05/09/2009

In Venice Days documentary L’Amore e Basta [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (“Love, Period”), Italian director Stefano Consiglio interviews nine happy, long-term gay and lesbian couples. What emerges is a look at love, period, and should inspire outrage towards all those who still insist on differentiating “acceptable” heterosexual love from homosexual love.

The film opens with children speaking about how love is more important than sexual preference, and segues into popular Italian actor Luca Zingaretti reading a passage by Aldo Nove. The text, written specifically for the documentary, explains how prejudice is instilled in us at a very early age. Interspersed between the subsequent interviews are animated designs by Ursula Ferrara.

Consiglio says he chose couples “who have a future, who are building something together,” from Italy, France and Germany and is pleased that the film leaves viewers inspired and optimistic. The couples’ social contexts are different, with homosexual rights more advanced in Germany and France than in Italy. However, what is taken for granted socially, if not always politically, in numerous Western countries, is still taboo throughout much of the world.

At the post-screening Q&A, Zingaretti said he himself grew up in a milieu in which “fag” was one of the worst insults a man could hear. “But then I moved away from that environment,” he continued, “and my eyes were opened. What is most important is that people know and learn about worlds different from them. There can be no acceptance without awareness.”

The couples in the film cover a broad range of social and personal experiences. There are those divided over whether or not to adopt children (because they would grow up in an unwelcoming and judgmental society), and others bringing up a brood of kids in a perfectly harmonious family. Italian co-producer and distributor Andrea Occhipinti (Lucky Red) said he was particularly pleased about being part of this project that goes beyond stereotypes. Several of the lesbian couples accompanied the film, with their children. Sadly, however, no questions were directed at them. Who better could have commented on their experiences, positive and negative, than the subjects of the film themselves?

L’Amore e Basta was co-produced with Angelo Barbagallo’s Bibi Films for €250,000, with a contribution from the Italian Ministry of Culture. Lucky Red released it yesterday, September 4, on 10 prints.

So far, Belgium’s Cineart and several other territories have picked it up from French seller Doc & Film International, but the film will make it’s true market debut at the upcoming Toronto Film Festival.