Painting the Spectrum 5 : Schedule of Films
Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays from Monday 1 June to Tuesday 30 June, 2009
Venue : Sidewalk Cafe, Middle Street, Georgetown Guyana
Programme starts at 7pm each night
Admission is FREE. All films are intended for mature audiences unless otherwise indicated
Special Event : Discussion on Spirituality and Sexuality - Wednesday 10 June, 6pm at Sidewalk Cafe.
Monday 1 June Brother Outsider : The Life of Bayard Rustin (2003)
/USA Documentary/
A master strategist and tireless activist, Bayard Rustin is best remembered as the organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, one of the largest nonviolent protests ever held in the United States. He brought Gandhi’s protest techniques to the American civil rights movement, and helped mold Martin Luther King, Jr. into an international symbol of peace and nonviolence.Despite these achievements, Rustin was silenced, threatened, arrested, beaten, imprisoned and fired from important leadership positions, largely because he was an openly gay man in a fiercely homophobic era. Five years in the making and the winner of numerous awards, BROTHER OUTSIDER presents a feature-length documentary portrait, focusing on Rustin’s activism for peace, racial equality, economic justice and human rights (85 mins)
Film donated by the Bayard Rustin Film Project
Tuesday 2 June Karmen Geï (2001)
Senegal/ Musical/ French and Wolof with English subtitles
Karmen Gei is the African adaptation of Bizet's popular opera Carmen. The conflicts between conventional morality and sexual freedom, between constraint and liberation, between complacency and passionate self-abandon, which are always present in iterations of the Carmen myth, will here acquire a very African political dimension, as well as a very modern one in terms of its sexual politics. (85 mins)
Donated by California Newsreel
Wednesday 3 June Le fate ignoranti/ His Secret Life (2001)
Italy:Turkey / Drama/ Italian/English subtitles
This beautiful film is another triumph from Director Ferzan Ozpetek
in which he explores the sub rosa aspect of the lives of his characters. Antonia is happily married to a handsome Italian man (Massimo) who dies suddenly in an accident, leaving her bereft and lonely. Massimo's friends at work bring Antonia his belongings and in opening the office clutter she discovers a painting ("The Ignorant Fairy") which has an inscription on the back that it is from a lover of seven years. Antonia is convinced that her husband has had another woman and sets out to confront her, only to discover that the lover was a man (106 mins)Monday 8 June Dreams Deferred : The Sakia Gunn Story (2008)
USA/ Documentary
This documentary tells the little known story of Sakia Gunn, a 15 year old student who was fatally stabbed in a gay hate crime in Newark, New Jersey. Sakia was a homosexual woman of color who dressed in masculine attire but did not necessarily identify as either lesbian or female-to-male transgender. Sakia was stabbed while waiting at the bus stop, after rejecting violent advances from young men. What lessons does her murder have for the way in which we perceive youth violence and violence against girls who reject violent masculine advances? (71 mins)Film donated by Third World Newsreel
Tuesday 9 June Dostana (2008)
India/ Comedy
Abhikshek Bachan and John Abraham play Kunal and Sameer, two straight guys who pretend to be a gay couple to secure an posh Miami apartment, but both of them fall for their gorgeous room-mate Neha, hilarity ensures as they strive to convince one and all they are gay! Secretly they are trying to win Neha's heart! (120 minutes)
More information..
Wednesday 10 June Toul Omry / All my Life (2008)
Egypt/ Drama/ Arabic with English subtitles
For Rami, all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds, as long as he keeps to himself. But when his longtime lover leaves him to marry a woman and his best friends drift away, he comes face to face with the harsh realities of life as a gay man in Egypt. Against the backdrop of the choreographed crackdown on gay men and the notorious Queen Boat arrests of 2001, he plunges into a world of loveless friendships and spirals downwards to his ultimate downfall.(120 minutes)Film Donated by Maraia Films
Monday 15 June Milk (2008)
USA / Drama
Academy Award nominee Gus Van Sant directs Academy Award winner Sean Penn as gay-rights icon Harvey Milk. Mr. Milk (1930-1978) was an activist and politician, and the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in America; in 1977, he was voted to the city supervisors' board of San Francisco. (128 mins)
Read the Stabroek News Editorial
Tuesday 16 June Bi the way (2008)
USA / Documentary
Bi the Way had its World Premiere at SXSW Film Festival in Austin, TX. The film is an enjoyable and entertaining documentary about the changing nature of sexuality and sexual identity in America today and how the next generation is redefining its sexual mores. The directors travel across the country talking mostly to young people about their new definitions of sexual identity. It is an eye-opening film, because it really begins to break down our normative dichotomous definitions of heterosexuality and homosexuality. (85 mins)
More information..
Wednesday 17 June The Sum of Us (1994)
Australia / ComedyHappy Father's Day!!!! A widowed, beer-drinking ferry driver who is looking for Ms Right and his rugby-playing, beer-drinking, gay plumber son both search for love and romance. Starring Russel Crowe, this film tells the story of a father son relationship and the difficulties they encounter as they try to intervene in each other's lives (100 mins)
Monday 22 June
Spectrum Celebration - An evening of poetry, prose, drama acknowledging the struggle and the achievements.
Featuring a reading from Beautiful Little Lies , a play by Judith Rudakoff
A Cuban cocktail with a twist.
Cuba, February 1998. The Pope’s historic visit raised the spirits of the Cuban people but a few weeks later, nothing has changed. Tourists are still drinking “Cuba Libre” (Free Cuba) cocktails, and bartenders are still calling them “Mentirita” (Little Lie) when no one is listening.
But this is Cuba. Someone is always listening.
Beautiful Little Lies follows the adventures of Juancy, a Cuban transvestite performer, Suzanne, a Canadian woman tourist whose mother has just died, Moffi, a little white Cuban dog with attitude, Bob, a closeted male homosexual tourist, and Maria, a Cuban mother with a passion for all life has to offer. And like Cuba, the world of Beautiful Little Lies is also populated by the ever present Orishas, the iconic and earthy spirit guides of the AfroCuban belief system...
Tuesday 23 June Straightlaiced: How gender's got us all tied up (2008)
USA/ Documentary
With a fearless look at a highly charged subject, Straightlaced unearths how popular pressures around gender and sexuality are confining American teens. Their stories reflect a diversity of experiences, demonstrating how gender role expectations and homophobia are interwoven, and illustrating the different ways that these expectations connect with culture, race and class.
From girls confronting media messages about culture and body image to boys who are sexually active just to prove they aren’t gay, this fascinating array of students opens up with brave, intimate honesty about the toll that deeply held stereotypes and rigid gender policing have on all our lives.
Film donated by Groundspark
Wednesday 24 June The World Unseen (2007)
South Africa / DramaThe film is set in Cape Town, South Africa during apartheid in 1952 and is based on the novel by Samin Sharif. The films stars Lisa Ray and Sheetal Sheth as two Indian South African women who fall in love in a racist, sexist, and homophobic society. This film has a background of beautiful music from that period. (100mins)
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Monday 29 June Three films
Coolie Gyal (2004)
In this coming-out story, an honest and sincere letter is read from a daughter to her parents. A familial montage is incorporated with a heartfelt narrative filled with the expectations and anxieties of a young woman. Renata Mohamed is a Toronto-based Indo-Guyanese filmmaker born in the British Virgin Islands.( 7 mins)
Contributed by Director Renata Mohamed
Blu in you (2008)
Canada/Tobago / Essayist DocumentaryDirected by Guyana born Michelle Mohabeer PhD
BLU IN YOU is an essayist rumination mediated through the lens of a female observer (Melanie Smith), who watches the staged conversations between a visual arts curator (Andrea Fatona) and a writer (Nalo Hopkinson). These conversations bridge historical and contemporary representations of the black female body, subjectivity and sexuality exploring various thematics from a cultural history of violence and spectacularization (embodied in the figure of "the Hottentot Venus") to discussions of art, representation and celebrated cultural icons (Josephine Baker, Dorothy Dandridge and the figure of the muse Jeanne Duval), to a contemporary black queer female erotic body and sexuality. (50 mins)
Film donated by Dr Michelle Mohabeer
Flores en el Parque (2006)
Spain / Short / 10 minutes
Ana and Lola arrange to meet in the park. Lola will bring flowers. Ana will bring doubts.
Film donated by director Mariel Macia
previously announced as
A domicilio (2008) (programme changed for this film )
Spain/ Drama
Rosa has thought of everything, she’ll treat Flor to a sushi dinner; they’ll drink white wine and listen to music. Both know what they are there for. However, things not always go as planned and some words, some time together can make them reconsider the prejudices they have about themselves and about one another (25 mins)Film donated by director Mariel Macia
Tuesday 30 June Noah's Arc: Jumping the Broom (2008)
USA / Comedy
Noah and Wade invite their friends to Martha's Vineyard (Massachusetts) for their wedding. This feature-length version of the TV show gives the characters a chance to learn more about each other - and themselves - while living in close quarters. Relationships are tested and there are plenty of surprises. (101 mins)
More information..
Acknowledgements
With the support of
For arranging the delivery of films :-
Scheherazade Khan
Stacey Gomes
Dion Small
Greg Jagroo
Sherlina Nageer
