Gay ‘Boy’ & Gay Fathers: Torino GLBT Film Festival Awards +Miami Festival

2009 Torino GLBT Film Festival Awards

2009 Torino GLBT Film Festival: April 23–30.

Best Feature Film: Leonera / Lion’s Den by Pablo Trapero (Argentina/South Korea/Brazil, 2008)

Special Mention: Actress Martina Gusman for Lion’s Den

Special Jury Award: Elève libre / Private Lessons by Joachim Lafosse (Belgium, 2008)

Special Mention: Actor Jonas Bloquet for Death in Venice

Special Mention: Wu sheng feng ling / Soundless Wind Chime by Kit Hung (Hong Kong/China/Switzerland, 2008)

 

Best Documentary (ex-aequo): Khastegi / Sex My Life by Bahman Motamedian (Iran, 2008) and Out in India: A Family’s Journey by Tom Keegan (USA/India, 2007)

Special Mention: Giorgio/Giorgia…storia di una voce by Gianfranco Mingozzi (Italy, 2008)

 

Best Short Film: Saliva by Esmir Filho (Brazil, 2008)

Special Mention: Même pas mort / Tomboy by Claudine Natkin (France, 2008)

 

The Nuovi Sguardi Award: Wu sheng feng ling / Soundless Wind Chime by Kit Hung (Hong Kong/China/Switzerland, 2008)

 

Audience Awards

Best Feature Film: Wu sheng feng ling / Soundless Wind Chime by Kit Hung (Hong Kong/China/Switzerland, 2008)

Best documentary: Queer China, “Comrade” China by Cui Zi’en (China, 2008)

Best Short Film: Tanjong Rhu / The Casuarina Cove by  Boo Junfeng (Singapore, 2008)

 

Narrative Competition Jury: Harry Baer (actor, Germany), Donatella Maiorca (director, Italy), Monica Rametta (actress, scriptwriter, Italy), Auraeus Solito (director, Philippines), Todd Stephens (director, USA)

Documentary Competition Jury: Christos Acrivulis (director, distributor, Italy/Germany), Eladio Climaco (critic, TV author and conductor, Portugal), Florence Fradelizi (director of Glbt film festival Paris, France)

Short Film Competition Jury: Tim Macavoy (critic, UK), Maren Kroyman (actress, singer, Germany), Nir Ne’eman (director, Israel)

Photos: Torino GLBT Film Festival

Torino GLBT Film Festival website

Filipino filmmaker Auraeus Solito, best known for his 2006 Teddy Award-winning The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros, will be at the Torino GLBT Film Festival, which runs April 23-30, as a member of the international jury and to present the world premiere of his new feature, Boy, recently banned in Singapore.

In Boy, a young poet sells his comic books to afford a one-night stand with a macho rent-boy on New Year’s Eve. However, their relationship will not end that night as the boy in question will learn to accept his sexuality.

Tuli (2005) and Philippine Science (2007); the latter follows eight students at the elite Philippine Science High School during the tumultuous 1980s.

In addition to the competition sections (features, shorts, documentaries), the 24th Torino GLBT Film Festival will also offer the following:

• a retrospective of Italian director Giuseppe Patroni Griffi;
• Italian director Ferzan Ozpetek will introduce “the films of his life”;
• Berlinale Panorama director, Wieland Speck, will introduce his movie Westler (1985) to remember life in Berlin as a divided city;
• tributes to pioneering Spanish director Ardorfo Arrieta and photographer Wolfgang Tillmans
• “Muscles in Skirts: The Italian Peplums”, a series of Italian B-movie epics, including Vittorio Cottafavi’s Hercules’ Revenge (1960), Sergio Leone’s The Colossus of Rhodes (1961) and Sergio Corbucci’s The Son of Spartacus (1962).

Miami Gay & Lesbian Film Festival: Gay Fathers, ‘Mr. Right’

The 2009 Miami Gay & Lesbian Film Festival (website) will kick off with a screening of Ella Lemhagen’s Swedish comedy Patrik, Age 1.5, in which a gay couple discover that their newly adopted “baby” is actually a 15-year-old anti-gay juvenile delinquent.

Among the other films scheduled at the festival, which runs until May 3, are:

• Yair Hochner’s quirky romantic comedy Antarctica (above, top photo), in which several gay men and a couple of lesbians try to sort out their entangled romantic lives in bustling Tel Aviv – all that while awaiting for aliens to land in the city.
• Valdis Óskarsdóttir’s Icelandic comedy Country Wedding, about several individuals with various personal secrets who gather for an out-of-town wedding.
• Jacqui Morris’ British romantic comedy Mr. Right, which follows three London gay couples and their emotional ups and downs.
• Martin Weisz’s Grimm Love (neither romantic nor a comedy), based on the real life case of cannibal Armin Meiwes.
• Gustav Hofer & Luca Ragazzi’s documentary Suddenly, Last Winter, which shows the effects of organized anti-gay bigotry on a gay couple (that’s Hofer and Ragazzi) who believed that their 8-year relationship would finally be recognized at the federal level after a center-left coalition became the majority in the Italian parliament in 2006 – their hopes, however, are dashed by a mix of political ineptitude and virulent anti-gay opposition led by the Catholic Church.
• Stefano Tummolini’s One Day in the Life, in which a deceptively ordinary day at the beach turns out to be a life-changing experience for an Italian gay man.