21/04/2010

How is “gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender” cinema in Italy? “Mediocre”, according to Fabio Bo, the film critic who as of this year is also helming the selection committee of the Turin GLBT Film Festival, running through April 22.

“The panorama is bleak. Militant films are nonexistent and GLBT themes are tackled with little conviction, be it in feature films – excluding leader of the pack Ferzan Ozpetek, who’s had commercial success, and small productions like One Day in the Life [+see also:
film review
film profile] – or documentaries, which, if possible, are in even worse shape”.

Consequently, the only domestic film in competition in Turin is La Capretta di Chagall (“Chagall’s Little Goat”), the witty short by Silvia Novelli produced by the group BADhOLE (also behind Guerra e Pacs); while penguins Gus & Waldo (of five very short sketches that were enthusiastically applauded) were designed by Italy’s Massimo Fenati, who however has been working and living in London for 15 years.

The situation is very different in the rest of the world. Of the countries that have always produced numerous GLBT films, Spain leads the way and, adds Bo, has the opposite problem of Italy, “an abundance of homosexual-themed work, from which we chose El Cónsul de Sodoma in competition and Tú Eliges and Madre Amadísima out of competition. Their shorts, documentaries and features are often remarkable, and they have to live up to a tradition in which Almodóvar looms over all”.

Perhaps it’s no coincidence then that the director of Tú Eliges – the most indebted to certain of the “masters” films – is Antonia San Juan, who played the unforgettable Agrado in All About My Mother.

Recurring themes include AIDS, “which today is no longer seen as the earth-shattering tragedy that spawned equally momentous films such as Jeffrey and Poison, to name two of the titles included in our retrospective on the 25 films that changed our lives,” says Bo. It is relatively marginal (El Cónsul de Sodoma) except in one case where it takes centre stage, in Luxembourgish film The House of Boys [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Jean-Claude Schlim, chosen “to show the carefreeness of the 1980s, to then leave behind comedy for drama through the trauma of the disease”.

Schlim’s film on “remembering” touches upon a need to reflect upon the past that was much discussed in Turin. Thanks above all to Family Tree [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by festival regulars Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau. The most mature film in competition, about a family secret finally revealed, speaks to wider audiences than those who usually watch GLBT films.

Audiences for whom, on other hand, some films seem to be strictly reserved, even struggling to find their way to theatres even at home (such as Hormoz’s I Dreamt Under the Water, released directly to DVD in France).

“This is why a festival such as ours is important,” concludes Bo, “because it allows spectators to see films that would otherwise be difficult, if not impossible, to find”.

(Translated from Italian)