Europa is about a teenage Iraqi boy trying to reach Europe. I read the film’s synopsis and was immediately interested, but also had a bit of hesitancy about sitting down to watch it, coz I knew it was going to be brutal. And it is, it’s about how traumatising the whole thing is. I think…
I really liked this short animation, thought it was funny and sweet. But in the Q&A afterwards, there was a variety of interpretation of it that was surprising. Largely dialogue-free, Flamingo Pride focuses on one grumpy and withdrawn curmudgeon in a flock of queer flamingos, who sulks all through the Pride party. He clocks a…
A great wee short film about the power of drag. Not many stories focus on drag kings, so it’s nice to see this for a change. Sarah is running in the Queen of Sheppey pagaent, like her older sister and mother before her. Everything is pink dresses and big teeth. I love the sense of…
Lotus Lantern is a dreamy, musical short animation about the filmmaker’s identity as queer and Chinese. Suffused with song, objects and symbols, the short film follows pieces of their identity like a string of pearls. Entrancing.
So we kick off Encounters’ Queer Joy series with Red Aninsri, a spy film about a trans woman sent to seduce a gay student activist, set in Thailand. The film deliberately plays with anachronisms to highlight the impact of the past on the reality of today. The short film starts by saying it is inspired…
Free Chol Soo Lee is a documentary examining the life of Chol Soo Lee, who he was as a person, and then as a symbol which forged the first Asian-American social justice movements. Despite knowing a fair bit about American racially-charged miscarriages of justice, I’d never heard of Chol Soo Lee. Unfortunately history is teeming…
I loved this! Watching this, I kept thinking of the time Emma Thompson was on the My Dad Wrote A Porno podcast, how she spoke passionately about sex positive representation, and that the best way to demystify and destigmatise a taboo subject was a good old dose of laughter. Good Luck To You, Leo Grande…
Splinters is a documentary about the Rio Tercero explosion, something I was completely ignorant of before watching this film. It is made almost entirely from home movies shot by the filmmaker as a 10-year-old kid. Natalia Garayalde lived in Rio Tercero with her family, her mum and dad, brother Nicolas, and sisters Caro and Gabi.…
Cinemaattic are doing their Adrift season, so I went along to see The Sacred Spirit. A deeply strange film, it follows an ordinary family with extraordinary beliefs in UFOs, clairvoyance, and ancient Egyptian mythology. Watching the film, it reminded me of an article I read on serial killers and abnormal psychology. Why can’t we spot…
An intimate portrait of a family still searching for answers 50 years after the suicide of their brother. Marco Bellocchio is a legendary acclaimed filmmaker, with a lifetime of success. However he describes himself and his siblings as sharing an “arid unhappiness” from growing up in a house where they were provided with all the…