Queer Lion, this year, pays tribute to “La dernière séance”, a docu-conversation about love, death, the AIDS epidemic in the Eighties, life projects, family, against the backdrop of the BDSM leather community, including harnesses, whips and erotic chats.
“La dernière séance” by Turin director Gianluca Matarrese was the winner, last year, of the 15th edition of the Queer Lion Award.
Author of the illustrated reimagining is Francesco Gangemi: “I decided to use the paper-art technique to create a sense of realistic depth, based on the superimposition of shapes and colors, drawing thick, dark shadows and several different levels of image reading. The rest of my work is based on traditional techniques: ink, charcoals and watercolors were used to create drawings and textures“.
La dernière séance by Gianluca Matarrese (Italy, France, 100 ‘, 2021)
Bernard has just retired. He is 63 years old, he lives alone with his two cats and decides to move to a new house, the one where he will live the last chapter of his life. Preparing the boxes, he begins to make a selection: what to leave, what to bring? Bernard is my master and I am his slave. His last lover I help him to put the whip in a box, between fragments of his memories; memories of the loves that AIDS has stolen from his arms, the traces of an adoptive family that rejected him, of the rigid upbringing that forged him, of a mother and father he never knew. Our sexual games are the chances for two generations to meet: between a whiplash and a leather harness we discuss about love, death, the AIDS epidemic in the Eighties, his new life project, about us. The wounds and grave goods of a survivor, a cry for life in the light of sexual impulses.
