Gay film festival to showcase Japanese queer cinema

By Staff Writer, PinkNews.co.uk • February 29, 2008 - 14:55

This year there will be a retrospective on Japanese queer films from the 1960s to the present.

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Now in its 23rd year, the Torino GLBT Film Festival or "Da Sodoma a Hollywood" will be held from 17th to 25th April 2008.

Organisers said it will be the third Turin festival jointly organised and administered with Italy's National Museum of Cinema.

"23 years of exploration and construction of queer imagination," they said in a press release.

"With a sharp discerning eye for perceiving new developments, the festival has gone from strength to strength, becoming one of the major drivers of dialogue between the GLBT community and the public.

"Moreover, it has introduced Italian audiences to the works of established directors such as Francois Ozon, Gus Van Sant, Derek Jarman and Todd Haynes."

Last year more than 25,000 people from all over the world attended.

Along with the competition sections for full-length features, shorts and documentaries, this year there will be a retrospective on Japanese queer films from the 1960s to the present.

Sebastien Lifshitz and Stanley Kwan be present at the festival and honoured with retrospective tributes.

Other highlights include:

* Divine, camp icon par excellence, who died in 1988 at age 43, will be remembered on the 20th anniversary of his death with an image-gift by Francesco Vezzoli and with a screening of Paul Bartel's Lust in the Dust (1985), where Divine teamed up with Tab Hunter in a triumph of kitsch.

* Jodie: An Icon

A special evening will be dedicated to Jodie Foster, a talented actress, now out as a lesbian icon. Pratibha Parmar's documentary Jodie: An Icon explains how she managed this in over 30 years of screen acting.

*Retrospective: j-ender: big bang love in Japan

An exciting journey into the empire of senses and signs. In collaboration with NEO(N)EIGA, the Festival will present the first European retrospective of Japanese queer films from the 1960s to the present.

The retrospective will cross borders of gender and genre as it explores the Land of the Rising Sun.

The cinema offers unique perspectives for us as distant observers of a country and a culture whose complexity is revealed in the endless paradigms of self-portrayal.

For more information visit the festival website.

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