Despite this festival being the second half of the 2007 Out in Africa (OIA) gay and lesbian film festival, and thus half the usual size, there are still a fair number of movies and a good range of diverse cinema on view. Bisexual behaviour (or just sexual confusion) is a theme in both foreign and South African productions, and teen sexuality is being put ever more strongly on screen. The ensemble drama is a constant presence, with mixed results — for instance, one film in this genre, Feast of Love, has almost no significant lesbian or gay content. The protagonist’s wife leaves him for a woman early in the film, and that’s that; the rest is about a set of heterosexual relationships. Why Feast of Love is on the OIA fest is hard to say. By contrast, Brothers in the Head, a disturbing portrait of rock-star Siamese twins in the 1970s, has little overt gay content but has a distinctly queer sensibility.
Glue
An Argentine film that uses shaky hand-held camera, a home-movie style and lots of rough edges to tell the story of a teenager battling his way through family trauma and his conflicted feelings for his best friend and a toothy girl, as well as the problems of his messily bouffant hair-do, all set in some desperate Patagonian backwater. Some will doubtless find Glue irksomely slow, but for me it was mesmerising. Its companion piece would be Water Lilies, the French film about a young girl discovering her sexual urges, which are directed at another girl; it’s good, but overall I found it rather glum.
The Witnesses
The latest film from French writer-director André Téchiné, who made I Don’t Kiss, My Favourite Season and The Wild Reeds. Around the figure of a poor but handsome young man, various interlinked characters constellate: the older man who’s in love with him, the cop of colour who gets the hots for him, the woman writer who’s fascinated by him … and his opera-singer sister. Beautifully done, riveting, tough and sad, this takes us back to the key moment in the mid-1980s when Aids was just rearing its ugly head.
Holding Trevor; Puccini for Beginners
Movies like these that give us an ensemble cast and are set in a gay or lesbian enclave somewhere in the United States (though usually Los Angeles or New York) are beginning to feel rather generic. The main issue is usually promiscuity versus commitment, whether embodied within one character (as in Puccini for Beginners) or contrasted by two people (as in Holding Trevor). The former is a relatively light and often amusing lesbian comedy-drama focusing on a woman who has commitment issues and vacillates between a male and a female sexual partner. The latter is sensitive as well as funny, with the titular Trevor having to deal with a druggy boyfriend, a sex-mad housemate, a hunky doctor, and a heavy-drinking lesbian. Jay Brannan of Shortbus fame stars in Holding Trevor (he’s the promiscuous one), and is a guest of the festival.
After Nine; Society
These two South African mini-series put the issue of gay and lesbian lives on our TV screens once more, and focus sharply on the difficulties of ‘coming out†in a still-homophobic society. Sechaba Morejele’s After Nine is about the heir to a BEE empire who can’t decide between his wife-to-be and the young man who sets his loins afire; Vincent Maloi’s Society is about a group of women characters, one of whom is in a lesbian relationship. Though limited by soap-opera conventions, these series confront us with interesting and often powerful takes on our changing society. Each runs to about three hours (four episodes), and screenings will be followed by discussions with the actors and makers — debates sure to ventilate pressing issues around making this kind of work in South Africa today. Look out, too, for the South African shorts by Howard Smith, Jennifer Radloff, Karen Rutter, Vivid Tjipura and Kekeletso Khena.
Anyone and Everyone
A fascinating and moving counterpoint to A Jihad for Love, this documentary looks at a variety of families from different religious and cultural backgrounds dealing with the fact that one of their members is lesbian or gay — Hindus, Mormons, Jews, Cherokees. We hear from the parents, and then from the children. The Jews take it in their stride more readily than the Mormons, say, but the latter end up arguing powerfully for their son’s acceptance even within conservative Christianity. All those groups who blathered about why gay marriage was sinful in South Africa’s parliamentary hearings should have to watch this.
One Night Stand
Unseen by our deadline, this promises some stimulating controversy: a lesbian sex movie, with three out of four screenings restricted to women only, and the fourth open to men only if they come with women. Is there such a thing as meaningful lesbian pornography? This is one way to find out.
Go to www.oia.co.za for more information, or get an OIA booklet from Nu Metro cinemas. Films show at Killarney Mall in Johannesburg from November 1 to 11, and at the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town from November 8 to 18.