Welcome to the Pink City!
This is now the third Lesbian, Gay, Bi and Trans (LGBT) Film Festival of Toulouse which is the film buff section of Arc-en-Ciel – the association which not only fights for our rights but brings you the finest in Queer cinema! Toulouse sparkles for a week and not just the bricks will be Pink! It is so great to see films from all over the world with stories that include us, and in more imaginative ways than ever. They range from the frankly frivolous geared at making you laugh; dramas that include everything life can throw at a person, to the more sombre stories, from parts of the world where being homosexual is definitely not yet gay.
There are three films previewing:
Were the World Mine (Gustafson, US 2008)
Die Like A Man (Rodrigues, Portugal 2009)
I Love You Phillip Morris (Ficarra & Requa, US 2009). Phillip Morris isn’t just a preview in Toulouse but the whole of France. It opens nationwide the week after us – so please, tell everyone where you saw it first!
Four of the feature films screened are preceded by shorts aimed at adolescents and have already been showing in cinemas for some weeks. They’re very well-made and acted and are part of the programme ‘Cinq courts métrages contre l’homophobie’ (Five shorts against homophobia). Widely seen on Canal+ and in cinemas – and endorsed by the government! – they are a real shot in the arm for visibility and tolerance.
There is an American and two Portuguese films with transgender story-lines. Normal (Anderson, US 2003) where Roy, the Midwesterner begins his journey to womanhood by wearing earrings (big earrings) into work; and no he doesn’t work in television, his colleagues are truck drivers. A Outra Margem (The Other Side – Rocha, Portugal 2007) Ricardo works as a drag artist in Lisbon but life has lost all pleasure for him since the death of his lover. However , thanks to his nephew, a boy with Down’s Syndrome who has acting ambitions, he finds meaning in life again. The young actor who plays the nephew almost steals the show; he feels for his uncle but is hilarious as he insists on a friendship which at first is not at all welcomed by the grieving Ricardo.
The local word in Cameroon for closet is ‘nkuta’ and Céline Metzger’s documentary Sortir du Nkuta (Coming Out of the Closet – France 2009) shows us a society where to be homosexual can mean a long prison sentence. Metzger will be presenting her film and there’ll be a discussion afterwards.
At the Goethe Institute Mein Freund aus Faro (My Friend from Faro -Neul, Germany 2008) complicates first love with androgyny. Mel, attracts another young girl who takes her for a boy. Needless to say this can’t last forever. This is also a short Open (Siebenrock, Germany 2005) which makes sure you will never feel the same again about empty canteens. The screening is free and there’s a drink afterwards.
The festival opens with Were the World Mine for the boys, and closes with Rain (Govan – Bahamas 2009) and Drool (Kissam – US 2009) for the girls. And this is not all. There is intense first love in a german boarding school for girls ; love and class in Edwardian England. There is the first love of Swedish teenagers, the last love of old Americans. The difficulties of love even when you’re young, beautiful and rich; when you run off with your girl-friend and your bad, dead husband is in the boot of the car. And what happens to small-town America when the mischief first sown by Shakespeare becomes gay on a midsummer night . . . .
Hope to see you at the screenings!
Enjoy!
