+++ Justin Leon Johnson aka Fatha Green, one half of Portland based duo Purple & Green has just released a pretty awesome solo EP/mixtape. Stream it here and buy it over at Bandcamp - you can decide yourself what you want to pay:
+++ A couple of days ago I received an email by a Swedish musician and set designer Johan Svenson, who introduced me to his electronic music trio called DELAYKLINIKEN. I really like their trancey latest Single “Everywhere”, which you can stream and download right here. There’s also a nice video to the song, you can watch it here.
+++ Kele Okereke (see sexy picture above) is about to release his new “The Hunter” EP next week. The EPs lead track “What Did I Do” feat. Lucy Taylor has already been released in September. You find the tracklist of “The Hunter” here and the video to “What Did I Do” here.
+++ Here comes a new video by Jessica 6 to their song “Prisoner of Love”, which premiered over at Interview Magazine yesterday. The song is a duet with Antony, who also appears in the video. Styling by Nicola Formichetti.
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…
This website would have around 100 visitors less per day if we hadn’t posted about Travis Mathews‘ semi-documentary project “In Their Room” and his short movie “I Want Your Love” over the past few months – they’ve turned out to be real Google magnets and I’m very thankful for that constant boost. “I Want Your Love” he has been produced as some sort of a test run for a feature film which the gay porn production company Naked Sword gladly agreed to finance after it became a huge success on the internet and has been watched more than 2 million times. The feature is now “finally, most definitely, wildly done” as Travis puts it and here’s a first teaser of what’s to come. I also recently made an interview with him, in which he also talks about his “In Their Room” Berlin movie, which Berliners will be able to see at the Berlin Pornfilmfestival later this month, where he will present it himself. I will post the the interview within the next few weeks. More about “I Want You Love” on the film’s website.
Alan Hollinghurst’s first novel since 2006 hit bookstores here in the U.S. last week.
“The Stranger’s Child”, a 500 + novel charting the goings-on of the Sawle family for decades beginning in 1913, appears to be Hollinghurst’s most epic book to date. Certainly in my top five favorite writers list, this one seems like a particularly good pick for forthcoming cold and foggy days in San Francisco.
I wanted to post the first part of a YouTube stream of the legendary queer experimental movie “Flaming Creatures” by director Jack Smith here, which some nice person had uploaded a couple of weeks ago. But since Google is obviously still on a crusade against nudity and especially gay/queer eroticism the video is “no longer available” (did I already mention that they shot down my Google Adsense account because we’re running a “pornographic website” here?). Luckily I found another online version of the film over at Ubuweb.com, where you can also stream the Smith movies “Normal Love” (1963) and “Scotch Tape” (1963). If you click on the picture below, you will be directed there.
“Flaming Creatures” was shot in 1962/1963 and depicted drag and forms of sexual ambiguity in such a self-confident and transgressive way that it was seized by the police at its premiere and later was officially determined to be obscene by a New York Crime Court. I’m still amazed about the groundbreakyness of these 43 minutes of film, although it’s orientalism is frequently criticized and it’s kind of exhaustive to watch it on online. But if you haven’t seen it yet you’ll at least get an impression. More about Smith and his work on Ubuweb.com.
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.
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.
The Antwerp Fashion Museum (MoMu) is currently showing the first big solo retrospective of fashion designer Walter Van Beirendonck entitled “Dream the World Awake”, which opened on September 9 and will run until February 2. The exhibition shows Walter’s work of three decades, reveals his sources of inspiration and investigates central topics of his designs. It also features a collaborative project between Walter, photographer Nick Knight and stylist Simon Foxton, who together have worked on a fashion film, which presents some sort of “best of” of the designer’s work, as well as on a huge photomontage (detail on top), which seems to be one of the highlights of the exhibition (you can watch the video below and scroll through the whole image on SHOWstudio). It will appear as a retrospective editorial in the Autumn/Winter issue of GQ Style.
Furthermore, the MuMa also has digitalized all videos of Walter’s past collections and will post two of them every week on this page. I posted one of the first two ones below, it’s the runway show of the W< Winter 1996/1997 collection “Wonderland” (the other one is a rather boring video of the exhibition opening). For more detailed information about the show check out the MoMu website + there are also interviews with Walter about the exhibition on Dazed Digital and on AnOther Web.
+++ Portland’s newcomers Purple & Green (see picture above) have just released their new 4-track EP “Sunshine”, which can be downloaded on bandcamp for whatever you wanna pay for it (including nothing). There’s also a new video to the title track “Sunshine”, which you can watch here, as well as their last video “Human Nature”.
+++ MEN founder JD Samson is featured in a fashion shoot of the latest ”Vogue Homme”. Check out all four pictures of photographer Maciek Kobielski on the website of the French gay magazine Tetu +++
+++ The website Homoground is a great source for music of queer artists. Every Monday the site releases a new mixtape by people related to the queer music scene, every Thursday you can download an audio podcast featuring music by queer musicians. The site also features tour date, live videos and much more. Check it out! +++
