Panel discussions around issues raised by gay and lesbian film-making have long been a valued part of what is now the J&B South African Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, with previous participants including luminaries such as Isaac Julien and John Grayson.
This year’s festival has two panel discussions lined up – Queerying the Past (January 30 in Cape Town, February 6 in Johannesburg) and Pornography, Violence and Racism (February 2 in Cape Town, February 9 in Johannesburg).
Queerying the Past could be titled “Queering the Past”. Recent work in historiography has brought gay and lesbian “hidden histories” to light, though it is perhaps anachronistic to speak of “gay” or “lesbian” when the periods explored often predate the existence of such categories. How do we view and recover such antecedents, and can they be reintegrated into the broader social picture? Jack Lewis and Zackie Achmat’s two-part documentary with dramatised episodes, Apostles of Civilised Vice, which showed recently on SABC and will show at the festival, imaginitively reconstructs a South African past of same-sex desire. It will form a starting point for the debate.
The panel on Pornography, Violence and Racism tackles these issues in the wake of the controversy surrounding Bruce LaBruce’s provocative new film, Skin Flick (also showing), which takes a hard, explicit look at the nexus of sex and violence that has fascinated film-makers for so long.
The legacy of anti-porn feminism, which sees it as a kind of violence, comes up against the contradictory evidence of homosexuals who find pornography liberating and affirming (not to mention fun). Add the issue of racism to the mix – particularly relevant in South Africa – and you have a panel discussion that is likely to be rather heated.
Among the participants in the panels are Achmat and Lewis, LaBruce, artist Steven Cohen, activist Sheila Lapinsky, and guest film-maker Angelina Maccarone, as well as other local writers and film-makers.