Mumbai hosts gay film fest

Gay director denies telling gay actors not to come out

Openly gay director Todd Holland recently explained remarks he made during a panel discussion at the California Outfest film festival. Holland has been accused of telling gay actors to stay in the closet during the panel discussion, an accusation he denies.

“[F]or the past week, my response has been twisted and shoved back into my mouth over and over — so that I appear to be a gay director telling all actors to ’stay in the closet,’” said Holland in a piece for The Wrap. “There are only a few things I allow to be shoved in my mouth — my mangled words are not one of them.”

La Weekly reported that during the Outfest panel, titled “Taking It to the Streets: LGBT Directors Get Political,” Holland “told a small audience that he advises young, gay male actors to ’stay in the closet.’” Holland, a past director on the The Larry Sanders Show, claims he was “just being realistic.”

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Gay film festival keeps low profile Toronto Star

BEIJING–When China’s homosexual moviemakers decided to hold their fourth-ever film festival this year, they took pains to avoid confrontation with the cops.

They’d had confrontations before.

So this year, they didn’t issue any press releases. They picked a venue where they didn’t have to apply for a government permit. And they insisted on calling the event The Beijing Queer Film Festival.

“The translation of queer in Chinese is `ku er,’” explains film director Cui Zi’en. “In the Chinese language, it’s actually a less well-known word – a less provocative word than `gay.’”

The idea, Cui says, is not to wave flags in the authorities’ faces.

Yesterday, the five-day film festival opened in a village on the outskirts of Beijing without incident.

It’s no longer illegal to be gay in China: that ended in 1997.

In 2001, the Chinese Psychiatric Association delisted homosexuality as a disease. But gay books and films remained banned here in China and the gay community continues to test the limits.

Cui and other organizers hope this week’s festival goes smoothly – and doesn’t get busted. Gay film fests in the capital were shut down in 2001 and 2005, while a festival in 2007 squeaked by under the radar.

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Shanghai Journal Gay Festival in China Pushes Official Boundaries New York Times

SHANGHAI — It was shortly after the “hot body” contest and just before a painted procession of Chinese opera singers took the stage that the police threatened to shut down China’s first gay pride festival. The authorities had already forced the cancellation of a play, a film screening and a social mixer, so when an irritated plainclothes officer arrived at the Saturday afternoon gala and flashed his badge, organizers feared the worst.

After some fraught negotiations, Hannah Miller, an American teacher who helped put together the weeklong festival, agreed to limit the crowds, keep the noise down and, most important, “not let anything happen that might embarrass the government,” she explained after returning from the impromptu sidewalk meeting. “That was a close call,” she said.

Crisis averted, the party continued.

And so it went for Shanghai Pride week, a delicately orchestrated series of private events that revealed how far China’s gay community had come, and how much further it had to go. In the 12 years since homosexuality was decriminalized in China, there has been an unmistakable blossoming of gay life, even if largely underground. Most big cities have gay bars, and social networking sites ease the isolation of those living in China’s rural hinterland. Antigay violence is virtually unheard of.

But official tolerance has its limits. Gay publications and plays are banned, gay Web sites are occasionally blocked and those who try to advocate for greater legal protections for lesbians and gay men sometimes face harassment from the police. For years, movie buffs in Beijing have tried, and failed, to get permission for a gay film festival.

This month, public security officials forced Wan Yanhai, a prominent advocate on gay issues, including AIDS, to leave Beijing for a week because they feared he might cause trouble during the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.

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Gay pride invitation goes sour Albany Times Union

ALBANY — A local woman whose vandalized Volkswagen launched her on a career as a gay activist welcomed nationwide as a speaker, often in conjunction with a documentary film she made about her experiences, will not be in the Capital Region for this weekend’s gay pride festival because of a dispute with event organizers.

The activist, Erin Davies, blames the Capital Pride Committee, a group of community volunteers and staffers of the Capital District Gay & Lesbian Community Council, for scuttling an Albany showing of her award-winning documentary, “Fagbug.”

Accepted at dozens of film festivals in the U.S. and abroad, the movie will be shown tonight, the date originally planned. But the screening has been moved from a 250-seat theater at the State Museum to the Photography Center of the Capital District in Troy, where it will be shown in a room that seats approximately 20.

“They tried to bribe and threaten me, but I wouldn’t let them and just found another place,” said Davies, 31. She alleges that anonymous members of the committee thought her $10 suggested ticket price for the museum screening was too high and vowed to remove the showing from Capital Pride listings unless she lowered it. Davies makes her living with paid speaking engagements and film screenings; the admission price was meant to offset some of the difference between what she normally receives for appearances and the $500 fee she had agreed to for the museum event, she said.

Organizers and other people involved in discussions with Davies dispute her account of what happened and characterize Davies as having a martyr complex that led her to exaggerate routine, if frustrating, negotiations into antagonism and personal attacks.

“We absolutely support (the screening). It’s always been one of our events,” said Nora Yates, executive director of the community council. The screening was included in printed calendars and is mentioned, with its new Troy location, on the community council’s Web site. Founded in 1970, the CDGLCC, believed to be the oldest such continuously operating group in the country, is the prime force behind the 11-day, 34-event Capital Pride 2009 observance that culminates with Sunday’s pride parade and festival in Washington Park.

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Quebec director sweeps awards for gay coming-of-age movie

Quebec filmmaker Xavier Dolan swept three of the four prizes Friday at the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight for his film I Killed My Mother (J’ai tue ma mere).

The 20-year-old’s first feature won the Art Cinema Award, given by an international jury of independent cinema programmers and the SACD Prize for best French-language film.

Dolan also won the Regards Jeunes 2009 Prize, given to a first film by a jury of young cinephiles.

The remaining prize, the Europa Cinemas Label, was given to the Austrian movie La Pivellina by Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel.

The Montrealer wrote and directed the coming-of-age movie, which is about a 16-year-old boy just discovering his gay sexuality and fighting with his mother, who constantly annoys him.

The film was one of the most talked about titles of the Directors’ Fortnight — a sidebar of the Cannes Film Festival — and its first screening was greeted with a standing ovation.

Dolan, who has compared his Cannes experience to a fairy tale, said the awards left him speechless.

“I’m completely flabbergasted, we never thought we would win a prize,” Dolan told the French language all-news network RDI.

“I can’t begin to tell you how moving this is,” he added.

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Chinese director Lou Ye braves ban risk at Cannes

Chinese director Lou Ye brushed off fears he may face problems with the authorities when he returns home after showing his new film “Spring Fever” at the Cannes film festival.
The film, a graphic drama that deals with the taboo subject of homosexuality, was shot in secret after officials slapped a five-year banning order on Lou preventing him from making films following his last feature “Summer Palace.”
That film, shown in Cannes in 2006, examined the protest movement that led to the brutal repression in Tiananmen Square in 1989 and earned Lou international acclaim as well as ostracism from the official world of Chinese cinema.
But speaking on Thursday after the press screening of “Spring Fever,” he played down the furor that has surrounded both the film’s subject matter and his problems with the powerful Chinese Film Office.
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Graphic Gay Film, Made in Secret, Makes it to Cannes from China

The 62nd edition of the international film festival at Cannes (the “Festival de Cannes”) includes a new look at American culture from Ang Lee of “Brokeback Mountain” fame, as well as a secretly-filmed movie about gays in China.A May 15 article at Adelaide Now quoted the director of “Spring Fever,” Lou Ye, as saying, “I hope to be the last Chinese director ever to be banned.”The article said that the full-length film contains several graphic scenes depicting sex between men. The movie had to be made in secret not only because of the subject matter, but also because Ye has been banned from making films for a five-year span, following his last movie, “Summer Palace,” which is set in 1989 and concerns the Tiananmen Square demonstrations.”We were psychologically prepared to be stopped during the filming,” said Ye, “but that never happened, and today here we are with the film and the cast, which after all is a good thing.” See Graphic Gay Film, Made in Secret, Makes it to Cannes from China
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Tribeca film targets hypocrisy in US gay politics

A documentary called “Outrage” argues that closeted homosexual U.S. politicians who vote against the interests of gays and lesbians should be “outed” because their hypocrisy has slowed the progress of gay rights.

Written and directed by Kirby Dick, the film relies on interviews with people who claim to have had gay relationships with politicians who vote against gay marriage, hate crime legislation, gays in the military, and funding for HIV/AIDS research.

“Outrage” premiered at this week’s Tribeca Film Festival in New York and opens on May 8 in select U.S. cities.

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Gay politicians’ hypocrisy uncovered in movie ‘Outrage’

As Obama passes his first 100 days in office, I find myself sad that we liberals have less and less to complain about. Guantanamo Bay is closing, good health care policy is in the works, and I no longer have nightmares about McCain invading my living room on top of an elephant as if he were a Carthaginian emperor.

Nonetheless, liberals in 2009 still have more things to complain about than Holden Caulfield would, holding a broken Miley Cyrus record.

One such complaint is homosexuality in America. This week’s “gay controversy” surrounded Miss California and her Twitter-quarrel with Perez Hilton. I could take an opinion on this. But I won’t. Why? Because important American figures don’t wear tiaras.

Moving on, a controversy occurred at the Tribeca Film Festival. A documentary titled “Outrage,” which outs allegedly closeted right-wing politicians, previewed this past weekend in lower Manhattan.

To begin with, I should be upset there’s a movie dedicated to this. To out someone is a bit of a faux pas, and this movie probably doesn’t help the queer cause. At the same time, it kind of makes the director of the film, Kirby Dick, look like the same four-letter word that is also his last name. On the other hand, gossiping about and laughing at the follies of Republican congressmen is definitely quite fun.

Dick’s film draws on a compilation of substantiated rumors to expose conservative Republicans. The more obvious of these individuals includes former Rep. Mark Foley, who was indicted for sexual relationships he had with 16-year-old male pages, and Larry Craig, who was caught cruising a men’s bathroom at a Minnesota airport.

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