesto Green, a second movie that is being highlighted in the article. “Gun Hill Road” tells the story of a father-son relationship that is going through tough times after a young man starts exploring and living out his trans identity, while his father, who has returned home from prison after three years, can’t really let go of his ideas of manhood and masculinity. The film doesn’t seem to have a proper release date, yet but with a little luck you may be able to see it at a film festival near your town sometime soon.
Via Todd / J’Kerian.
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!
American Horror Story is a pretty interesting new horror/drama series that premiered few months ago on cable channel FX in the States. The show centers on the Harmon family who moves into a restored mansion in Los Angeles, unaware that the house is haunted by it’s previous owners.
Sounds campy, yes, but it is also sexy and scary at the same time. I hadn’t really thought about writing about the show, until I watched the episode “Rubber Man” (S01E08). In previous episodes we have seen glimpses of the houses previous owners; a gay couple played by Zachary Quinto (who recently came out in the New York Magazine) and Teddy Sears, but in this episode we learn to know more about their history.
The show also features magnificent Jessica Lange and Frances Conroy from HBO’s Six Feet Under, of which American Horror Story slightly resembles.
About a month ago San Francisco based director Travis Mathews has presented the Berlin episode of his “In Their Room” project at this year’s Porn Film Festival. The movie, which interlaces a couple of very private and portraits of gay Berliners and their dating- and sex life, will be released in Germany via Edition Salzgeber this winter. The DVD will also feature the San Francisco episode and a couple of short solo portraits made in conjunction with this first project. I’ve interviewed Travis for the latest issue of Salzgeber’s sissy magazine, which will be out next week. Here’s the english version of the conversation, which goes back until the very beginnings of Travis’ work as a director. The second part, in which we talked about his new movie “I Want Your Love” (Trailer here) will be published here as well as soon as the movie is out.
Your movies all have interesting stories about how they came to live. Tell me a little bit about these backgrounds, maybe we could start with the San Francisco episode of “In Their Room”. It was a collaboration with BUTT magazine, wasn’t it?
Basically it was winter 2009 and I had been doing documentary stuff for quite a while and was really putting all of my energy into getting back into film after I had left it for a while to pursue being a psycho therapist. I read a posting on BUTT’s blog where they were curating some videos for the Ace Hotel in Palms Springs or LA or something. I had a pretty short amount of time to try and come up with something to submit for this thing. So the idea of “In Their Room” came together – I shot a couple of people not really knowing what I was doing or what the template was going to be for it. But soon it became really clear to me how I could put it together as a piece with different men linked together. So I did that and submitted it to BUTT.
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.
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…
“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.
