London’s Queer East Film Festival is Back. As usual it is a celebration of queer storytelling and activism in East and Southeast Asia and aims to uplift and amplify the voices of those marginalised in the LGBTQ+ community. To reflect on the significant progress that has been made, as well as the obstacles that millions still face in Asia. The festival welcomes everyone to be part of the discussion and celebrate diverse identities, cultures, and heritages of Asian and diasporic communities who have often been excluded from mainstream discourse in the UK.
Reimagined as a season-long showcase, the festival’s in-person cinema screenings will now go nationwide beyond London to include Manchester, Nottingham and Bristol, as well as offer UK-wide virtual screenings for audiences to enjoy at home.
What make this years Edition more interesting is that the eclectic program for the very first time spans over 50 years of filmmaking. fThis Queer East is a mix of classic retrospectives and new releases, to explore how culture, law, history, and social norms have affected and built the current queer Asian landscape.
Festival Director and Programmer of Queer East, Yi Wang told QUEERGURU “Lockdown, social distancing and the ‘new normal’ have changed our lives and how we engage with arts and culture. With the tremendous support from our funders, cinemas, festival partners and audiences, I am extremely proud that the Queer East Film Festival is back, stronger and better. It is different to what we originally envisaged for our first year, but we are excited to share queer Asian storytelling to a wider audience through digital spaces and our nationwide tours.”
You can see the FULL SCHEDULE of QUEER EAST and the info of how/where/when to view https://queereast.org.uk/festival-2020/ |
Queerguru has been through the full Program as usual, and picked out some personal favorites we think you should not miss ;
A Dog Barking at The Moon : This multi-award winning documentary from first time writer/director LISA XIANG ZI who was actually heavily pregnant when she made it, has been completely mesmerising audiences since its premiere at Berlinale.. Very closely based on Xiang’s real, thorny family life in China and she seamlessly moves the cation back and forth between decades to understand where she comes from.
She has this remarkable grasp on portraying the detailed nuances of her family as they struggle with the difficulties of keeping to traditions even though the trauma is pulling them all apart. A very conflicted Xiang has this empathy for her parents in particular and in fact RENHUA NA playing her mother an obtuse and ridiculous matriarch desperately clinging to the possibility that her husband is not cheating (we assume with man) steals every scene she is in.
MILITARY DOG is one of whole range of rather fab short films that play a big part in Queer East. From Taiwan its the story of a young military cadet who is having his very first master/slave episode with a senior officer. Keep an open mind if this is not something that usually ends up on your radar
QUEER JAPAN: The LA based Canadian filmmaker GRAHAM KOLBEINs set himself an impossible task with his new documentary Queer Japan. Although it is both intriguing and thoroughly entertaining it is also very obvious that 90 minutes is certainly not long enough to comprehensively cover the whole spectrum of LGBTQ culture in Japan. Although somewhat uneven in parts, Kolbein’s glimpse at how traditional Japanese society is slowly embracing the queer community does have some fascinating glimpses into the lives of a few of the more outrageous and larger than life characters in the community.
SONG LANG: LEON LE’S heart-string-pulling story of a love that goes unconsummated is probably the first LGBTQ movie from Vietnam that we have ever seen. It is an unexpected and very compelling love story between two previously rather confused young men who have found their potential soul mates in the most unlikely of circumstances, It is also a love song to a Saigon long changed and the wonderful tradition of Cải Lương Opera which Le, a resident of California since he was a teenager, treats with the utmost respect and passion. If this is to be the standard bearer of a new source of queer cinema then we cannot wait to see what could follow that would match this.
THE TEACHER : From Taiwan comes this engaging romantic drama . It’s the story of Kevin a 26-year-old high school civics teacher in Taipei . He’s an out gay man , attending rallies for same-sex marriage and romantically involved with an older married man. But when he dares to bring up gay rights in his classroom, he finds he is putting both his job and relationship in jeopardy.
The Wedding Banquet. Way before Oscar winning Director Ang Lee’s gave us Brokeback Mountain he made this romantic comedy about Wai-Tung Gao (Winston Chao), a Taiwanese immigrant to the USA who lives happily with his partner Simon (Mitchell Lichtenstein) in Manhattan. Despite having achieved success Wai-Tung faces pressure from his parents, who wonder why he hasn’t yet gotten married and attempt to set him up with women.
What follows in this very entertaining drama is a take on the aged old story of queer men who not inky have to go back in the closet to appease parents but they have to drag a ‘fake bride’ in their with them . Lee’s 1994 film was nominated for a Best Foreign Picture Oscar and is considered something of a classic now
Labels: 2020, film festval, Queer East, Top Pics
