The Gay and Lesbian Film Festival turns five this year, and it promises to be bigger and better than ever, with one of the highlights being a local documentary on a gay activist
Andrew Worsdale
During the late 1980s and early 1990s filmmakers like Gus van Sant, Derek Jarman and Monica von Treut, together with youngsters like Gregg Arraki, John Greyson and Isaac Julien, charted the course of new queer cinema. Movies about gays and lesbians that were defiantly independent both in subject matter and in the way they were produced, challenging both subject matter and audience appeal. They were refreshingly original and completely daring.
The films of the last decade abandoned the self-pity and closeted-ness of previous movies like Joseph Losey’s The Servant, campy farces like La Cage Aux Folles, or convenient Hollywood stereotyping as in Kiss of the Spiderwoman
Nowadays gay and lesbian movies are, as one critic put it, “Yeah, we’re queer, what the fuck you gonna do about it?”. Gay and lesbian characters in mainstream films and television are now shown in a less predatory or anti-social way – mind you Philadelphia was a completely sexless movie about Aids. Nevertheless queer is here and is possibly the most cutting edge of movie- making – dealing with issues like the anxiety of HIV and sexual desire, the open gay person as a rebel, and the communication and unification of gay men and lesbians.
South Africa’s Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, which turns five this year is a major feat of organisers Nodi Murphy and Jack Lewis, both film-makers and gay activists in their own right.
Murphy, who has an irrepressible charm and a feisty Irish-born character, says the idea of the festival was born out of activism: “The first festival was an endorsement of a broad range of homosexuality – there are rich fags, poor fags, gay-men-hating-dykes, fag hags, misogynists, hey there are a lot of queer people and we’re all different.”
She says the gay movie industry was previously dominated by rambunctious, rebellious “boy movies” but more and more “girl’s movies” are emerging. Director Yvonne Rainer is here as a visitor this year and Greta Schiller, a celebrated “lesbian” movie-maker, directed a feature- length local documentary, The Man who Drove with Mandela.
Murphy’s partner, albeit not romantically, is Jack Lewis, equally as funky and fervent. He was banned for five years in 1976 and then became active in forming NGOs in the education and health sphere while teaching at the University of the Western Cape. He drifted into making videos as a result of stifling academia.
As for the origination of the gay and lesbian film fest, he says the idea was born when he was fund-raising for a Cape queer organisation, “It was amazing to see how wealthy fags were happy to pay R10 to sit on the floor at Jazz Art and watch movies screened on video. There was a real need and demand out there. I started organising the first fest using my intuition and not know a thing about it.
“Nodi was working for Cape Film Festival director James Polly at the same time and told me how dare I start a moffie film fest without her.” He adds that they’ve been a real odd-couple since then, balancing activism, idealism and business pragmatism.
The two of them are great examples for local independent filmmakers whatever their sexual orientation. Committed to their ideas, making movies about them and also showing people movies from like-minded folks around the world. Next week I’ll give you my picks of the fest – there are 33 movies – so you gotta glut or be picky.