The fine line between straight boys “being boys” and homoeroticism is on display in Marco Berger’s latest feature, Horseplay (Los agitadores), that leans into the liminal spaces of male sexuality and “manhood”. A group of twenty-something young Argentinian men are vacationing together in a luxury villa. Freed from the constraints of parents and family, the... Continue Reading →
Mardi Gras Film Festival 2023 Review: Gateways Grind ★★★1/2
The Gateways Club, or the Gates as it was known, was the centre of lesbian London for decades. A watering hole in the heart of Chelsea, it one of the only exclusively lesbian venues in London, frequented by a mix of women of all classes, including the likes of author Patricia Highsmith. Running from the... Continue Reading →
Mardi Gras Film Festival 2023 Review: Elephant (Słoń) ★★★★
The autumnal landscape of southern Poland shines in writer-director Kamil Krawczycki’s new feature, Elephant (Słoń), adding fresh layers to the familiar tale of a rural young man discovering his sexuality in a homophobic town. Bartek (Jan Hrynkiewicz) works multiple jobs to support himself and his mother, looking after their farm animals by day and helping... Continue Reading →
Mardi Gras Film Festival 2023 Review: Golden Delicious ★★★
Basketball, teen angst, social media, and family drama combine in Golden Delicious, a tale of an Asian-Canadian high schooler dealing with the claustrophobic impact of everyone else's expectations. Jake (Cardi Wong) is a good kid with a sweet girlfriend in Vancouver whose parents run a local Chinese restaurant. But the pressure is mounting. Nearing graduation,... Continue Reading →
Mardi Gras Film Festival 2023 Review: Shall I Compare You to a Summer’s Day? (Bashtaalak sa’at) ★★★
An experimental blend of film, poetry, song and more, Shall I Compare You to a Summer’s Day? (Bashtaalak sa'at) is an art piece that defies linear narrative or easy interpretation. We may start with a play on Shakespeare, but where we’ll end up…well, that's anyone’s guess. Egyptian filmmaker Mohammad Shawky Hassan has given us a... Continue Reading →
Mardi Gras Film Festival 2023 Review: In Her Words – 20th Century Lesbian Fiction ★★★
Chronicling key figures in lesbian fiction from the 1920s to the 90s, Lisa Marie Evans and Marianne K. Martin's In Her Words: 20th Century Lesbian Fiction is an exhaustive walk through individual author's lives and works using a range of new and archival interviews. Without preamble, we are thrown into a discussion of Radclyffe Hall’s... Continue Reading →
Mardi Gras Film Festival 2023 Review: Lotus Sports Club ★★★★
At its core, Lotus Sports Club is the story of found family, and one relationship in particular. Filmed over five years in Cambodia, the documentary is both inspiring and poignant as it explores the strength and limitations of the bonds we create. The Lotus Sports Club itself is the creation of Pa Vann, a trans... Continue Reading →
Mardi Gras Film Festival 2023 Review: #LookAtMe ★★★★★
Banned in its native Singapore, Ken Kwek’s second feature #LookAtMe takes the city-state’s repressive laws to their disturbing end point to deliver an emotionally charged, Orwellian nightmare of a story about siblings fighting for freedom when society is pressuring them to submit. Identical twin brothers Sean and Ricky Marzuki (both seamlessly played by yao) are... Continue Reading →
Mardi Gras Film Festival 2023 Review: Where Butterflies Don’t Fly (Kam motýli nelétají) ★★★
When a bullied gay teen and his discreetly gay teacher are stranded in a complex cave system, they both need to drop their pretenses and learn to survive in order to escape in writer-director Roman Němec's claustrophobic feature debut, Where Butterflies Don’t Fly. Also there are sandwiches, but we’ll get to that later. Daniel (Daniel... Continue Reading →
Book Review: A Boy’s Own Story The Graphic Novel ★★★★
Eighties gay-lit classic, A Boy’s Own Story by Edmund White, has been adapted into a gorgeous graphic novel by Michael Carroll, Brian Alessandro, and Igor Karash, that manages to streamline the original book and strike at the heart of White’s autobiographical breakthrough. Opening in the American midwest of the 1950s and jumping forward through time... Continue Reading →
