myDylarama

Interview with Theo Montoya, director of Son of Sodom

Brasserie du Court team, Clotilde Couturier — 2021-02-01T14:12:40Z

How have you met Camilo Najar?

I met Camilo 6 years ago at a party. When I saw him, he immediately caught my attention, he was a special guy, with his curly hair, and super thin. Besides that, he had an overwhelming personality. I will always remember a phrase that he told me “I care more about having acne than being gay”.

Do you often deal with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues in your films and will you in the future?

I think I am portraying my generation and this generation is exploring their sexuality. I try not to pay too much attention to my friends' sexual orientation, I try to see humans. Although sometimes I am aware that in such a conservative society, a society that has raised us with heteronormative models, deciding to be different, to be oneself, to be free, brings its consequences, many times negative. And yes, in my next project I will explore again my generation (my friends) in Medellín, the city where I grew up. I am interested in being able to show the contrast of a queer youth, in the midst of a religious and conservative society.

Did you plan to focus on the question of drug addiction when you considered making a film about his life and why?

I think my film is not about a drug addiction, because Camilo wasn't. He used drugs, like me or many people in the world. I think my film is more about a sense of discouragement, a hopelessness that young people feel about their future and living life as if there is no tomorrow. Is there one? I also wonder sometimes. But I think what is important here is when people are afraid to talk about those kinds of issues in our society. People are afraid to really talk about the issues. When you can talk about your shit, you can understand a lot of things, and maybe get better. Of course drugs are part of our society, and we have to talk about that and listen to the kids.

How much are you interested in the indifference or even desire towards death and do you have further projects on this theme?

I believe that my generation has a pulsion with death. It is in a way a pulsion of life, living life with an intensity. For me, cinema always talks about death and love, and of course cinema is life. I am very interested in the duality, between eros and tanatos. My cinema is very local, I try to portray my city and my friends, and in our city death is just around the corner, my first feature film ANHELL69 will speak about that too.

What do you think the future holds for short films?

Incredible things, for me short films are an incredible language. I try to watch a lot of short films all the time and I think the short film circuit and appreciation is growing. I love this format and I hope there will still be a lot of creativity.

If we were to go back into lockdown, what cultural delights would you recommend to alleviate our boredom?

Hmm… Watching classic movies again, short films, listening to music, taking psychedelic drugs because it will be the only way to trip and of course masturbation. Well and disconnect from the internet, which absorbs us more and more.

Son of Sodom is part of Lab Competition L3.

Tommy Hodgson's Encounters TOP 5

Tommy Hodgson — 2020-10-01T19:16:18Z

Writer Tommy Hodgson offers his own top picks from this year's Encounters Short Film Festival.

Breadline (UK, director: Carol Salter): Breadline displays intimate footage of a food bank in a Northern town through the gaze of an elderly volunteer and, in doing so, serves as a damning indictment of the austerity state which the Conservative Party has manufactured and sustained within the UK. Carol Salter's short tale is a personal, and soul-searching look into the ordinary people who have chosen to help other ordinary people because their government has neglected them. Through basic conversations and mundane day-to-day tasks, Breadline is disarmingly successful in adding a layer of humanity to the political choices of this country. Understated and simplistic in its execution, Breadline gives a more realistic glimpse into modern Britain than a passive news report ever could.

Calvario (Spain, director: Lluís Margarit): From Spanish director Lluís Margarit comes a delightful gaze into insecurity and male fragility, specifically the perils of balding before one's time. As funny as it is tragic, the picture takes the toxicity of our self-image to hilarious extremes, within an easily digestible and relatable reality. Margarit's success lies with tapping into a male fear often assumed but not dwelt upon, and offering misdirects as to whether this supposed slight is real or imagined. Well-acted and not at all self-indulgent, Calvario is sure to produce a hearty laugh in its audience, regardless of their hairline.

Christy (Ireland, director: Brendan Canty): Christy is brilliant in its display of the often uncomplicated bonds of male friendship, and further how comradeship cuts deeper than job rejections and other setbacks in life. A fascinating depiction of life for the working-class youth in Ireland, it resonates with anyone who has ever been young and broke, faced with the anxiety of a job interview when you do not even know yourself yet. Director Brendan Canty's piece is ultimately positive in its message that there are rays of sunshine in friendship and petty revenge to counter the very adult drudgery and mundanity of a working life.

Christy (Short Film Trailer) from Brendan Canty on Vimeo.

Exam (Iran, director: Sonia K Hadad): When a teenage girl is pressured to deliver a package before school, her patience and limits are severely tested. An extremely tense and gripping short tale, Exam offers a simple premise but with unthinkable consequences. The build-up of tragedy is layered from the beginning, with intriguing use of over-lingering shots, often sticking closely and relentlessly to the back or front of the character's head to make the suspense more personal, and the fallout more dramatic. Touching on themes of authority, the black market and the perception of vices in Iran, Sonia K Hadad's refreshing direction and execution is simply masterful.

Soup (Russia, director: Inga Sukhordukova): Soup is a dark and dramatic piece, building layers of tension, guilt and the inability to articulate one's emotions into a tight eleven minute journey. The cost of success is apparent when a father and son are re-acquainted, and the unsaid strains on the relationship only infect the plot from there. Both actors successfully use subtle body language, micro gestures and erratic speech patterns to communicate the deep wounds of the relationship in question. It is fitting that the surroundings are sparse and empty, so only emotions cloud the set. Ultimately, Inga Sukhordukova's directorial debut is impressive in crafting a nuanced narrative - with overtones of political commentary about Russian family life and society, especially the state of LGBTQ rights in the country.

Check out more of Tommy's recent work: "Why Tearing Down Statues Is Tackling Britain's Racist History" & "Belarus' young photographers are capturing a country in flux".

A Dog Barking at the Moon - BFI Flare At Home

Tommy Hodgson — 2020-05-27T15:54:29Z

Tommy's review of the week is Xiang Zi's A Dog Barking at the Moon, streamed on BFI Player as part of the #FlareatHome film festival.

A Dog Barking at the Moon is a fittingly dramatic piece following the trials of a Chinese family as they deal with the revelation of repressed homosexuality within the family. Director Xiang Zi's semi-autobiographical feature brings the uncomfortable feelings and lingering resentments of each character to the fore through slow-paced shots, with long drawn-out scenes that intensify the gradual dig to uncover these long-buried secrets.

The saga is told through various points in time, dealing largely with the revelation that the character Li Jiumei's husband has secretly been living as a homosexual. This disruption provokes a range of responses from the family, with the style aptly showing how the secret has spanned across ages and circumstances. As we see in flash forwards, the couple chose to remain in a toxic marriage due to taboos about divorce and homosexuality - when their now-pregnant daughter visits from abroad, old tensions are brought back to the surface. The time jumps give emotional depth to the revelations and reactions from the characters, exploring themes of denial, anger and lost loves with honesty and clarity. The generational approaches to shame reveal a deeper pattern of unresolved issues that untangle but are left in the open, never to be fully or neatly concluded.

Naren Hua, who plays the pained matriarch Li Jiumei, deserves high praise for her portrayal of such an infuriating and tragic character - a reactionary, unsympathetic soul but a victim too of societal burdens and of her own pride in refusing divorce as an escape. As she is forced to face the reality of her husband's secret, she shifts the blame onto those around her and looks toward the paranormal, opting to join a religious cult to atone herself of this imagined sin.

Many of the characters seek ‘cures' in this fashion - external solutions to inward problems around homosexuality, desire and love; for instance a younger couple use a marriage of convenience to conceal both their sexual preferences and the decision to adopt. So much of the plot comes back to highlighting these specific aspects of both traditional and contemporary Chinese culture. The tensions often stem from the importance placed on perception of the family, with secrets or irregularities never to be spoken outside of the house for fear of judgement. As Li Juimei articulates with revealing insight into her character's mindset, ‘gossips can bury you alive'.

The direction uses a captivating theatrical style - even going so far as to represent a driving scene through chairs on an empty stage. As Xiang Zi elaborated in an interview for BFI Flare last month, a wholly realistic style was purposely not used to prevent the audience becoming ‘too close' to the characters; a sharp moment was needed every so often to bring the audience out of the story to reflect. Not being ‘trapped by the story' gives the viewer some much-needed emotional distance from the otherwise all-consuming and heart-wrenching tale. The cinematography focuses on delicate details of the sets, utilising long silences masterfully to draw attention to obsessive, repetitive actions such as preparing food. Incidentally, exploration of food culture in China is often a recurrence - deep, heavy conversations happen over meals but food also serves as a distraction from the penetration and pain of reality.

This personal and radical art piece is nothing short of cinematic excellence; one can only assume that speaking the language of the film would provide an even more profound understanding of the story than the translations can do justice. It is nominally about one family's journey - but gives greater context to China's interesting relationship towards homosexuality, pregnancy and the concept of marriage. From its inception, the piece draws you into this saga, approaching a heavy, soul-searching topic with nuance which details both the agency and pettiness of humanity. On a grander scale, A Dog Barking at the Moon illustrates what hiding the truth can do to foundational relationships, and the decisions we all make in either rising above societal pressures, or bowing to its will in potentially extreme and damaging ways.

LONDON SHORT FILM FESTIVAL - London Lives 3

Louis Christie — 2020-02-13T14:31:02Z

Thrive (Jamie Di Spirito, 2019)

A sublimely intelligent and sensitive film, which sees a hook-up move into a challenging conversation. A naked man wakes up, lights up a cigarette and smokes out the window – through which the daylight outside illuminates the whole room. This is the only light source in the film, and it's used brilliantly. Grindr buzzes. His date comes over, and they're kissing almost before he's through the door. The orange curtain is drawn, turning the generous daylight into a warm luminescent wall, against which the sex scene unfolds, the two of them simultaneously bristling with hunger and tenderness. When the dialogue finally comes in, it necessarily makes a point of how wordless the film had been until then. Rejecting an invitation to breakfast, the man pulls the curtains back, and suddenly the scene is plunged back into cold daylight. The following conversation hurtles into the crucially underexplored grey area of HIV in the age of antiretroviral drugs, which render the virus undetectable and untransmittable. It delves truthfully into that quality of togetherness unique to gay romance, by which ties of attraction are ties of community. The dynamic between the two characters flickers mercurially; one moment they're lovers, the next moment they're brothers in solidarity. Held up by excellent cinematography and a beautifully understated central performance, the film finds a well of tenderness and complexity in the most ostensibly meaningless of hook-ups. It's a triumph.

3 Sleeps (Christopher Holt, 2019)

3 sleeps short film trailer from Chris holt on Vimeo.

In this gritty short, the trust a mother places in the maturity of her eldest daughter proves more well-founded than she could have guessed. She leaves her, in the opening scene, in charge of her two sisters. It's night and the girl doesn't want her to go; seeing her fear (and hearing the music rise ominously), we get the feeling that there is more to the situation than a child's stubborn attachment to her mum as she tries to go about everyday business. Sure enough, when they wake up she's still gone – for ‘three sleeps', possibly to Spain – and they have to fend for themselves. They spend what little money their mum gave them (with the instruction to not to spend it all on sweets) on sweets. The situation goes from bad to worse for the three sisters, with mum completely unresponsive to their phone calls, and it's almost unwatchable – not because of physical violence, but just because they're so completely helpless. The yellowish strip lighting beautifies nothing, and feels straight out of the more recent offerings from Ken Loach. When the end credits reveal that the film was based on a true story, the horror is accompanied by a strange sense of relief that the stress of seeing it might have somehow been a necessary form of witness-bearing. The film might not do much more than put its audience though a gripping and difficult watch, but in fulfilling that goal it's very successful.

Q&A with Ioseb “Soso” Bliadze, dir. Tradition - Clermont 2020

Elise Loiseau — 2020-02-06T14:52:17Z

Two German tourists travel around Georgia and encounter the country's culture, traditions and some more conservative attitudes.

A brave film in which the director's passion for the subject and anger at the prejudices faced by many gay people in his home Country certainly come to the fore. An interesting and timely festival run, ahead of the general release of Georgian filmmaker Levan Akin's And Then We Danced, a film centered on the growing feelings between two gay students of a Georgian traditional dance school.

Trailer

More on the film...

How did you go about creating Tradition? Can you talk us through the filming processes a little?

An anti-homophobic rally was held in Tbilisi, Georgia, on May 17, 2013, the International Day Against Homophobia. The gay rights activists holding the rally were met by thousands of protestors opposing homosexuality, who were allowed to break through a police cordon and violently pursued them, beating and throwing stones at them. After that event, I understood that as an artist I must do something and I recalled a story that happened in Georgia in 2012: several Georgian men invited tourists to join them in their feast in Tusheti. After a traditional Georgian toast, including one for love, the invited guests began to passionately kiss each other on the lips. The hosts attacked the men then tied their hands and feet and threw them in the river. Local residents pulled them out of the river and helped them safely out of the mountains, from where they got to Tbilisi and subsequently left Georgia. I wrote a script with my German-Azerbaijani friend Elmar Imanov in 2013. It took us five years to get funding for this film and because of the topic of the film, it was quite hard to receive any funding from Georgia. Eventually, the film was financed by the German fund and we finally made it.

What did you want to explore in this story of these two men having to face rejection and violence because of their relation?

The film shows how the level of freedom and expression varies for different individuals. It is about the people who cannot express themselves the way they are, just because society will not accept them, who have to wear masks during whole their lives just to avoid conflicts.

Love Is The Devil - Blu-Ray release

Alice Nicolov — 2015-12-02T14:19:03Z

The BFI has just re-released ‘Love is the Devil' on Blu-Ray. First released in 1998, this is a film portraying the destructive relationship between Francis Bacon and his muse and lover, George Dyer. The film culminates in Dyer's suicide on the eve of one of Bacon's triumphs, an exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris in 1971.

Just as Dyer drops seemingly from nowhere into Francis Bacon's chaotic London studio, so the audience of ‘Love Is The Devil' is flung head-first into Bacon's tumultuous life. Set in late 60's and early 70's Soho, the film is visually stunning. The placement of every prop is perfect. The colours are rich - bottle greens, crimson reds, oak browns. The constant switching between different lenses as we see elements of Bacon's life through his own eyes – blurred vision, mirror images, magnifying lenses - helps the audience to understand how Bacon saw the world in a way quite unlike ‘normal' people. He saw it through colour and movement, placement and reflections.

Furthermore, the performances of both Derek Jacobi and Daniel Craig as Francis Bacon and George Dyer respectively are compelling. Jacobi, from the outset, gives us the lascivious, cruel, selfish artist, while Craig as Dyer, the rough diamond so beloved of the wealthy classes of the period, plays the drowning man to perfection. Bacon as the protagonist destroying the very thing he loves and admires and the authenticity of Dyer, whom he uses as a muse, is tainted by Bacon himself. Dyer's authenticity is lost, the life sucked out of him to feed the maw of Bacon's own art. The audience is also given a startling insight into Bacon's Soho with its codes, jokes, secret language and private clubs.

If we take the ‘Love Is The Devil' on a basic level of a story of two lovers, one destroyed by the other then it is a powerful and moving film, thanks to the performances of Jacobi and Craig. Unfortunately, the simple story of a man being being taken out of his natural surroundings, used and eventually destroyed does not work in this instance.

The film attempts to focus on Bacon's private life and his relationship with Dyer whilst trying, somehow, to weave Bacon's art into his personal life as a separate entity, something apart or additional to him and to his relationship with Dyer. In fact, Dyer was an essential part of an important development in Bacon's oeuvre and this fact is somehow lost on the audience.

The film presupposes a prior knowledge of Bacon's art and personal background and without this, it ends up as merely a love story gone wrong. Bacon's work is referenced throughout the film – the distorted images, his revelries at the Colony Room, his studio and the presence of other artists such as David Hockney. Indeed, it is only near the end that George is referred to as Francis' muse. Bacon's art embodied him and so to have his personal life and his work running parallel rather than to see all of his actions stemming from his art short-changes Bacon. In order to understand the destruction wreaked by Bacon, you must understand his work.

It leaves anyone who is not familiar with Bacon's life and work wondering who the film was actually for – a wider audience with no understanding of Bacon's art or the art world only? While the audience can guess at this, it then has to tolerate Jacobi delivering to camera Bacon's own complex musings on his inner torment in order to explain this. There is too much telling and not enough showing of Bacon's need to consume the life and energy of others to feed his own genius.

‘Love Is The Devil' is a film that isn't sure what it is or who it is for. Jacobi and Craig provide mesmerising performances as Bacon the monster with a brilliant line in camp banter and his beautiful, simple lover. The awful nature of their relationship is difficult to watch as Bacon gradually robs George of his identity. On the other hand, Bacon was assuredly a genius and this attempt to explore its darker side misses the full horror, except perhaps in the last images recalling Bacon's painting of George, in his final tragic moments set in a blood-red frame. As for Bacon, however sordid his private life was, however much inner torment he suffered, his genius has always shone through all that, and the film somehow just manages to miss this fact. If however you are looking for ninety minutes of sheer visual beauty and a powerful screenplay, it is not to be missed.

Dir. John Maybury, 1998

Stories of our Lives - Film Africa 2015

Ryan Ormonde — 2015-11-09T10:54:01Z

Stories of our Lives is a sequence of five tales sourced from real life experiences of gay Kenyans. The film uses the same crisp, saturated black and white photography across its five sections. Even though this creates a flattening of visual tone, the films-within-the-film each have a different feel.

‘Ask me Nicely' is briskly punctuated by a school bell but its scenes are also divided by images of clouds, in turn expressive of the absurd conventions and nebulous hopes that define possibilities for its central lesbian couple. Society's disdain is embodied by an imperious head teacher but this is not a simple ‘us against the world' tale. Here, a gay relationship is like any other friendship: sometimes we punish each other for no good reason.

The second story in the sequence, ‘Run', uses slow motion and muffled sound to capture the tingly transgression of a first brush with gay culture. A plaid shirt (good for black and white footage) represents this ‘other' life. In cinema, as in societies where LGBTI identities are repressed, the visual is all important.

Whereas in ‘Run', monochrome adds a slick edge to urban scenes, in ‘Athman' it lends itself well to beautiful, sunlit fields and branches against a clear sky. This pastoral setting is the backdrop to a very natural and sympathetic portrayal of a friendship between a gay man and the straight man he loves.

‘Duet' has a fairly interesting premise: a Kenyan in London has saved up his money to have sex with a prostitute, eager to find out if white people are different in the sack. This sets up some nicely prickly dialogue: ‘We're from Sudan and Ghana or wherever, not Africa. Africa is huge.' But in the end, the truth of the encounter seems to have got lost in transition to screen. Still, there's some pretty kissing.

In ‘Each Night I Dream', Africa does seem like a constricting continuum: the central character knows that trying to escape Kenya in any direction either leads to another gay-hostile African nation or the Indian Ocean. So instead she imagines an island paradise. Or is she is an alien from a more enlightened planet? ‘Maybe we came here to find out what it's like to be human,' she wonders.

Stories of Our Lives is a welcome project from the Nest Collective. A quiet defiance runs through it, rather than outrage. Colours are shut out from the narrative as well as the photography, but there is clarity in the telling.

Stranger by the Lake (L'inconnu du Lac)

Matt Bray — 2014-04-17T09:23:41Z

Alain Guiraudie's erotic gay thriller is located in rural France and takes place over ten summer days. Set on the shores of a vast inviting lake, a small group of men spend the day building up all-over tans in between swimming and cruising around the adjoining forest. We quickly fall into the world of the film and Guiraudie presents with ease the rituals that these gay men enjoy as they escape the confines of heterosexual society. However, we quickly feel that all is not well in ‘Gay Utopia'. Warnings of over-sized lake amphibians, the silent loneliness of dusk falling and the perceived dangers of anonymous outdoor sex, combine to give the lakeside location a palpable eeriness. That Guiraudie's camera never leaves this setting only intensifies our sense of dread.

So to the characters – Franck, (Pierre Deladonchamps) a chiseled beauty with mournful eyes, befriends out of shape loner Henri, (Patrick d'Assumçao) and develops a gentle, non-sexual relationship with him. Whilst chatting on the lakeside with his newly acquired friend, Franck eyes the object of his desire over on the beach - Michel, (Christophe Paou) who is swarthy, sporty and moustached; an archetypal grade-A hyper-masculine male. However, the course of true sex does not run smoothly. In the afternoon, Franck follows Michel into the forest only to find him with another man. In the evening, a greater obstacle to his emotions occurs when he thinks he witnesses Michel committing a crime.

As voyeurs we share Franck's shock – what in fact did we see occurring ? Dusk is falling – was there a crime or have our eyes tricked us? For Franck, there is a forceful sexual intrigue to what Michel may have done and soon the two embark on a highly sexed affair. Whether a crime was really committed will later become apparent.
Beautifully composed, clever, sexy and suspense-laden, Stranger by the Lake is a gem in the gay canon. The film's much talked about ending is lingering and perverse. In a world dulled by rational behaviour, Stranger by the Lake applauds a man who loses himself to passion and champions the liberation found in animalistic sex and wild emotion.

Dir: Alain Guiraudie, 2013

XXY

Judy Harris — 2010-07-29T08:45:03Z

XXY weaves together three landscapes: the fluidity of the ocean, the violence of the scientist's laboratory and the arid determinacy of life on dry land. Fifteen year old Alex, who so far has been subsumed by neither a male nor female gendered identity, is marooned on the shore. For writer/director Lucia Puenzo this is where things are forced into a fixed shape.

XXY (in my opinion grossly mistitled -the film has been criticised as misrepresenting Klinefelter's syndrome and actually resists the scientific reductionism the title implies) is a stunningly subtle depiction of the struggle to remain nameless. Puenzo inhabits the borders of a system in which to perform with least resistance you need a signifier more conclusive than ‘Alex'.

XXY produces an atmosphere which is both distant and infeasible, only making more marked the stifling tyranny of social performance. Within a landscape which is indicative of vast possibility, subjects are demanded to provide an account of themselves that will make them easier to apprehend. Alex- are you male or female? Do you want to slice carrots in the kitchen with your mother or slice turtles in the lab with your father?

In distinction to their child, Kraken and Suli inhabit predictably gendered roles. Suli, Alex's mother, performs her distress gently and quietly, while Kraken's rage periodically erupts from beneath his brooding resentment. The ambiguity of Alex's body is less of an affront for Kraken, “from the moment she was born she was perfect” he affirms. Alex's crotch becomes the niche in which the males of the species affirm their masculinity; fearless in the face of the unknown, they become captivated by it, sometimes wanting to colonise it for themselves. “Leave her alone, she's too much for you” Vando, Alex's maybe boyfriend brags.

When Alex stops imbibing the hormones that produce the pronoun ‘she', the family understand the forthcoming implications as a process of ‘masculinisation'. As the struggle to accept Alex's decision to neither take the hormones nor inhabit either a ‘male' or ‘female' gender Puenzo subtly pushes Alex's mother offscreen, depicting her as incapable of enduring such ambiguity. Kraken's masculinity is the bulwark which can survive such an assault. He occupies a gender with enough strength to withstand the crumbling of the binarious infrastructure.

Both aesthetically and epistemologically XXY captures the beauty and terror of ambiguity, yet stops short of rejoicing in it. Possibly what's most compelling is Puenzo's ambiguous relationship to ambiguity itself. Just like Alex, XXY never declares itself either way. Is it a subtle attack on the constraints of gender or merely a wistful attempt at triangulation? Whilst certain social assumptions are profoundly thrown into question, the primacy of gender and sexuality never are. The identity of a self which is not the site of lust and sexual consumption and which does not define itself as lacking, is never explored. In this aspect the film betrays it's subtle yet radically imaginative potential.

The underwater opening sequence of XXY prompted me to explore the world of ambiguous amphibians. In doing so I encountered the following questions: ‘What is the sex of my fish?',‘What issues do mermaids pose for men?' and ‘If the Little Mermaid influenced people attitudes to sexuality, then how come more people aren't sexually attracted to fish?' Exactly.

Dir: Lucía Puenzo, 2007