Archive

I Heard It through the Grapevine

Two decades after the Civil Rights Movement, James Baldwin revisits historical places stretching from the South to the North – from Selma and Birmingham, Alabama to Atlanta, Georgia and on to the battleground beaches of St. Augustine, Florida and the Dr Martin Luther King Memorial in Washington, D. C. On this journey down memory lane, he engages in conversations with friends, activists and fellow writers such as Amiri Baraka, Oretha Castle Haley ...

I Saw the TV Glow

Teenager Owen is just trying to make it through life in the suburbs when his classmate introduces him to a mysterious late-night TV show – a vision of a supernatural world beneath their own. In the pale glow of the TV, Owen’s view of reality begins to crack.

I Shot Andy Warhol

Based on the true story of Valerie Solanas who was a 60s radical preaching hatred toward men in her S.C.U.M. Manifesto. She wrote a screenplay for a film that she wanted Andy Warhol to produce, but he continued to ignore her. So she shot him. This is Valerie’s story.
The attempted assassination of Andy Warhol from the perspective of Factory member, artist, writer and publisher of the S.C.U.M. Manifesto Valerie Solanas. Mary Harron's debut fil...

I Shot My Love

Over 15 years, Tomer Heymann has made a film portrait about the men in his life, his family and the development of his country. From a personal perspective and with humour and sensitivity, he shows the maturation of a 40 year old man, his family and his country, the actions of which he does not always agree with. Heymann uses old 8mm material, revealing intimacy and occasions from his private life. The film was shot with a small video camera tha...

I'll Be Your Mirror

 "I used to think that I could never lose any one if I photographed them enough. In fact, my pictures show me how much I've lost." (Nan Goldin)
Synopsis
Nan Goldin is an artist - and a survivor. Her photographies chronicle a life from a middle-class American up bringing, to the wild and liberating experiences of the 1970s New York underground, to the recent devastating impact of AIDS on her community. A collaboration with Goldin, the film is a...

iBhokhwe

Ukwaluka is an ancient circumcision ritual for young men still widely practiced by the Xhosa in South Africa. It marks the transition from youth to manhood. A boy who has just undergone circumcision sits in semi-darkness in a simple hut on a hill, far away from the village, as prescribed by the initiation ritual. He is covered from head to toe with a paint made from clay which makes him look as white as a goat. This should be a period of healing,...

Ich kenn keinen – Allein unter Heteros

In big cities, discrimination against homosexuality and a gay way of life is not a big issue anymore. Gay mayors and football club association presidents are no longer colourful exceptions to the rule, rather they have become an expression of normality. In rural areas,however, the definition of what is normal is quite different. Out here, normal means a husband, wife and children – the nuclear family. In the country, expressions such as “bloody p...

IEC Long

Who inhabits the ancient Iec Long Firecracker Factory? A search for the traces of the history of china crackers, child labour and the ghosts of a majestic ruin.

If from Every Tongue It Drips

If from Every Tongue It Drips is a hybrid documentary film that uses the framework of quantum physics to explore the ways that personal relationships and political movements at once transcend and challenge time, space, identity, and location. The film follows the lives of a couple living in Batticaloa, Sri Lanka; Ponni writes Rekhti, a form of 19th-century, Urdu, queer poetry; the other, Sarala, is the camera operator. As their personal lives...

Il giardino dei Finzi Contini

Ferrara, Italy at the end of the thirties: The Finzi Continis are a respected intellectual, jewish family with a stately property. When restrictions against the jews under Mussolini’s fascist government tighten, their large garden becomes a meeting point for the jewish friends of their grown-up children Micòl and Alberto. They try to avoid the ever growing threats with parties and tennis matches. The pretty Micòl falls in love with Giorgio, son of ...

Improvvisamente l'inverno scorso

Luca and his friend Gustav are thirtysomething; they have been a couple for eight years. Nothing out of the ordinary for a western country, one might think. Yet this is not so. For Luca and Gustav live in Italy and, believe it or not, there are a few places out there in Euroland where the acknowledgement of civil rights for a pair such as Luca and Gustav are still an issue – and a major one at that.
Then, “suddenly, last winter”, Luca and Gustav’...

Incroci

Bergamo, northern Italy. Fede’s days are spent between school and a home run by nuns. In a corridor of the Pensionato, Fede sees Valentina, a new tenant, for the first time. In the middle of a choreography of open, semi-open and closed doors, unknown feelings arise. As sudden as the luminosity of a flashlight entering a room at night. As odd as mixing new flavours. Another world is born inside the one Fede knew, with different questions and possi...

Inflorescence

Autumn again on planet Earth. Eternally united, a couple of pink rose petals endure the slings and arrows of a heavy thunderstorm. A romantic-conceptualist bedtime story of resistance and redundancy, or the awkward ambivalence of truth, dream, life and love. Let’s unite and blossom!

Inside Deep Throat

“Deep Throat” was not just the pseudonym of the Washington Post journalist who unleashed the Watergate scandal in 1972. The name was inspired by a film by director Gerard Damiano entitled DEEP THROAT which had been released several months previously and which was the unexpected hit of the year. In the wake of its run in the porn cinemas of mid-town Manhattan, this modest 25,000-dollar production unwittingly became the trigger for a political debate ...

Inside the Chinese Closet

Andy’s father knows that his son is gay but, determined to conform to social conventions, he urges him to find a lesbian who is willing to marry him. Cherry has already entered into a bogus marriage, but now her parents expect their only daughter to provide them with a grandchild so that they can finally put an end to their neighbours’ gossiping. In China, gay men and lesbians are under enormous pressure to spare their parents the perceived shame...

Instructions for Survival

Alexander’s transgender identity means he is obliged to lead a life of secrecy in his home country. Being identified as “female” in his passport means he cannot legally find work, either. Since even a visit to the doctor is a risk for him, he has begun hormone therapy to transition on his own with support from internet forums and the local transgender community. Desperate to escape their hopeless situation and leave the country, Alexander’s wife...

Interior. Leather Bar

When William Friedkin’s film Cruising was screened in competition at the Berlinale in 1980 it unleashed a wave of controversy – and not just at the festival. Gay activists accused the film, in which Al Pacino plays an undercover cop investigating a case inNew York’s gay and leather scene, of stirring up homophobic stereotypes. Moreover, forty minutes of allegedly overly explicit scenes were deleted in order tosecure a less restricted rating for t...

International Dawn Chorus Day

On International Dawn Chorus Day (May 3, 2020), birds from six continents join an online video call. They gossip about storms and cats and wires and dates. They share speculations about Egyptian filmmaker Shady Habash, known for his satirical anti-dictator music videos, who died the day before in Cairo’s notorious Tora prison. They talk about Egyptian queer activist Sarah Hegazi, famously incarcerated for flying a rainbow flag at a Cairo concert...

Între revoluții

In the 1970s, an Iranian student named Zahra meets a fellow student called Maria at university in Bucharest. They are both pursuing a degree in medicine and develop a deep friendship and admiration for each other. When the revolution against the Shah breaks out in 1979, Zahra goes back to Iran, moved by the hope of political transformation, although disappointments are quick to follow. Zahra never ends up returning to Romania. Over the next decad...

Io Sono L'Amore

Emma is the trophy wife of an Italian textile maker. She shines in her roll, instructing servants and organizing high society meetings and parties. The fact that she lives in a cage only becomes clear to her by watching the development of her two children. Her daughter, who studies in England, falls in love with a woman and is ready to break free of her predestined path. On top of that, her son brings a cook home whom he loves platonically. Emma...