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Michael [Mikaël / Chained: The Story of the Third Sex / Heart's Desire] (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1924)
Aug
3
National Michael Day
Art critic Switt (Robert Garrison) with muse Michael (Walter Slezak). DPs: Karl Freund & Rudolph Maté.
Considered one of the earliest positive cinematic depictions of (male) homosexuality, Carl Theodor Dreyer's Michael tells the story of lonely artist Zoret (director Benjamin Christensen), his bright young muse and model Michael (Walter Slezak), and the more mature art critic Switt (Robert Garrison). Though it's mostly suggested – there's a female temptress (Nora Gregor) assuming a heterosexual perspective – its motif of the spoken and unspoken relationship between the men is definitely one of love, much in the same way Charles Vidor's Gilda (1946) is.
“Now I may die content, for I have seen great love.”
– opening title card
Michael is the second book adaption of Herman Bang's Mikaël (1902) after Vingarne [The Wings] (Mauritz Stiller, 1916).
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Blue (Derek Jarman, 1993)
Jul
13
Oxymoron Day
Not a screenshot from the film, but a pure representation of International Klein Blue.
Synchronous to the screening of a film that wasn't, Derek Jarman's Blue was broadcast on radio and television. Those who tuned into the radio could request a special card printed in that most spectral of colours, International Klein Blue, a blue that according to its creator Yves Klein, has “a quality close to pure space” and “immaterial values beyond what can be seen or touched”.
“You say to the boy 'Open your eyes'. When he opens his eyes and sees the light, you make him cry out, saying 'Oh, Blue, come forth! Oh, Blue, arise! Oh, Blue, ascend! Oh, Blue, come in!'.”
– Nigel Terry
Submerged in #blue, seeing through what was left of Jarman's eyes, we live through the artist's life, and love, and loss. When you leave the theatre, put down that card, you're temporarily blinded by the physiological afterimage of a devastating disease. What remains is the voice of a filmmaker who lost his sight.
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Nicht der Homosexuelle ist pervers, sondern die Situation, in der er lebt [It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse, But the Society in Which He Lives] (Rosa von Praunheim, 1971)
Jul
6
National Daniel Day
A gay couple kissing on the street in front of a black-tiled Berlin bar. A third gay man nearby looks away. DP: Robert van Ackeren.
“Werdet stolz auf eure Homosexualität! Raus aus den Toiletten, rein in die Strassen! Freiheit für die Schwulen!”
Von Praunheim's Nicht der Homosexuelle ist pervers is a plea for rebellion and visibility. For revolt and love. A wakeup call for gays and straights alike. Such a stir this film pamphlet made it became the blueprint for West-Germany's gay liberation movement.
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Compulsion (Richard Fleischer, 1959)
Jun
29
coffee
A squeaky young Stockwell and Varsi at a diner. We're looking in from the outside through an open window. The place is busy but she's all enthralled by his wit and intellect (and looks for sure). DP: William C. Mellor.
“Europe, a Stutz Bearcat, the best restaurants. You fellas really have a hard life, don't you?”
– Harold Horn, DA
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A Bigger Splash (Jack Hazan, 1973/74)
Jun
24
Swim A Lap Day

A Bigger Splash is the name of one of painter David Hockney's best known works and part of a series of pool portraits of the artist's close friends, one of them his lover Peter Schlesinger, an artist in his own right. When in the early 1970s the relationship between the two men started to unravel it affected #Hockney so much it almost rendered him incapable of working.
“I paint what I like when I like, and where I like.”
– David Hockney
While going through Polaroids he found that two of the shots, one of a man #swimming underwater, the other of a man standing on a poolside, fell into the composition he was looking for. The resulting Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) – where an unknown man can be seen swimming towards Hockney's fully-dressed former lover – bears similarities to Renaissance paintings where the composition of human figures, landscape, and perspective culminate in proto-cinematic storytelling.
A Bigger Splash is of course not the only (pseudo) documentary about an artist and his or her life, but one of the very few honest ones. The struggle to create is not romanticised, nor is the intimate relationship between artist and muse a playground of lazy, perverse speculation. As Hockney creates, destroys, and recreates his Pool, so we all destroy our lovers to bloom again.
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May
9
Teacher Appreciation Day
Manuela (Hertha Thiele) in her Don Carlos costume with her beloved teacher, Frl. Von Bernburg (Dorothea Wieck). Note the similarity with Garbo vehicle Queen Christina (Rouben Mamoulian, 1933). DPs: Reimar Kuntze & Franz Weihmayr.
“What you call sin, I call the great spirit of love, which takes a thousand forms.”
– Fräulein Von Bernburg
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Orphée [Orpheus] (Jean Cocteau, 1950)
Apr
27
Morse Code Day
Orphée (Jean Marais) in the black car, hearing poetry in Morse. DP: Nicolas Hayer.
#Cocteau's Orpheus – here the mythological poet and musician is personified by Jean Marais – accompanies a fallen young poet transported to the Underworld by car. The car radio plays fragments of poetry, interrupted by #MorseCode. When back in this world, #Orphée obsesses over the lines of radical poetry he heard and returns to the car's radio to retrieve them.
“Sleeping or dreaming, the dreamer must accept his dreams.”
– The Princess
Morse code and other industrial sounds serve as a soundscape for Cocteau's characters. They swerve in and out of it, sometimes fully aware of them (#Orpheus himself is attuned to the #poetry to be found in emergency radio broadcasts), by times passing through like a mirage.
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Jagdszenen aus Niederbayern [Hunting Scenes from Bavaria / The Hunters and the Hunted] (Peter Fleischmann, 1969)
Apr
6
Sorry Charlie Day
The townspeople gather to prepare the communal harvest meal. A dead sow is laid out on an improvised table. DP: Alain Derobe.
A scandal, that's what it was! In the late 1960s, Peter Fleischmann picked the picturesque Catholic village of #Landshut as the backdrop for Jagdszenen aus #Niederbayern, the film adaptation of Martin Sperr's #TheatrePlay with the same name.
A young man named Abram – played by Sperr – returns to his family village. Soon the townspeople's thorns move from the in their eyes other disgraceful villagers to the much-needed mechanic.
“Ich habe ihn halb tot geschlagen, ich schwör's. Ich kann nichts dafür, dass eine Drecksau draus geworden ist.”
Where did he return from? He was in prison. What for? For being a homosexual. He's a Drecksau (a filthy pig), his mother says. The village whore can't turn him around. A sow is slaughtered in real time in celebration of a successful #harvest and plans for the town's future are forged.
While created when West Germany's #Paragrafen175 was in place [1872–1994], illegality of same-sex relations], the homosexual aspect wasn't the main cause of the outrage. Some of the Landshutter villagers who played alongside the professional actors felt they were depicted as being backwards. This isn't a movie about hunting, sigted some. Lifting the veil of the prevalence of, a #Fernweh in a sense, that Germany (hush) was another.
Catholic Mass is a theatrical re-enactment of the life and suffering of the son of God. When rites outstay their meaning, when invocations turn routine, the worshippers lose sight.
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She-Man: A Story of Fixation (Bob Clark, 1967)
Mar
10
International Wig Day
Real-world female impersonator Leslie Marlowe plays Lt. Albert Rose, a military man forced into wearing lingerie and said wig and eventually embracing it as “Rose Albert”.
“IS HE? or ISN'T SHE?”
– tagline
Re-released by Something Weird you're forgiven to think that She-Man: A Story of Fixation will be a schlockfest. Instead it's a versatile as Bob Clark's filmography. She-Man – and do please forgive the wording – is part #fetish fest, part #mondo movie, part #queer liberation.
A lovely film that, reminiscent to Ed Wood's Glen or Glenda (1953), was made by people who lived the lifestyle and therefore forfeits the unnecessary, exploitative angle.
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Paris Is Burning (Jennie Livingston, 1990)
Mar
6
National Dress Day
Paris Is Burning is probably best known for its fabulous #ballroom and #vogueㅤing scenes but in its heart, it tells the story of #family, of people who found their new ménage where they can live and love without fear and prejudice.
“In the ballroom circuit, it is so obvious that if you have captured the great white way of living, or looking, or dressing, or speaking – you is a marvel.”
– Pepper LaBeija
While you may expect a fierce documentary about #TransRights, or maybe merely a glamorous parade, you will be confronted with the flagrant #racism that made the #BallroomScene so essential for the Black and #Latinx LGBT+ community who founded it. And the tragedy of its demise in the name of pop culture even more heartbreaking.