Gay porn mogul Michael Lucas and his co-director Yariv Moser start their documentary in dismissing some of the widely held misconceptions that people around the world have about Israel. That everyone rides around on camels, and secondly that the country is always at war. But in the next 45 minutes they quickly replace them with their own rose-colored glasses perceptions about being gay in contemporary Israel today. Actually not the whole country but just on the capital Tel Aviv itself.In a movie that Lucas, well known for his strident anti-Islamic pro Israeli views, self-financed, he determindedly wants us to know all the positive accomplishments that the local gay community have now got without any mention of the struggle and the cost in human toil to achieve them. He interviews a whole series of remarkably handsome and abundantly happy gay men …. not only is there not one ugly one, but there is no sight of any lesbian or transgender person. Life for gay people (read men) in Israel is better than in New York, or anyone else in the world according to Lucas. He does go so far to get a gay member of the Knesset to agree that it has the most gay rights than any other country in that region which is hardly much to boast about when neighboring states still stone gay people to death.
Lucas’s choice of Mozer to co-direct is also odd, as in his own brilliant documentary in 2012 ‘The Invisible Men’ Mozer profiled the horrific life that gay Palestinians suffered living in a Tel Aviv that looked remarkably different than the carefree one now being shown.
I’m sure that the City of Tel Aviv Tourist Board must be thrilled with this love letter to their city, but its unsubtle blatant bias gets very annoying by the end of this short film, and I am sure will disappoint gay men who trek there expecting this perfection to be a reality.
Lucas’s approach of covering up all unsightly blemishes may make better porn movies but it ends up making woefully inadequate documentaries.
Available at Amazon
Available at Amazon
