RAINBOW CINEMA: 10 LGBTI+ THEMED FILMS!
AHMET YILMAZ
Our list of LGBTI + themed movies consists of 10 films that are not recent and share common features such as staying out of mainstream cinema.
Some of the films we selected also claim to be cults for the time they were shown.
MADAME SATA
Karim Aon sits in the director’s chair of Madame Sata, which focuses on the life of a Brazilian black queer, who spent nearly 30 years of his life in prison. The script is inspired by the real life of Joao Francisco dos Santos, known as Madame Sata in Rio De Janeiro in the mid-1900s, prominent with his criminal identity. The film tells how Madame Sata survives in a hostile environment, aided by his passion, sense of humor, and determination. “Madame Sata “ premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2002.
CHUN GWONG CHA SIT
Happy Together, directed and written by Wong Kar-wai, is regarded as one of the taboo-breaking examples of Far Eastern cinema during its period. The lives of Lai Yiu-Fai and Ho Po-Wing, woven with love and anger, changed when their relationship came to a deadlock in Argentina, where they came for adventure, is highlighted with a poetic narrative. One of the main venues of the 1997 movie, a tango bar is accompanied by Astor Piazzola songs.
STRELLA
The 2009 Greek production “Strella” tackles a rather gritty story. The main character of the movie directed by Panos H. Koutras is a trans woman named Strella. The name of Strella, who lives in Athens, comes from the combination of the words Stella, a female name, and Trella, which means crazy in Greek. The story begins with a coincidence at a cheap hotel in Athens. Strella meets Yorgos, who is staying in the next room in the hotel where she works as a sex worker and just got out of prison, and a relationship begins between them. The events that unfold with this relationship lead to an extraordinary point about Strella’s life and past. The film, which viewers sometimes liken it to a modern Greek tragedy, has a unique theme.
BENT
Adapted from Martin Shaw’s famous theater play, the 1997 movie features surprise cast members such as Clive Owen, Jude Law and Mick Jagger. “Bent” is about the platonic love affair of two homosexuals who were sent to a concentration camp in Nazi Germany during the years of World War II. The Film poignantly conveys to the viewer the experiences of the characters on the axis of pride, helplessness and resistance. Bent‘s first screening was at the Cannes Film Festival and won awards from many festivals.
DİE BİTTEREN TRANEN DER PETRA VON KANT
A shining star in the Fassbinder filmography, ” Die Bitteren Tranen Der Petra Von Kant ” consists of 5 scenes in total and long, powerful dialogues. Focusing on Petra’s obsessive desire for young model Karin, the film’s art direction, costume and space designs, which shake the power relations between people, also stand out with striking beauty.
PRIDE
The 2014 UK production Pride is inspired by real events. The film is about the struggle of homosexuals in Britain in 1984, who were the target of the conservative policies of the Thatcher government. The miners, another community that shook Britain with major strikes in the same period, are again targeted by the Thatcher government. Organized in a London bookstore, a group of gays and lesbians set up the LGSM (Lesbians and Gays Support The Miners) and set out to a mining town for support. The example of solidarity between these two social groups that are thought to never come together finds an almost magical expression in the film. Pride, one of the most striking productions among the post-2010 European-based LGBTI + films, is also a historical record.
CONTRACORRIENTE
2009’s Contracorriente is Peruvian director Javier Fuentes-Leon’s first feature film. The film, which won an award from the Sundance Film Festival in 2010, is about forbidden love between two men in a coastal town in Peru. The secret relationship of the fisherman Miguel, who lives with his pregnant wife, and Santiago, who lives a mysterious life alone in the same town, draws the audience into a realistic love story with an extraordinary fiction. Set in a charming fishing town in Latin America, the script is quite striking.
A ROSA AZUL DE NOVALIS
A Rosa Azul De Novalis, a 2018 Brazilian documentary, features a 40-year-old character named Marcelo. Marcelo, who lives alone in his apartment in Sao Paulo, does not hesitate to tell shocking stories about his life and childhood in a humorous language. He manages to focus the audience on the screen with eye-opening monologues on many topics such as conservative family structure, HIV experience, and social morality. A Rosa Azul De Novalis allows us to watch an extraordinary and daring film about a gay man’s grasp of life and art while witnessing Marcelo’s everyday practices.
THE BLONDE ONE
Marco Berger is the director of the 2019 Argentina-made The Blonde One. The film tells the story of two young men who share the same house and work in the same workplace in one of the slums of Buenos Aires. Although it has a very static atmosphere, the traffic of emotions in the film is moving in a quite opposite direction to this stagnation. The tension created by camera angles and dialogues manages to intertwine with the romantic flow of the film. Although The Blonde One may seem like a cliché at first, it offers a detailed analysis of hidden homosexuality.
PARADE
Parade is a LGBTI + themed film from Serbia, which has been a trending topic with the attacks on honor marches in the past. It’s exactly what brings this story into focus. A group of LGBTI+ activists in Belgrade is under constant pressure. As the date of the pride march they are about to organize approaches, they are attacked by homophobes and neo-Nazis. Some coincidences in which a Fag Hag woman plays a key role leading the activist group to cross paths with a team of war veterans, heterosexual, macho bodyguards, and events unfold. The 2011 film Pride, is a powerful movie with a humorous side, despite the many dramatic elements in its story. Although the film sometimes uses a stereotype of stereotyping LGBTI +, it has a fun aspect in its background that also ridicules the Balkan culture.
