Hong Kong Lesbian and Gay Film Festival
Dec. 11th, 2004 06:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
opengoalFinally recuperated from my gruelling schedule during the Hong Kong Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. I tried my best but I still regret that I couldn't fit Arisan in my schedule.
I absolutely adore The Adventures of Iron Pussy. It's about a middle-aged man who is a 7-11 shop assistant by day but a superhero/heroine named Iron Pussy when his help is needed. The film spoofs Superman and James Bond and the actors burst into songs in the middle of a scene just like some 60s movies. I'd known the film was camp. I just never thought it's done so well. The film could've gone wrong at so many points but didn't. And although the lead actor isn't especially pretty, the way he carries himself, the way he flashes his eyelashes that makes him endearingly cute.
Here's a very good review of the film. See if you'll like it as much as I do. And a very short interview of the co-director and lead actor can be found here.
Drag Kings on Tour is another film I like a lot.
It's a documentary about a group of drag kings doing an unprecendented two-week tour across the US and Canada. It's about their show, it's about who they are and it's about gender fucking. Their show is fun and each of them is very different. But they don't just do drag shows. They also manage to squeeze in gender workshops during their tour. Several of them made their home towns one of the stops. It's really touching to see their families watching their shows and how the audience appreciate the presence of the families.
But I'm a shallow person. At the end of the day, it's their show on stage that made me go WOW! Christopher Noel (a thirty-something mother who can pass as a teenage skater boy and does exactly that every day) was so hot! He started in black leather, looking not unlike a gay boy toy. He then changed to something like a military uniform and danced to David Bowie's "Boys Keep Swinging" (When you're a boy, you can wear a uniform. When you're a boy, other boys check you out...) After stripping off his long trousers, he now looked like a boy scout. He then stripped further and further. The audience was tucking cash in his pants and a gay man said after one of the shows that he now wondered if he was really completely gay.
A review & analysis of the film can be found here.
But I was most surprised by the quality of the short films this time.
In Asian Shorts on Boys, there was a Korean short film called A Crimson Mark (脣痕). It's only 13 minutes long but it's breathtakingly beautiful.
It's about the regent and his protege who is now a clerk in the young king's court. There wasn't much in terms of plot (considering the length of the film) but the restrained feelings bursting between them was very beautifully done.
A viewer asked in the post-screening Q&A session whether it was a true story. Sadly it wasn't.
I tried to search the web for some more info. But since I don't Korean, I could only find these pictures:
and this trailer:
http://www.film2.co.kr/festival/pifan_2004/daily_report.asp?D=19
(Scroll right to the bottom of this page and you can find a link to the trailer.)
Playing with 3R: Identity Behind the Mirror is another nice surprise. It's actually an unaired episode of a Malaysian women's TV programme. That episode was censored because its topic was about lesbians. Frankly, I was shocked by the censorship. There was no kissing, no holding hands, not even any romantic or erotic references in the episode. Just a woman saying to a female friend that she is a lesbian, and then there were some interviews with lesbians and a counsellor. The counsellor didn't even really view lesbianism as something positive. She just said some girls undergo that phase and that the pressure they receive from family and society may drive them to even worse things like drug abuse. But the episode was banned by the government as promoting something anti-islam. What the hell are these people doing in the name of religion?!
26/11 (Fri) | 21:30 | Here Comes the Rainbow .1 |
27/11 (Sat) | 16:30 | Taiwanese Lesbian Shorts |
| 18:20 | Asian Shorts on Boys |
| 19:50 | Grande Ecole |
| 21:50 | E.K.G. Expositus |
28/11 (Sun) | 12:30 | The Adventures of Iron Pussy |
| 14:10 | Tropical Malady |
| 16:40 | Colonel Jin Xing /Playing with 3R: Identity Behind the Mirror |
| 18:15 | Hong Kong Lesbian Shorts |
30/11 (Tue) | 19:40 | Proteus |
1/12 (Wed) | 19:40 | Dangerous Living |
| 21:30 | Drag Kings on Tour |
3/12 (Fri) | 19:40 | Mysterious Skin |
| 21:30 | Splendid Float |
5/12 (Sun) | 18:00 | A Moth and a Butterfly / My German Boyfriend / Blood |
| 19:40 | Ethan Mao |
I absolutely adore The Adventures of Iron Pussy. It's about a middle-aged man who is a 7-11 shop assistant by day but a superhero/heroine named Iron Pussy when his help is needed. The film spoofs Superman and James Bond and the actors burst into songs in the middle of a scene just like some 60s movies. I'd known the film was camp. I just never thought it's done so well. The film could've gone wrong at so many points but didn't. And although the lead actor isn't especially pretty, the way he carries himself, the way he flashes his eyelashes that makes him endearingly cute.Here's a very good review of the film. See if you'll like it as much as I do. And a very short interview of the co-director and lead actor can be found here.
Drag Kings on Tour is another film I like a lot. It's a documentary about a group of drag kings doing an unprecendented two-week tour across the US and Canada. It's about their show, it's about who they are and it's about gender fucking. Their show is fun and each of them is very different. But they don't just do drag shows. They also manage to squeeze in gender workshops during their tour. Several of them made their home towns one of the stops. It's really touching to see their families watching their shows and how the audience appreciate the presence of the families.
But I'm a shallow person. At the end of the day, it's their show on stage that made me go WOW! Christopher Noel (a thirty-something mother who can pass as a teenage skater boy and does exactly that every day) was so hot! He started in black leather, looking not unlike a gay boy toy. He then changed to something like a military uniform and danced to David Bowie's "Boys Keep Swinging" (When you're a boy, you can wear a uniform. When you're a boy, other boys check you out...) After stripping off his long trousers, he now looked like a boy scout. He then stripped further and further. The audience was tucking cash in his pants and a gay man said after one of the shows that he now wondered if he was really completely gay.
A review & analysis of the film can be found here.
But I was most surprised by the quality of the short films this time.In Asian Shorts on Boys, there was a Korean short film called A Crimson Mark (脣痕). It's only 13 minutes long but it's breathtakingly beautiful.
It's about the regent and his protege who is now a clerk in the young king's court. There wasn't much in terms of plot (considering the length of the film) but the restrained feelings bursting between them was very beautifully done.
A viewer asked in the post-screening Q&A session whether it was a true story. Sadly it wasn't.
I tried to search the web for some more info. But since I don't Korean, I could only find these pictures:
and this trailer:
http://www.film2.co.kr/festival/pifan_2004/daily_report.asp?D=19
(Scroll right to the bottom of this page and you can find a link to the trailer.)
Playing with 3R: Identity Behind the Mirror is another nice surprise. It's actually an unaired episode of a Malaysian women's TV programme. That episode was censored because its topic was about lesbians. Frankly, I was shocked by the censorship. There was no kissing, no holding hands, not even any romantic or erotic references in the episode. Just a woman saying to a female friend that she is a lesbian, and then there were some interviews with lesbians and a counsellor. The counsellor didn't even really view lesbianism as something positive. She just said some girls undergo that phase and that the pressure they receive from family and society may drive them to even worse things like drug abuse. But the episode was banned by the government as promoting something anti-islam. What the hell are these people doing in the name of religion?!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-11 05:21 am (UTC)Apart from the gay content, overall it was a far more intelligent, more witty movie than your standard Indonesian fluffy teen romance fare. And everybody was just holding their breaths waiting for the Islamic clerics to come guns ablazing with fire and brimstone to demand its recall.....but they didn't. It survived, intact, as perhaps the first movie to ever illustrate gay people in a positive light--whilst other movies and TV shows have always portrayed gays as effeminate, comic relief, sissified clowns.