This year, in celebration of its 10th anniversary, the Out in Africa film festival combines new releases with old favourites. It also has, this year, a distinctly Latin flavour.
A returning classic is Strawberry and Chocolate, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos TabÃÂo’s courageous (and heart-warming) look at the situation of gay people in Cuba. Made in 1993, it makes a fascinating contrast with the traumas experienced by Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas as depicted in the recent Before Night Falls (not on the festival).
Also set in that part of the world (Brazil, to be precise), and explosive by contrast with the relative gentleness of Strawberry and Chocolate, is Karim Aïnouz’s Madame Satã. Co-produced by the late Philip Brooks, who was also involved in key South African cinema projects, it portrays the life of a 1940s gangster-pimp who later became a drag diva of the Rio carnival. It is riveting.
From Latin Europe come several pictures, too. As gritty as Madame Satã is Antonio Capuano’s movie Pianese Nunzio, about a crusading anti-Mafia priest in Naples and his relationship with a 14-year-old boy. Less gritty and more stylised are the three other Italian movies on the festival.
Little More Than a Year Ago is the tale of a gay porn star reconciling with his brother, who is rather shocked at first to discover how his sibling makes a living. Despite a mysterious ending, it is a light, fun piece of work.
A World of Love and Nerolio are by festival guest Aurelio Grimaldi. He has dramatised two episodes in the life of pioneering gay Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini, who was murdered in 1975. A World of Love revolves around the sex scandal that drove Pasolini from his home town in rural Friuli in the late 1940s.
By contrast, Nerolio takes place right at the end of Pasolini’s life, as he rants to an admiring student come to interview him, anathematises the critics of his last movie (which, in reality, came out just after his death), and goes in search of the sexy, working-class boys who would eventually prove to be his angels of death.
Grimaldi’s black‒and-white movies are elegantly done, but they come across as staid and coy alongside the stunning Portuguese feature Phantom. Directed by João Pedro Rodrigues, it is the almost surreal story of a man for whom sex is an entirely animal activity, and it’s erotic and disturbing in equal measure. Pasolini would have approved.
The details
The Out in Africa film festival takes place at Cinema Nouveaus in Johannesburg from March 12 to 21, in Cape Town from March 19 to 28 and in Durban from April 2 to 4. A selection of films will be shown in George, Bloemfontein, Potchefstroom and Pietermaritzburg in May. Visit www.oia.co.za
Aurelio Grimaldi will appear at the Wits Amphitheatre at 4.30pm on March 15 to discuss the making of biographical movies. Tel: 717 9749.