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21 million people take part in global LGBTI film festival

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21 million people take part in global LGBTI film festival

fiveFilms4freedom LGBT film festival finds audience in over 125 countries.
| BY GARETH JOHNSON
Image courtesy of BFI Flare festival.
LGBTI Film Festival

LGBTI Film Festival

The BFI Flare film festivalis popular enough that even if you live in London you have to be lucky to get a ticket to watch the LGBT themed films being shown.
If you are LGBT and live in countries such as India, Poland, or the Ukraine, your opportunities of being able to watch movies that reflect your sexuality and your experiences will be even more remote.
The British Council, which is a UK organisation that internationally promotes British culture and education, has partnered with the BFI Flare festival and UK charity Stonewallto create a digital, global, LGBT film festival.
UK film-maker Paul Greengrass (director of movies such as The Bourne Supremacy, and Captain Phillips) is actively supporting the positive role that film festivals can play:
‘Film festivals at their best are a window and also a mirror’ said Greengrass. ‘…a window through which we can see the world, and a mirror in which we can see ourselves.’
The 5Films4freedom festival runs from 19-29 March 2015, the five films available through the online festival have already reached over 21 million people in 125 different countries around the world.
The five short films that are screening as part of the festival are:
An Afternoon (En Eftermiddag)
Director Søren Green’s new short film is an exploration of nascent sexuality. Mathias and Frederik are two friends who spend an afternoon together; Mathias has decided that this is the time to tell Frederik that he is in love with him.
Chance
Jake Graf’s self-funded short film focuses on older gay love and overcoming loneliness as a chance encounter between Trevor and a mysterious stranger equally troubled by his own past, forces both men to start to live again.
Code Academy
Canadian writer and director Nisha Ganatra is best known as Producer/Director of Transparent, the Golden Globe-winning TV series. When searching for love in all the virtual places, Frankie, Libby and Sheridan of The Code Academy are their own worst enemy.
Morning Is Broken
Director and writer Simon Anderson’s 2014 film is a coming-of-age drama set in the English countryside, following a young man’s struggle to come to terms with his sexuality while at his older brother’s wedding.
True Wheel
Director Nora Mandray’s 2015 documentary focuses on Fender Bender, an inspirational bicycle workshop for Detroit’s queer and transgender communities.
The films showing as part of the festival can be viewed via the BFI online player.

The Happy Gordons

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The Happy Gordons

Lakme Productions

This video documentary sets out to examine Gay life in Ireland, and gives most of its 26 minutes to Irish lesbians and gay men in New York.  These include Anne Maguire of the ILGO (Irish Lesbian and Gay Organisation) taking being arrested and hassled by Noo Yoicks Finest (the polis) calmly in her stride, Billy Quinn a Dublin-born artist and Tariach MacNaillais.
Tariach came to Gay politics by way of the Hunger Strikes agitation and says he was told than an out Gay man was not going to be employed in his field of Youth and Community Work.  The other person from Northern Ireland who spoke, Cherry Smyth, lives in London (England, UK).  She is of middle-class, liberal Protestant origin.  Her parents had she makes clear, no insuperable problems with her sexuality.  She also said things about “being Irish” which I found difficult to grasp.  You don’t have to be Catholic and Gaelic to be Irish.  Who said you did?  Why does “being Irish” matter?
Billy Quinn is a working class Dubliner who was sexually abused in his childhood and has worked in bars from a very yong age.  Where he acquired his rather plummy accent is a mystery.  He compared Molly Bloom unfavourably with Jane Austen’s heroines.  The latter were prissy and repressed but James Joyce’s Molly was a great sexual Earth-Mother.  This proves he hasn’t read either Joyce or Austen.  Compared, for example, with Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, Molly is positively south.  Jane Austen, a great comic writer, is central to English, even British culture.  Joyce is not central to modern Irish culture.  Billy Quinn’s paintings, founded, so far as one could see, in a culture of “wee holy pictures” and fold Catholicism seems far more relevant to what one could almost call a post-Catholic Republic than Joyce, the middle-European intellectual.
Quinn says that many of his friends found the news that Ireland had abandoned practically all of the laws criminalising Gay sexuality almost impossible to believe.  Kieran Rose explained why it was not impossible in the rather short amount of time he was allowed.  Mike Quinlan said that ten years ago a Pride demo “ran down Grafton Street”, implying that this was nervousness on the part of the marchers – rather than the fact that a decision was taken to hurry us up with fantastic disco tracks.  In 1992, GLEN (the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network) decided on a Pride for Dublin: the fact that Galway was organising its third and Belfast its second Pride[s] was neither here nor there of course … not.
The video looks very good.  You can’t really miss with the New York skyline and the Irish scenery, and the excitement of a big public ceremony, namely St Patrick’s Day parade.  A flash of wit was a group of red-necks carrying an AOH banner marked ‘Orange County’.  There was a flash of Belfat Pride with a bible-0thumper given more time to talk than the locals.  There was a cut to Catholic objectors to Dublin Pride, which appeared to be saying that one was as bad as the other.  But the Paisleyites put up a bigger (if not a better) show.
The Sin Fein banner was shown at the Dublin Pride demo (it was the one which came days after the change in the law).  Why, one wonders?  There were a dozen – at least – ‘straight’ political groups there, including Democratic Left and its leader De Rossa.  There was also the Socialist Workers Movement, which has been assiduous in it support of Gay groups – to the point of being irritating.  Why were they not shown?
There did seem to be a rather simple-minded (straight) political agenda behind these images or lack of the, including the non-appearance of people who actually live in Northern Ireland (not to mention the rest of the island).
This sort of thing is not inherently a bad thing artistically – it can give a certain flavour to a work.  But the special flavour of the place (Ireland-in-general and Northern Ireland in particular) leached away, mainly because most of the people talking had lived outside of the island for the greater part of their short lives.
There were really two videos fighting to get out of this one.  Maybe Paula Crickard, the director, should re-splice the material and produce one on New York and one (possibly even two) on Ireland – there are plenty of tales worth the telling.
 
Reviewer; Sean McGouran  Reprinted from upstart print edition

Should the YouTube copy of this documentary stop working, then it can also be viewed at the Northern Visions Archive

For a lost soldier

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  • Studio: Strand Home Video
  • Actors: Maarten Smit, Andrew Kelley, Jeroen Krabbé, Freark Smink, Elsje de Wijn
  • Directors: Roeland Kerbosch
  • Writers: Roeland Kerbosch, Don Bloch, Rudi van Dantzig
  • Producers: Guurtje Buddenberg, Matthijs van Heijningen

This film breaks all the barriers regarding male sex – a young boy reaching pubrty introduced to the pleasure of love with an adult man.  A man who is a tranisient soldier,
 
Based during the Second World War in Holland when the Allies started liberating Europe, this film stirs something in everybody, whether it be loathing, liking or ambivalence.
I loved this film  The main characters, 12 year old Jeroen (Marten Smit) and Walt (Andrew Kelley) are totally believable.  They both bring a spark of originality to what could have been a very low key, possibly boring story.
My only criticism is regarding the actor planying the adult Jeroen, he did not in my view do justice to the acting of the boy.  He did not convince me in his description of the dance moves, or in his part.  Possibly this could be the directing, but I do not feel so.
Do not come to this film expecting excitement, blood or guts, you won’t get them.  This film is full of tenderness, love and the possibility of a happy ever after ending.
Get it out on DVD, or see it in the cinema, you won’t be disappointed.



Orlando

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Orlando
UK/Rus/France/Germany co-production
Director/Screenplay: Sally Potter
Cert: PG
93 mins
OrlandoThe notion that there is a Gay sensibility has been controverted by some people but this film seems to me to be in a Gay mode – the word ‘tradition’ is too strong at present. Some of the set-pieces at the beginning of Orlando’s adventures in Elizabethan England reminded one of Paradjanov’s films specially Colour of Pomgranates. Not in their look but in the tretment of the screen as a ‘picture’ (that films started out as “motion pictures” is something that western European and especially British Isles film-makes have tended to forget). The ‘picture’ here were like those Tudor-period pictures where the subjects all look out at the viewer. The welcome for Queen Elizabeth I to Orlando’s parents house is clearly based on such paintings – the skating scenes where Orlando waxes rather too familiar with Sasha the Muscovite princess is a bit sneaky, it is more like a Victorian genre painting than the genuine Elizabethan article.
Paradjanov (whose name was Paradjanian, it’s an Armenian name, but he was born in Moscow! – the joys of [federal] union!) based his images on the art of the Christian Caucasian peoples and also to some extent on Islamic art – his images are static like icons; they are also stunningly beautiful. This film might not be quite so overwhelming for people who live in these isles but it has been very popular in American (and it probably will be in Europe).
So far as the narrative itself is concerned, it is handled quite straight, so the oddities in the Orlandooriginal novel by Virginia Woolf are simply taken for granted. And they are very odd oddities, Orlando is granted immortality and in the middle of the eighteenth century changes gender! This is after a period where the “male” Orlando’s realtionship with the local Indian Rajah was less than entirely heterosexual (it is not implied that they were “at it” – but even for the period it is pictured as … unrestrained).
Having become a female, Orlando is dragged through the law courts because she cannot be the owner of the stately pile we first saw in the 1500s, this last lasts somewhere in the region of 200 years … Orolando meets a number of Georgian intellectuals, Steele, Swift, Goldsmith and drinks tea with them. A hundred years later she has a fling with Shelmerdine, a Byronic freedom fighter, played by the beautiful Billy Zane. The last few scenes do not ring true – the action is updated to the 1990s, it should have been left in the 1920s.
The director of Orlando is Sally Potter who did Oranges Are Not The ONly Fruit for the BBC. As well as the high art mentioned in the first sentence she also employs other aspects of Gay sensibility – camp, for example. Orlando talks straight to the audience like a character from one of the Carry On films and we also have Jimmy Somerville as an Elizabethan castrato and a 1990s angel!
Tilda Swinton’s performance as Orlando is amazing, if only because she is not in the least believeable as a woman, or as a man.
Orlando is a lovely film to look at, it is funny and sad, has some great performances, and engrossing story and the viewer is not required to gawp at acres of flesh – I wouldn’t have minded a bit more of Billy Zane’s, though!
 
Reviewer: RL.  Published in ‘upstart’ April 1993

Full BFI Flare Programme Revealed

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Full BFI Flare Programme Revealed

Reprinted from Front Row Reviews
By

Ollie.Charles

Published: February 22, 2015

Opening with I AM MICHAEL and closing with OUT TO WIN.
The full programme of the 2015 edition of BFI Flare: London LGBT Film Festival was released tonight at a public programme launch at BFI Southbank. The festival will take place 19th – 29th March 2015 at BFI Southbank and is supported by principal sponsor Accenture. BFI Flare is the UK’s leading LGBT film event and one of the world’s longest established with over 50 features, more than one hundred shorts and a wide range of special events, guest appearances, discussions, workshops and more. Tickets go on sale via www.bfi.org.uk/flare on 25th February for BFI members and 2nd March for non members.
Direct from premieres at Sundance and Berlin Film Festivals, we open with the UK Premiere of I AM MICHAEL. A feature directorial debut for Gus Van Sant protégé Justin Kelly, the film stars James Franco and Zachary Quinto in a powerful interrogation of gay identity through the real-life story of Michael Glatze, who went from crusading gay journalist to anti-gay pastor.
As evidence of the strength of documentary work in this year’s Festival, Closing Night will feature the European Premiere of director Malcolm Ingram’s highly topical and rousing OUT TO WIN, charting the experience of LGBT sportspeople working in the highest echelons of professional sport. Featuring contributions from such pioneers as Billie Jean King, Martina Navratilova, David Kopay, John Amaechi and Jason Collins, Ingram returns to the Festival after previously having screened documentaries SMALL TOWN GAY BAR and CONTINENTAL.
Director David Thorpe delivers the Accenture Gala with the European Premiere of DO I SOUND GAY?, a documentary exploring the provocative idea of whether there is a ‘gay voice’ and featuring humorous, insightful contributions from performers and comedians including Margaret Cho, David Sedaris, George Takei and Dan Savage.
Our Centrepiece Screening, the UK Premiere of STORIES OF OUR LIVES, directed by Jim Chu Chu is a drama adapted from real testimonies of LGBT Kenyans (where the film is banned for promoting homosexuality). Fresh from winning a Teddy Jury Prize at the Berlin Film Festival, this is powerful cinema but also essential viewing for those who are concerned about global human rights.
The festival offers rich cinematic insight into LGBT lives and loves around the world with films from the USA, France, UK, Spain, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Poland, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, Australia, Greece and India plus the world’s first LGBT film from Sri Lanka (FRANGIPANI).
Confirmed guests so far  include Justin Kelly (I AM MICHAEL), Malcolm Ingram (OUT TO WIN), Jeffrey Schwarz and Tab Hunter (TAB HUNTER CONFIDENTIAL), Mark Christopher (54: THE DIRECTOR’S CUT), Carol Morley (THE FALLING), Colin Rothbart (DRESSED AS A GIRL),  Jonny Woo and friends. More confirmations expected shortly.
The festival’s films are grouped into themed sections as follows:
HEARTS – films about love, romance and friendship
MATCH stars Patrick Stewart as an eloquent and entertaining dancer-turned-teacher who discovers more than he bargained for when he takes part in an interview about his career. Disco and an infectious beat are at the heart of the UK Premiere of Mark Christopher’s 54: THE DIRECTOR’S CUT, fresh from its world premiere at this year’s Berlin Film Festival and bolder and gayer than ever before.  UK feature film is represented in THE FALLING, Carol Morley’s wonderful tale of girl-school obsessions and hysteria. BROKEN GARDENIAS is a quirky dark comedy where Jenni is forced to confront a series of mishaps which turn into a dream-like quest for her long-lost father in LA. BLACKBIRD brings intense drama to a coming-of-age story set in a Mississippi small town including a stand-out performance by Mo’Nique as a traumatised mother.  FRANGIPANI, the world’s first Sri Lankan LGBT film, features a classic love triangle with two men forced to make difficult decisions. PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL MONOGAMIST is a whip-sharp comedy of 40-something lesbian dating, where commitments never seem to last for long but things of the heart are never simple. GIRLTRASH: ALL NIGHT LONG is that rare thing: a lesbian rock musical, with a healthy disregard for stereotypes and irresistible performances by a bright young cast and some great songs.
BODIES – stories of sex, identity and transformation
Our interest in the human form is reflected in a diverse group of films. The World Premiere of DRESSED AS A GIRL is a celebration of an indefatigable group of drag performers, filmed over five years, from London to Glastonbury and back again, up-close and personal with Jonny Woo, Holestar, Scottee, John Sizzle, Ma Butcher, Amber and Pia.  BORN TO FLY: ELIZABETH STREB vs. GRAVITY is a jaw-dropping encounter with the stunning aerial choreography of dancer Elizabeth Streb. DRUNKTOWN’S FINEST follows the lives of three young Native Americans, set against a background of extreme poverty, crime and violence, where coming-of-age presents difficult choices. MIRCO is a playful and thought-provoking documentary about three young people living in Berlin who identify beyond the gender binary, with the film-maker inspired by having spent some time in their early years mistakenly assigned a boy’s name (the Mirco of the title) and male identity. SOMETHING MUST BREAK is a tenderlove story between a shy trans teen and a young straight man, from the director of the acclaimed She Mail Snails. FULBOY is an insightful documentary into the real life of an Argentinian, professional football team, with camerawork which suggests there might be a ‘gay gaze’ or aesthetic, and offeringa surprisingly intimate look at these athletes in their prime.
MINDS – reflections on art, politics and community
Tab Hunter is a legend whose career as a Hollywood leading man was famously sacrificed when he was outed by his agent (to save the reputation of his other client Rock Hudson). Jeffrey Schwarz’s film TAB HUNTER CONFIDENTIAL, in its European Premiere, reveals the utterly compelling Tab Hunter and his extraordinary life at the movies and beyond, and will be presented by Tab Hunter at the Festival; Jenni Olson’s thoughtful essay film THE ROYAL ROAD (also here a European Premiere, fresh from its Sundance debut) is a meditation on life and art and the politics of landscape, wrapped up in a dizzyingly beautiful range of images, with musings on Hitchcock’s Vertigo and being a butch dyke. WE CAME TO SWEAT celebrates the Starlite, one of New York’s pre-Stonewall gay bars, a black-owned and operated influential dance club where some of the disco sound originated, and now in danger as the threat of redevelopment looms. EVERLASTING LOVE is a haunting tale of a teacher and student, and a group of friends caught up in illicit sexual encounters. The film’s languid camerawork belies the intensity of vision. THE LAST ONE: UNFOLDING THE AIDS MEMORIAL QUILT is an affecting account of the final episode in the rich history of what is now the largest folk art project in the world, celebrating the lives of those taken too soon by HIV. Céline Sciamma’s GIRLHOOD, a powerful, truthful story of young black girls growing up in Paris, subtly examines female friendship and gender dynamics. The ravishingly beautiful DIOR AND I celebrates the arrival of new designer Raf Simons at the house of Dior as he assembles his first couture collection in a film which truly gets under the skin of the fashion industry.
Special events:
This year is the 40th anniversary of the film THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW which launched a thousand devotional dress-ups, and we’re having a special anniversary screening at the BFI IMAX followed by a Blue Room party; dressing up is definitely encouraged. In our regular lecture series We Love… this year’s subject is Xena Warrior Princess which will celebrate the 20th anniversary of Xena and other glorious female role models, followed by a suitably themed Warrior Women after party. The pioneering archive classic from Germany, Different from the Others (1919) will screen at the V&A.
And for book lovers, a special Flare bookclub ‘Reading Between the Lines: Queer Books on Film’ will allow a chance for discussion through screenings of key LGBT literary adaptations: ORLANDO, THE COLOR PURPLE, STRANGERS ON A TRAIN and FRIED GREEN TOMATOES AT THE WHISTLE STOP CAFE.
We’ll reprise some of the year’s most thrilling, previously released LGBT films in our BEST OF YEAR programme: APPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR, a delicious Persian-American bisexual comedy; THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY, a coolly modern take on a stylish 70s, European porn; and PRIDE, the beloved Brit hit. Pride will be followed by a talk with some of the people on whom the film’s characters were based who will share memories and experiences..

The Real Matthew Shepherd

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Over the years we have reported on various productions of the The Laramie Project and its sequel, The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later when they have been produced in Northern Ireland by local artists , and when they have been shown in movie houses or we have been lucky enough to see them on DVD,  A new movie has just been released which has a new focus on Matthew, and brings out a fuller picture of his life and who he was.  We are reproducing the article as it appears in the ADVOCATE and we will write a review of the story and movie when we have an opportunity to see it, as it is currently on release in the USA.
 

Getting to Know the Real Matthew Shepard

Shepard’s father and the director of a new documentary talk about why it’s important that we remember him.

BY TRUDY RING

MARCH 02 2015 8:00 AM ET

Matthew Shepard with Michele Josue

Matthew Shepard with Michele Josue

1998 doesn’t seem that long ago, but in many ways the world was different. For one thing, there was no Facebook, no Twitter, no Instagram, no YouTube — but one young man’s story caught the attention of the nation in a way that today would be called “going viral.”
The young man was Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old gay college student who was viciously beaten by two men he’d met in a bar and left hanging on a fence on the outskirts of Laramie, Wyo., then died a few days later at a hospital in Fort Collins, Colo. His death increased the awareness of antigay hate crimes and became a rallying point for supporters of LGBT-inclusive hate-crimes laws and other gay rights measures.
The new documentary film Matt Shepard Is a Friend of Mine, produced and directed by Matthew’s onetime schoolmate Michele Josue, seeks to let audiences know there were so many things important about Matthew beyond the way he died — and also to make sure that his life and death are not forgotten.
Matthew Shepard with his parents“The young people in the gay community today are having freedoms that he never had,” says his father, Dennis Shepard, on a recent visit to Los Angeles for the film’s opening. “They don’t understand that, especially the very young people, because they don’t know who Matt was. People from 12 on are the activists today.”
Matthew, his father says, would be amazed to see the advances in LGBT rights that have taken place since his death. Among those are the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, signed into law by President Obama in 2009, which commits federal resources to investigate and prosecute crimes motivated by the victim’s actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity, race, religion, gender, and other factors. Judy Shepard, Matthew’s mother, worked tirelessly to get the law passed, her husband notes.
Then there are advances in marriage equality, state-level antidiscrimination laws, the proliferation of gay-straight alliances in schools, and more. Also, Dennis Shepard says, “He would just be thrilled to see how open and relaxed the young people are. They just don’t understand what the issue is” with being gay.
But other factors — the persistence of homophobia among some segments of the population, the need to pass federal nondiscrimination protections, and the backlash against LGBT progress, with “license to discriminate” laws and calls to defy pro-equality court rulings — make it crucial to remember Matthew’s story, say his father and the filmmaker.
“It’s important for people to kind of reengage with the outrage we all had then,” says Josue. “Matt’s story is not unique … there are a lot of Matt Shepards out there who still need support and validation.”
Matthew Shepard with Michele JosueSome observers have wondered why Matthew’s death resonated with the public so much more than any other homophobic hate crime. To Josue, “The egregiousness of the crime … created such a haunting image that still stays with people and affects people all these years later.”
That’s part of it, says his father, plus Matthew’s everyman quality — he was a young man of many interests, who loved hunting and fishing as well as theater and politics, who was intelligent and multilingual, who made friends easily. “Somebody everywhere could relate to a part of him,” Dennis Shepard says.
There are those who wonder, though, if his death commanded attention partly because he was a white, attractive, middle-class college student, not, say, a black transgender sex worker. To this, Josue responds, “Matt never asked to be the face of the gay rights movement, but for whatever reason, he is. And if it sheds some light on what’s happening to others, in the trans community as well, so be it.”
And before he became the face of a movement, he was a son, a brother, a friend, and that’s what Josue wants to show the world through her film. “He changed me in many ways,” says the filmmaker, who attended school in Switzerland with Matthew when his family was living in Saudi Arabia because of Dennis’s job (there was no high school for Matthew to attend there). “He taught me what it is to be a true friend. He was so extroverted and just truly loved people. He never met a stranger. I looked up to him and how he treated other people. In his death I couldn’t reconcile how something so horrible could happen to such a tenderhearted and kind person. It taught me to be a better ally and just stand up for all the Matt Shepards out there.”
The film recounts Matthew’s experiences at the school, his earlier years in Casper, Wyo., and some of the darker times of his life, as when, after being sexually assaulted while traveling in Morocco, he went into a period of depression and isolation, his gregariousness diminished.
Both of Shepard’s parents appear in the movie, as do many other people who knew him. Talking about Matthew was sometimes painful for them, Josue says, “but I think everyone, all his close friends, his teachers, his family were all very willing to share the Matt that we remembered and that we cherished.”
She adds, “I often compare it to reopening some very old wounds that never healed properly. So there’s a lot of tears, of course, but you know, there are also some really joyful moments when we were able to reminisce and remember little things about Matt that we had forgotten over time.”
Matthew’s brother, Logan, who is now 34, declined to participate in the film. “He’s very introverted like Judy and he’s more of an advocate behind the scenes,” Dennis Shepard says, adding that Logan is deeply involved with antibullying efforts and all the work of the Matthew Shepard Foundation, set up by the family to advocate for LGBT equality through a variety of programs.
The film, Dennis notes, is very honest. He says it’s one of four accounts of Matthew’s life and death that are totally honest, the others being Judy’s book, The Meaning of Matthew, and the playsThe Laramie Project and its sequel, The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later. He and Josue dismiss as “totally bogus” the accounts that claim Matthew’s murder was not motivated by his killers’ homophobia but was instead the result of a drug deal gone bad. “We just ignore it because those who want to believe something that strange and odd will believe it,” he says.
Part of the movie’s honesty, he says, is making clear that Matthew “had failures and successes like everybody else.” He continues, “I think it’s important for young people to know that you’ll have good times and bad times.” The knowledge that some young people despair over the bad times to the point of suicide, he says, “just scares me to death.”
He and his wife, with their son and other allies, are working hard to keep other young LGBT people from despairing. One of the foundation’s projects is Matthew’s Place, an online community for LGBT youth, many of whom find little support in their families or schools.
Dennis and Judy’s work also includes visiting schools — this spring they’ll be talking to junior high students in San Francisco who are reading The Laramie Project — and, under the aegis of the U.S. State Department, traveling overseas to speak about Matthew and LGBT rights. They’ve been to 18 countries to date.
In a way, that effort is carrying out one of Matthew’s ambitions. “His goal was to go out and improve the world,” Dennis says. “He really loved this country and he thought those ideals should be taken everywhere.”
And continuing to tell his story, as through Matt Shepard Is a Friend of Mine, is important to any effort to improve the world for LGBT people, his father says. That the film will be edited into an educational version for schools is just critical,” he says. Young people, he explains, “need to understand that they’re standing on the shoulders of what Matt did, what happened to Matt, who is standing on the shoulders of what happened to Harvey Milk, who was standing on the shoulders of Stonewall.”
“History repeats itself,” he adds, “unless you educate and teach. And I think that’s what this film does.”
 
Matt Shepard Is a Friend of Mine is playing in theaters around the country. Click here to find a screening near you, and watch the trailer below.

Book and Movie – LOVE AND DEATH ON LONG ISLAND

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LOVE AND DEATH ON LONG ISLAND
by Gilbert Adair
138 pages
Published by Minerva
This novel might be described as a gay Lolita, or more properly a modern Death in Venice. The tile seems to hint at this connection, and while the main character does finally meet and speak to the object of his desire, the same fruitless ending follows.
Giles is a middle-aged writer who lives in near seclusion. On impulse he goes to the cinema complex to see a film of a Forster novel. He goes to the wrong cinema and sees instead Hotpants College II, and falles hopelessly in love with Ronnie Bostock, one of the stars.
Giles embarks on a search for details of his beloved. He discovers Teen Dream Boat and other fan magazines. He even enters the world of video rental. Then he finds himself pushed to buy Toy Boy and superimpose the head of Ronnie on the nakes bodies from the flesh mag. When he reads that Ronnie is to wed, he goes in desperation to the States to meet him. This he finally manages, and flatters Ronnie with an intellectual analysis of the crap films he stars in. When he does finally declare himself to Ronnie, he is rebuffed.
The novel is told in beautiful spare prose, and (contrary to what this brief outline might indicate) it is funny and amusing. Adair, who is an accomplished film commentator and author of Hollywood’s Vietnam, manages to filter the world of cinema through innocent eyes, and this shed new light on it.
the obsessive nature of love is superbly captured, and this (Gile’s declaration to Ronnie) captures the style:
I found myself clinging to his wrist, to his hand, holding him back to then, in a fierce whisper, forcing frommyself the inevitable,: irreplaceable words, hackneyed and sacre d’I love you!’
When Ronnie has left, he wonders:
Dear God, I said to myelf, what have I done?
This short book says more in its space than many an overweight ‘page-turner’. It will appeal for its fine handling of a gay theme with poise and humour, while not flinching from the pathos that lies at the heart of so much love.
AH

Good Will Hunting, a gay scene?

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Yes, Ben Affleck And Matt Damon Put A Gay Sex Scene In ‘Good Will Hunting’ Script

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Posted: Updated:
BEN AFFLECK GOOD WILL HUNTING
There was once a gay sex scene in the script of “Good Will Hunting.”
Ben Affleck and Matt Damon were rookie screenwriters when they wrote the 1997 film about a gifted janitor working at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They ultimately decided to go with Miramax Films, then run by Harvey Weinstein, to distribute the movie. Weinstein, whose company was known for independent and foreign flicks, beat out the competition for one reason: he actually read the script, and noticed the scene seemed out of place.
“Every studio wanted the movie, every studio wanted them to be in the movie and make this film,” Weinstein said on “The Graham Norton” show earlier this month. “They were young kids, just really starting out, but they had some good roles behind them. They came to my office, and I read the script [before] the meeting, and we walked in and everything was pleasant, and then about 10 minutes into the meeting I said, ‘Guys, there’s just one thing on the script … I just have one really big note. About page 60, the two professors give each other oral sex and they’re on their knees andthis whole big sex scene. What the hell is that? Because the guys are straight, and there’s no hint of anything like that … I don’t get that scene.'”
Apparently, the inclusion was a purposeful one.
“They go, ‘That’s the scene that we wrote to find out whether guys in your job actually read the script, because every studio executive we went to … no one brought that scene up, or maybe people thought it was a mistake or maybe nobody read it themselves.’ They said, ‘You’re the only guy that brought it up. You get the movie.'”
Affleck and Damon had originally sold the rights to Castle Rock, but they began suspecting no one at the company was actually reading the rewrites the two were instructed to hand in. Or at least not reading them very closely.
“We were so frustrated that Castle Rock wasn’t reading the script, so we felt like we had to develop this test,” Affleck told Boston Magazine in 2013. “We started writing in screen direction like, ‘Sean talks to Will and unloads his conscience.’ And then: ‘Will takes a moment and then gives Sean a soulful look and leans in and starts blowing him’ … We would turn that in, and they wouldn’t ever mention all those scenes where Sean and Will were jerking each other off.”
“Good Will Hunting” went on to gross over $200 million worldwide. The film earned Affleck and Damon the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, as well as the Best Supporting Actor award for Robin Williams.

Straight Guys Reveal Which Male Celebrities They Think Are Hot

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Have you ever wondered which prominent male celebrities straight guys find attractive?
Buzzfeed is here with another video that aims to tackle this very question. The video brings together several pairs of straight guys and shows them pictures of famous men.
The results are surprisingly honest and, if these guys are being truthful, could reveal a lot about the nature of human attraction.
So what do these guys think about John Stamos? Drake? Justin Timberlake?
Only one way to find out — check out the video above.

Just in time for Thanksgiving, here's the new short film Black Friday: A Gay Love Story

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Dennis Hensley and Tom Goss experience consumerism, long lines and most especially, gay drama

| BY GREG HERNANDEZ – Gay Star News

Photo courtesy of Tom Goss
Black Friday, the big post-Thanksgiving shopping day in US, is the setting for high gay drama in a fun new short film by Tom Goss and Dennis Hensley.
Goss tells Gay Star News that he and Hensley came up with the idea while chatting over coffee and pie about the ridiculousness of relationships and Black Friday consumerism.
The short tells the story of Chad (Hensley) and Claudio (Goss) who meet while waiting in line for Black Friday doorbuster deals.
Lust, love and heartbreak quickly – very quickly – ensue.

– See more at: http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/just-time-thanksgiving-heres-new-short-film-black-friday-gay-love-story261114#sthash.9HgGVqI1.dpuf