Gay neo-Nazi film wins top prize

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.

See Gay film festival keeps low profile Toronto Star

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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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Shanghai Journal Gay Festival in China Pushes Official Boundaries

New York Times

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Cynthia Nixon announces engagement at gay marriage rally

Film, TV, and theater star Cynthia Nixon announced to the crowd of thousands gathered at Broadway Impact’s Equality rally in New York City on Sunday, May 17, that she is engaged to be married to her partner since 2003, Christine Marinoni.

“I have a secret to tell you,” she told …

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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Robert Pattinson’s gay sex scenes in latest film Little Ashes … Mirror.co.uk

Robert Pattinson gets hot and steamy with a man in his latest film Little Ashes.

The Twighlight heartthrob plays Salvador Dali and stars alongside Spanish actor Javier Beltran, who plays poet Federico Garcia Lorca. See Robert Pattinson’s gay sex scenes in latest film Little Ashes … Mirror.co.uk

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Muslim gay filmmaker’s work to be shown at the arts school

UT at the Movies/Winston-Salem presents the documentary, A Jihad for Love, 7 p.m. Saturday at the ACE Theatre Complex on the UNC School of the Arts campus.

Muslim gay filmmaker, Parvez Sharma, brings to light the hidden lives of gay and lesbian Muslims from such countries as Iran, Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey, France, India and South Africa.

Admission is $5, and all proceeds will benefit the Adam Foundation and UNCSA’s School of Filmmaking.

For more information, call 336-918-0902, or e-mail OUTattheMovies@triad.rr.com.

See Muslim gay filmmaker’s work to be shown at the arts school
Winston-Salem Journal, NC

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Sundance: Still in Utah, Still Totally Gay

Despite threats of boycotts and a grim financial future for independent film, Sundance kicked off last night in Park City, Utah, continuing its tradition of being the place that high-art cineastes peddle their wares to mainstream distributors. This year includes an especially strong roster of LGBT-interest films, including, this year’s gay-for-Oscar Jim Carey vehicle, I Love You Phillip Morris. What are the gay films premiering in Utah that you’ll want to see– and in one instance, that you can see right now? Let’s find out @ Sundance: Still in Utah, Still Totally Gay
Queerty, NY

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North Texas LGBT community split over post-Proposition 8 tactics

Gay groups in north Texas are mixed in their response to plans to protest the Cinemark theater chain over donations made by company CEO Alan Stock in support of California’s marriage ban, Proposition 8. Morris Garcia, president of the Collin County Gay and Lesbian Alliance, which reportedly has two members who are corporate employees of Cinemark, said the group preferred to set up a dialogue with the movie chain. A gay filmmaker in Dallas organized a protest against Cinemark, but the city’s chapter of the Stonewall Democrats is not backing the event, in deference to local concerns. Dallas Voice

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Milk yanks gay movies from closet to mainstream

Milk is a message movie, but more importantly, it’s an openly proud and entirely self-possessed message movie that wears its progressive rhetoric on its rainbow sleeve.

The distinction is crucial, because when you get right down to the nitty-gritty nub of what director Gus Van Sant has been able to achieve with Milk, it goes beyond teaching a particularly loathsome chapter of American history.

Van Sant, the openly gay film director, has created a universally accessible movie about the birth of the gay movement that is not framed by shame.

Back when this movie was set, in the mid-1970s, shame was an inherent part of the entire gay experience and Van Sant quickly sketches the emotional mood in the opening credit sequence.

Small, plain white titles appear over archival footage of police raids on gay bars. Slowing down the black and white footage to a surreal, dreamy pace, Van Sant sends us through the glass darkly as we watch all sorts of men being loaded into paddy wagons with their hands hiding their faces.

It’s mind-altering imagery because it’s obvious these men are not criminals, yet truncheon-swinging police are corralling them into custody. Their only crime is hanging out with other men and being who they are, but homosexuality was seen as a legitimate reason to deprive a human being of his or her civil rights.

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