Over the past year QUEERGURU has noticed a marked increase in homophobic censorship by the anonymous bureaucrats of social media. So much so that one day we woke up to discover that our You Tube channel had been banned . Overnight we lost 2000+ carefully curated videos that we had been creating since 2017 which all had queer content NONE of which could ever be described as explicit.
This has had two serious consequences for us. Firstly we have struggled to locate copies of the missing videos to put up on our new You Tube Channel …….some have been lost forever. Equally regrettable is that we now suddenly find ourselves self-censuring all the queer content that we share on any SM. Now the ONLY place that all our content can be viewed and enjoyed is at www.queergruu.com .
We have labelled it as homophobia but in an Election year when Evangelicals and the Catholic Church hierarchy scramble over themselves to endorse an adulterous convicted felon as President, then maybe the correct description is hypocrisy .
But I digress. What we wanted to share with you is news about this years edition of the Pornfilmfestival Berlin. It is an independent, non commercial, not publicly funded film festival centered around the topics of sexuality, politics, feminism, gender diversity, post porn and body politics.
The festival program includes an average of 25 to 30 feature-length films as well as around 100 short films, which engage with questions of sexual ethics, identities, body norms, conceptions of morality around the world and the artistic-alternative approach to the genre of pornography, in a wide variety of thematic program blocks. The average annual audience of 8000 visitors – slightly more than half of which are female – identify as a mix of hetero-, homo-, bi-, trans*, non-binary and queer and, with almost 50 percent of the visitors from all over the world, is incredibly international. Additionally, the film festival includes panel discussions, lectures, readings, workshops, performances, and presentations around the topic of sexuality today. The numerous festivals with a similar focus that have emerged in various cities and countries after the founding of PFF Berlin prove that a discourse on an empowering approach to sexuality and sex work is still relevant and that networking, not just for the community, is important.
Here are our top picks of 4 of the queer films in the program :
Queer Greek Filmmaker Fil Ieropoulus is to screen his second feature film AVANT DRAG. If you caught his debut feature ORFEAS2021 there a couple of years back, you will know that he likes to push the parameters as much as he can when filming his subject. At the time Queerguru Editor Andrew Hebden wrote If only there was a Greek word for a marathon, it would perfectly sum up this ambitious, expansive, and demanding futuristic opera that sets the struggle for gay rights against the weight of Greek history. It is based on the original opera L’Orfeo by Monteverdi.
“Can a vagina be masculine?” This, and many more thought-provoking questions, are posed by interviewer/director Jules Rosskam, in his innovative new documentary Desire Lines, which examines the lives of trans men who also became gay men after transitioning. Rosskam’s film, which premiered at Sundance, combines drama with documentary.
Lesvia, a new documentary currently in the festival circuit, is a Sapphic confection. Cinematographer/director/producer Tzeli Hadjidimitriou who refers to herself as “a double lesbian… a woman who grew up on Lesbos and is also a lesbian.”
Hadjidimitriou has put her heart, soul and vision into this production for decades. In 2012 she published “A Girl’s Guide to Lesbos.” For the next decade she filmed, shot interviews, and collected archival photos of the local lesbian community for this film. She still spends half of each year living on the island.
Queen Of The Deuce: From the late ’60s to the mid-’80s, in the notorious Times Square area known as the Deuce, the eccentric, Greek-born Chelly Wilson built a straight and queer porn cinema empire and a reputation as one of the savviest and charismatic figures on the scene.
With a cigarette in hand and bags of money stashed in the corner, Chelly regularly held court in her bunkerlike apartment above the legendary 8th Avenue all-male Adonis Theatre, summoning a lively cabal of associates, entertainers, and fellow poker players, with her female lovers always hovering and grandchildren often underfoot.
PORNFILMFESTIVAL BERLIN
begins on 10/17 and will end on 10/27
To see the whole program and book tickets
https://pornfilmfestivalberlin.de
for full reviews of over 2000 queer films check out www.queerguru.com and whilst you are there be sure to subscribe to get all the latest raves and rants on queer cinema …best of all its FREE
Labels: 2024, PornFestivalBerlin, Top Picks
