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.
See Quebec director sweeps awards for gay coming-of-age movie Canada.com
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Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/05/quebec-direct…
‘Milk’ Oscar Winner: My Emotional Voyage Home to High School
Editor’s Note: On May 9th, Academy Award-winning “Milk” screenwriter Dustin Lance Black returned to his high school in North Salinas, CA, as part of Live Out Loud’s Homecoming Project. Aiming to inspire a new generation of role models, the program brings lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) leaders back to their high schools to share their personal stories with today’s students. In this exclusive submission to the MTV Movies Blog, Black tells us about his first time returning to the school since that powerful Oscar night speech, when he had spoken of his struggles as a gay teenager.
by Dustin Lance Black
My palms got a little sweaty as I turned off East Alvin Drive in Salinas, and onto Kip Drive.
For the first time in 17 years, I saw the entrance to my old high school, the same one where I was once called “gay” by my peers. And it wasn’t said as a compliment — it was said with hate, anger, and on one occasion I was honestly afraid of getting my butt whipped.
So, I did what so many kids still do — I tried to vanish. I didn’t get great grades, I didn’t excel, I shrunk and hid, and I did my best to disappear at lunch. High school is tough for almost everyone, but for LGBT kids, it can be truly frightening. And as much as I know that I’m all grown up now, and that I can stand up for myself, I still got a little knot in my stomach as we pulled up to the front doors of North Salinas High and the camera crews closed in.
Before my speech, I hung out in a back room waiting to be announced, but I could hear the crowd inside the gym. It sounded big. Then I heard them play my Oscar speech, and if you haven’t heard it yet, it’s pretty clear that I’m a gay guy fighting for the LGBT kids out there. The room got very quiet; I got a little nervous. But when the Principal called my name and I came through those doors, I was greeted by a standing ovation from the over 1000 students who chose to show up. That was my first clue that something had changed at North High. See ‘Milk’ Oscar Winner: My Emotional Voyage Home to High School
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Larry Kramer Blasts Yale’s ‘Conspiracy of Silence’ on Gay History
When more than 300 Yale alumni and their guests arrived at Yale for the University’s first-ever lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender alumni reunion this weekend, they found not only camaraderie, but also controversy.
The first-ever recipient of the GALA Lifetime Achievement Award, gay activist Larry Kramer ’57, harshly rebuked the University for its treatment of gay history as an academic field during the three-day reunion, which was jointly organized by the LGBT alumni association Yale GALA and the Association of Yale Alumni. At a dinner ceremony Saturday, Kramer said the University has wrongly relegated the study of gay history to LGBT studies, arguing that there is a significant semantic difference between gay “history” and gay “studies.”
Declaring that queer and gender theories are “relatively useless,” Kramer — who was among the first to call for action against the AIDS crisis — said gay history has been “hijacked” by queer theorists.
Kramer and Yale have clashed before; in the mid-nineties, Yale rejected a sizable gift from Kramer to create either an endowed chair in gay and lesbian studies or a student center for gay students. In 2001, Kramer’s brother, Arthur Kramer ’49, gave a $1 million gift in Larry’s name to found the Larry Kramer Initiative for Gay and Lesbian Studies, which was closed after five years when the gift was spent.
In order to demonstrate the importance of gay history, Kramer declared that he believes many prominent American historical figures were gay, including George Washington, the famous explorer Meriwether Lewis, Abraham Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth.
The study of gay history is therefore important as a means of promoting acceptance for LGBT individuals, Kramer said.
“The plague of AIDS was allowed to happen because most of the world hates us,” he said. “They don’t know we’re related to Washington and Lincoln.”
While alumni sat attentively throughout the speech and gave Kramer a standing ovation, some said afterwards that they were standing not necessarily out of agreement with Kramer, but rather out of respect for his activism in the wake of AIDS.
“He’s been a provocateur all of his career, since the AIDS crisis,” said Ken Demario ’64. “I don’t know if this was an appropriate forum for as nasty a broadside as his was against the University.”
In a brief interview after the speech, Provost Peter Salovey said he agreed that the study of LGBT history is important.
See Gay activist and playwright Larry Kramer Blasts Yale & Yale Daily News. * Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual
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Transgender model steals fashion show
(Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) Rio closed its main fashion event of the year with less attention to the clothes than the model - a transgendered actress.
Patricia Araujo received a standing ovation after parading along the runway for the Complexo B brand to end the event in a city that delights …
Tags: Actress Patricia, Brazil Rio, Clothes, Complexo B, De Janeiro Brazil, Fashion Event, Fashion Show, Main Event, Model Fashion, Patricia Araujo, Rio De Janeiro, Rio De Janeiro Brazil, Rio Janeiro, Standing Ovation, TransgenderedTransgender model ’star’ of show
Rio closed its main fashion event of the year with less attention to the clothes than the model — a transgendered actress.
Patricia Araujo received a standing ovation after parading along the runway for the Complexo B brand late Friday to end the weeklong event in a city that delights in shocking the prudish with each year’s Carnival celebration.
Complexo B designer Beto Neves said he invited Araujo to amaze the public.
“In fashion, the cool thing is to surprise,” he told the O Dia newspaper.
See Transgender model ’star’ of show (pic)
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