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es some incisive musings about how profound the logics of apartheid were shorts programme life s too short includes girl bunnies lesbian clichés and man eating wedding dresses the skinny patrik ian polk 2012 usa the skinny never forces neat resolutions and easy forgiveness a sequel beckons for these characters and though the lessons they learn aren t revolutionary and they might have grown from sex and the city esque character types magnus wants the 2 5 children kyle is samantha it ll be hard to resist spending more time in their sexy sparkling presence the ballad of genesis and lady jaye marie losier 2011 usa although it seems petty to complain about sexism in a film concerned with the breakdown of gender roles lady jaye s scant presence she often exists as a mere haunting giggle is the film s inherent weakness losier constantly delves back into aspects of genesis past and arcs these entangled narratives towards the present but only once does lady jaye s life receive the same treatment as narrated by genesis difficult love zanele muholi 2011 south africa difficult love feels a little unevenly constructed with an overarching eschewed narrative however as a portrait of the power of the creative challenging patriarchy and homophobia without their violent tendencies it isn t difficult to admire yes or no saratsawadee wongsomphet 2010 thailand it s hard to really dislike such a sweet bubblegum romance between such a likeable pairing but the film almost turns into a strange checklist of every romantic cliché in the rulebook there s a dramatic confrontation in torrential rain one character eavesdropping on an emotional declaration an obsessive rival threatening suicide and so on the mountain ole giæver 2011 norway filmed in vast widescreen you re unlikely to happen upon a film as beautifully shot as the mountain very often cinematographer oystein mamen is attuned to every breath of wind on every blade of grass working with the sound designers to make the mountain a third character in this sparse drama stud life campbell x 2012 uk budget constraints obviously contribute heavily to the small overexposed location shooting but the close camera work feels like an imposition on the engaging performances of the actors worse this style neutralises every space so that the sense of danger inherent in the visibility of the alternative lifestyles with the london cityscape never connects even when events take a darker turn of course you shouldn t forget to check out the rest of the reviews on the sosogay website the most comprehensive coverage of the festival you ll find anywhere and all top class i mean it s unlikely that i bagged all of the great films image from joe belle courtesy of bfi org posted by dave at 5 00 pm no comments labels llgff london lesbian and gay film festival sunday march 11 2012 queer anglo films take 3 sebastiane for our third discussion james and i move both forward and backwards in time we re five years on from last take sunday bloody sunday but derek jarman s feature debut is set thousands of years back in ancient rome there s something interesting about sebastiane and it s not just his penis david sebastiane was the first film to be recorded entirely in accurately translated latin that s a hell of a way for derek jarman to introduce himself to cinema we should note that sebastiane was co directed by paul humfress but since he s done no feature work since we ll probably talk exclusively about jarman jarman s films are the type that lie everything controversial on the surface so that you can t even look at them without confronting these issues and opinions and images which is why i feel this discussion might be considerably more difficult that our previous two sebastiane intertwines religion and sexuality on the level of imagery and of text and i m finding the extrapolation of what these mean within the film hard to manage it s also something we can t avoid so brace yourself for some inappropriate comments and boneheaded observations i want to take this down to the most basic reading i made of the film at the end if we read the entire film as queer which seems necessary then sebastian despite his refusal of severus advances is gay too only what his rhapsodic words to justin demonstrate is the purity of his gayness the separation of love from lust you think your drunken lust compares to the love of god he asks severus boldly even in the face of potential rape severus hazy slow motion views of anthony and adrian s wet make it clear that he seems the men around him purely in terms of the bodily carnal involvement but i think what the actors do both in those scenes and later when adrian is leaning against anthony is suggest the genuine affection and coupledom between the pair lust is part of love but severus separation from the men around him causes him to objectify and see sex as the only possible connection to them he s also along with max who momentarily acts as our narrator the old guard the remnants of the brutal roman society they ve left behind one of the most amusing moments is where the camera s so disinterested in max s lament over how the glory of the past is receding that it lingers heavily over another man shaving his body it s easy to criticise the film for baring so much flesh and filming certain scenes in such an erotic way they re straight no pun intended out of porn films but jarman and humfress don t use these techniques so basically the constant appearance of dicks becomes normalised even comedic when they all try to outdo each other s fake endowments especially late in the film the degree of nudity for the various men seems to reflect social status note how emphasised adrian is in the final scene and how he has to be forced to shoot sebastian because he is the submissive partner of anthony and has been teased earlier about being a virgin the younger member of the group at the prey of his superiors his posing in the final scene is erotic but it s also so posed that it reflects the kind of emotionless decorative qualities of male flesh that we see in the ornate opening with a motionless man painted gold and muted the film s natural equivocation of sex and violence swords penises you know the drill and sebastian doesn t want to have sex so he refuses to clean those swords create the natural solution to severus sexual frustration if he can t sex sebastian he can reach satisfaction by piercing sebastian with an arrow in fact the involvement of all of the men in this final act is a perverse reflection of the bukkake climax to the dancing scene that opens the film and now james you have carte blanche because i ve just said bukkake twice james maybe we can start a drinking game every time we say bukkake in this post the readers have to take a drink it s really the inevitable continuation of the bridesmaids girls scorsese sebastiane was my first jarman film all i really knew about him was that he made queer avant garde films and that tilda swinton was his muse so i was actually surprised to discover that sebastiane wasn t as out there as i had feared then again what does it say about me that i did not find a film with a barebones plot and shot entirely in latin out there perhaps it was the gratuitous amounts of male flesh on display unashamed of just how gratuitous it was like you mentioned many scenes were shot like they were straight out of a porno perhaps though jarman and humfress weren t borrowing so much as they were influencing that genre i m no expert in 70 s porn but a few of these scenes particularly the one where the guys nearly naked and wet start throwing around a ball on the beach felt completely modern to me oh look at these strapping young dudes just tossing a ball around like the hot macho jocks they are hot macho jocks who are going to fuck each other that is i like what you have to say about the film s love vs lust angle which i must admit completely escaped me when i was considering sebastiane s queerness i was more focused on the relationship between sebastian s homosexuality and his christianity there s no doubt that sebastian was attracted to severus he openly admits it yet i never quite saw it as something he was interested in experiencing or exploring in fact he seems oddly ashamed of it jarman and humfress are not exactly subtle in making sebastian a christ like figure over the course of the film he is brutally beaten for refusing the follow severus orders sexual and otherwise instead of getting the punishment over as soon as possible however sebastian refuses to give in accepting beatings far beyond what his body can handle it s almost as if he feels he deserves these punishments for the sins he has committed namely his homosexual desires it s no coincidence that he mentions his desire for severus during one of these cruel punishments the purity of sebastian s christianity contrasts strongly with the hedonistic romans who surround him he won t allow himself to give into severus lust but he also still has some feelings for him besides as you said the films shows that love and lust go hand in hand but neither sebastian or severus can see this in a way the film s finale is the only way it can end sebastian must die for the sins of not only himself but of the soldiers around him let me pose a question that has been nagging at me since i watched this film why is it that the movies associate ancient rome with male homoeroticism and homosexuality there are countless examples no doubt but perhaps the most glaring choice is fellini s satyricon released just a few years before sebastiane that film was an epic about one young roman s love lust for an even younger male a twink to be more specific and the journey he takes to be with him it s a surprisingly brazen film both for the time it was made and even among fellini s filmography but i think it got away with it precisely because of its historical context even with last year s the eagle many spectators were hoping tatum and bell got it on because that s what we expect from ancient roman epics why is it that ancient rome was and to an extent still is a safe haven in films for homosexuality or at the very least homoeroticism to flourish in other words why is it we got to see bukkake in sebastiane without uk censors burning every last print of this movie is it because of the well recorded decadence of the empire particularly during its final years and why is rome used more often than ancient greece where homosexuality and pederasty was widely reported and approved max neil kennedy momentarily acts as conduit david i think they key to your last question lies in your final word it s quite clear that although homosexuality is a common occurrence among these romans it s not strictly approved in sebastiane at least i ve not seen the eagle nor satyricon and i m no expert on roman history so i m proceeding with caution on this subject but jarman and humfress seem very careful to give a fair amount of time to max who even though he admits having engaged in it himself views homosexuality as inferior wrong somehow they re okay for a quick one i d guess that we see much less of ancient greece within this topic precisely because it was too normalised i think the roman films we re talking about rely to an extent on a frisson of deviation from the normal sebastiane is a gay film from gay directors for gay audiences but the central conflicts we ve been discussed are powered by that sense of castigation and punishment of someone who is inherently wrong as you suggested sebastiane equates christianity with homosexuality at its most essential the film is an allegory for the homophobia and resulting violence that still occurs in modern society and certainly did in the 1970s where homosexuality was more visible due to legalisation but far from accepted jarman and humfress twist these depictions to a brilliantly confrontational degree the jewish man crucified by christians jesus equates to a christian crucified by romans sebastian to a gay man attacked by possibly repressed heterosexuals the contemporary audience the final point is an obvious but essential one discrimination is bad your excellent perceptions also pick up on the self hatred that is often induced in gay people by the repressive society around them becoming convinced that they deserve their punishment when they are instead essentially suffering because of the self hatred of people who can t accept homosexuality their own but also simply the concept i do remember as it began thinking this is the weirdest film i have ever seen and then ten minutes later it felt almost ordinary i think it takes a certain brazen attitude to pull that off as you suggested even though it does use the nudity for titillation it contextualises that within an environment where the titillating elements are always on display and thus normalised the exotic is sucked out of the nude bodies because we see them doing everything naked and so those scenes you describe are not necessarily pornographic simply the day to day life you re right though since 70s porn i am honestly not lying when i say i ve been reading academic pieces on pornography just hours before i write this it s part of my module on exploitation cinema was driven by actual narratives as opposed to the more direct clips we get today and scenes like those ball games definitely reflect the infamous volleyball scenes in earlier films about nudist camps how developed pornography was in terms of the slow motion erotica jarman and humfress shot i couldn t tell you but i think it s worth noting that they aren t strictly sex scenes what exuded powerfully from those scenes for me was the good humour of the two men porn generally reduces sex to a physical connection and those scenes felt more emotionally driven adrian ken hicks and anthony janusz romanov embrace i m most intrigued by the character of justin as his relationship with sebastian seems to strengthen it becomes clear that he s actually in love with him to the point of sacrifice where he s too made to ape the crucifixion with a crown of thorns forced onto his head the film doesn t depict any actual relationships that aren t founded on sex it doesn t seem possible for these men to simply be friends a society without females seems to suggest that the sexual drive is so strong that homosexual interaction is simply inevitable which rather shatters the idea of sexual categorisation that our society is based on it takes a story set in such an ancient time period as this to make these things apparent which is why i found the character of max so strange because he s the only one so insistent on the deviant nature of homosexuality he isn t strictly judgemental but he doesn t understand the preference whereas for the rest even the idea of preference doesn t seem to exist james does the film position justin as the idealized love counterpoint to severus lust i never thought of it before but now that you mention it the i...