3. Queer Lion Award: films in competition

Cast, credits, synopses, pictures and of all the movies in competition for Queer Lion 2009; and the calendar with the screening schedule throughout the Film Festival

A Single Man by Tom Ford (Usa 2009, 99’)
A day in the life of George, an English gay professor, who, after his male partner’s death, starts in Los Angeles an ordinary and lonely life, among his longtime female friend Charley, and his many young students. This film is the debut of the gay stylist Tom Ford and is based on the eponymous 1964 novel by Christopher Isherwood, who fictionalizes the encounter with his lifetime partner Don Bachardy.

Persécution (Persecution) by Patrice Chéreau (France 2009, 100’)
Daniel, 35, lives a busy but solitary existence that’s peppered by his troubled affair with Sonia, a woman he seems to both love and loath, but can’t get enough of. When out of nowhere a mysterious man shows up in his apartment, what Daniel believes to be a one-time event starts happening more and more, and the unlikely intruder just won’t leave him alone. The unending harassment begins to take its toll on Daniel’s tormented relationship, and when Sonia suddenly decides to leave him, he’s left facing a slew of unanswered questions: Who is this unknown character? Why is he persecuting Daniel? And, what is this all for?

Life During Wartime by Todd Solondz (Usa 2009, 96’)
Something of a sequel to Solondz’s own “Happiness”. The main topic of the movie is love in its differents facets, a feeling that often needs to forgive rather than to forget – in order to survive and get stronger -. One of the main stories, among the many that animate the movie, is the one of Timmy, a kid discovering that his father is not dead but has been condemned and imprisoned for paedophilia.

Lei wangzi (Prince of Tears) by Yonfan (Hong Kong 2009, 122’)
Set in 1954 Taiwan, during the “White Terror”, it’s the story of a family happily living in a small village nearby Formosa, mostly inhabitated by soldiers working at an aircraft base and their relatives. In the movie, a surprising lesbian twist will give a new meaning to much of the story.

Great Directors by Angela Ismailos (Usa 2009, 90’)
Bertolucci, Breillat, Cavani, Frears, Haynes, Linklater, Loach, Lynch, Sayles, Varda: the life and work of ten living authors, through interviews, conversations, movie scenes and archive materials. Bertolucci remembers Pasolini, Frears talks about queer cinema in the 70’s, Haynes analyzes the actualstate of queer cinema; Agnès Varda remembers Jacques Demy, Lynch once again drives through “Mulholland Drive”.

L’oro di Cuba by Giuliano Montaldo (Italy 2009, 74’)
The Revolution turns 50. Fifty years of a country that has influenced politics and culture all over the world. A country as rich in contradictions as it is in fascination, for its strong cultural and political identity. The movie wants to analyze what is Cuba now, as seen through the eyes of the youth. Among them , Mariela Castro, head of the National Center for Sexual Education, and daughter of president Raul Castro, speaking about her fights for LGBT rights; the interview ends with an excerpt from Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s movie “Strawberry and Chocolate”.

Choi voi (Adrift) by Thac Chuyen Bui (Vietnam 2009, 110’)
Duyen got married to Hai, a young man who is still very innocent. Duyen thought she is happy, but the shared life of the young couple is soon dotted with flickers of emptiness. They dont make love like other couples. They are just like two good friends. Cam, a writer, is Duyen’s friend and she’s quietly in love with Duyen. She is troubled by a vast emptiness brought about by Duyens marriage. In order to hide from Duyen her real feeling”a kind of love deemed immoral by the Vietnamese society, Cam pretends to be tortured by her love for a man named Tho. At the same time, another woman named Vi is also desperately in love with Tho.

Io sono l’amore (I Am Love) by Luca Guadagnino (Italy 2009, 120’)
Family strategies involving family and the guide of the familiar business drive the stories of Emma and Tancredi, their offspring Elisabetta, Edoardo and Gianluca, their companions and soon to be spouses: but all the delicate balances and liaisons are soon to be broken. Guadagnino’s feature is a mix of plots, affaires and loves involving many characters; among them, a lesbian girl. Screenplay by Barbara Alberti, Ivan Cotroneo and Guadagnino himself.

Villalobos by Romuald Karmakar (Germany 2009, 125’)
A 360° portrait of internationally acclaimed dj Ricardo Villalobos. What his music tastes are? How does the chilean born combines electro sounds with Herbert von Karajan and Musorgskij? How people react to his techno performances in Berlin or Ibiza?

Repo Chick by Alex Cox (Usa 2009, 90’)
Rich and spoiled Pixxi De La Chasse is living her scoundrel life between days spent not being able to find a job and arrests for driving dangerously. Recruited by “repo men” Arizona Gray e Agua, she soon becomes the best of punk confidents, a trendy bodyguard and a flashy fashion designer.

Pepperminta by Pipilotti Rist (Switzerland/Austria 2009, 80′)
Pepperminta, anarchist of the imagination, wants for everybody to become able to look at the world through their favorite palette of colors. She will bejoined inher mission by young and plumpy Werwen, and by androgynous Edna, able to talk to the tulips.

Francesca by Bobby Paunescu (Romania 2009, 94’)
Francesca is 30 and teaching to kids in Bucharest. Her biggest wish is to go to Italy to be able to live the way Western Europeans do. She will comeclose tofulfillherdream when she will be hired for a job near Milan. Francesca’s best friend is gay.

Il compleanno (David’s Birthday) by Marco Filiberti (Italy 2009, 106’)
Two couple of friends, Matteo and Francesca, Diego and Shary, decides to spend summer holidays together at a beach house. Matteo, a psychoanalyst, is married with Francesca and they have a 5 years old daughter; Diego, a lawyer, got Shary pregnant while being still very young, and they have a son, David (played by Brazilian model Thyago Alves). When David joins the quartet, Matteo starts developing a deep upsetting feeling towards the boy, and the tension arising between the two couples only make things worse.

Poeti by Toni D’Angelo (Italy 2009, 69’)
Peculiar journey inside the metropolitan poetry, to see Rome through the images and the words of the two main characters: Biagio Propato and Salvatore Sansone. They talk about poetry, modern times, and question themselves about the possibility of another event, like the one who happened in Castelporziano in 1979, to take place again: poets from all around the world gathered in a great “Woodstock of poetry”. Among others: quotations from Pier Paolo Pasolini and Sandro Penna, and poems from Elio Pecora and Dario Bellezza.

Apan (The Ape) by Jesper Ganslandt (Sweden 2009, 81’)
Krister, a husband and a father, wakes up having to face the consequences of a familiar tragedy. During the press conference, the director revealed that the whole tragedy revolves around an episode of homophobia, who is only briefly sketched in the movie during a scene in the gym showers.

L’amore e basta by Stefano Consiglio (Italy 2009, 75’)
9 homosexual couples, 9 stories: Alessandro and Marco, university students in Catania; Nathalie and Valérie, fortysomethings, from Versailles; Catherine and Christine, in their sixties and living together for more than 20 years; Lillo and Claudio, from Rome, living together for the last 17 years; Thomas and Johan, in Berlin; Emiliana and Lorenza, living together for the last 7 years in Northern Italy; Gino and Massimo, a couple for the last 30 years in the Palermo province, Gaël and William, longtime companions in Paris; and finally, Maria and Marisol, from Spain, legally bound in marriage, as long as it was possible.

Gordos by Daniel Sánchez-Arévalo (Spain 2009, 121’)
“Gordos” (Fats) revolves around the stories of 5 overweight characters: 5 bodies trying to find themselves again through group therapy, a place where they have nothing to lose, but simply try to find out the reasons for their obesity. One of the main characters, a former TV seller of diet pills, is a gay sexhaolic; while trying to discover what turned his body into a flabby fat something, he will run into his repressed heterosexuality and will accept the sexual offers of his best friend’s widow. After his stunning “Azuloscurocasinegro”, Daniel Sánchez Arévalo returns with a black comedy, as ironic and unbiased as only young Spanish cinema can be.

Qu’un seul tienne et les autres suivront (Silent Voices) by Léa Fehner (France 2009, 119’)
In the parlour of a French jail, the lives of a group of men and women are interwoven and influence each other’s destinies. Among them: a notorious criminal’s look-alike, the girlfriend of a young man in jail, a falsely cynic doctor, a killer’s sister, and the mother of a young Algerian killed by his male lover: the woman is not willing to accept the long waiting dictated by justice, and starts investigating by herself, even managing to get to talk with his son’s murderer. It will be a pointless meeting: it’s impossible to use the reason to understand what is driven by passion.

Domaine by Patric Chiha (France/Austria 2009, 110’)
Pierre is a 17 year old, intellectually fascinated by his aunt Nadia, an alcoholic. Their exclusive and peculiar relationship, driven by consolidated habits, is slowly weakened by love interests and other “distractions” coming from outside their own world, and the two start to fall apart. During the process of “separation”, young Pierre will get to know himself better, to discover his true feelings, his hidden desires, from a one night stand with a boy picked up in a club, to the friendship with a transvestite.

The list of films of queer interest includes as well the following titles, not competing anyway for the Queer Lion Award:

Survival of the Dead by George A. Romero (Usa 2009, 90’)
On a small island nearby the coasts of North America, the living dead are threating the humans; but despite the growing danger, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to get rid of the “living corpses” of the beloved ones. Among the military forces trying to keep the order, an openly lesbian female soldier.

Valhalla Rising by Nicolas Winding Refn (Denmark 2009, 90’)
One-Eye, mute warrior with a supernatural force, has been kept prisoner for years by Barde, the head of the tribe. Helped by Are, he kills his warder and they both manage to escape, beginning a trip into the heart of darkness. Trying to escape the bounty hunters, One-Eye and Are go on board of a Viking ship sailing towards Norway; as the country reveals its secrets and the Vikings meet their fate, One-Eye discovers his true nature. In a society such as the Viking one, based on manliness and cruelty, there is place for violence and rapes, even homosexual ones.

Sinner by Meni Philip (Israel 2009, 28’)
13 years old Yotar, student in a hortodox jewish school, turns to the rabbi to come to terms with his first sexual impulses; but, instead of receiving the help he was wishing for, he will find himself even more confused and alone.

Celda 211 (Cell 211) by Daniel Monzón (Spain/France 2009, 113’)
Two men, during a jail riot: the merciless murderer heading it, and the newly arrived jailer that will find himself involved in it (being forced to undrgo an humiliating rite of passage, being stripped naked among the prisoners, that will take advantage of that). “Prison movies” often show a male-driven, homophobic society, ruled by violence and abuses, even sexual ones. The movie starts from there to tell stories of loves, power games, secret agreements, inside and outside the prison’s walls.

Good morning Aman by Claudio Noce (Italy 2009, 103’)
Aman, a 20 year old boy born in Somalia and raised in Rome, works as a used cars seller. Driven by insomnia, he wanders at night for the streets of the Italian capital. One night, after sneaking on a terrace, he meets Teodoro, a former boxer with a dark past. Their friendship soon starts to become something much deeper, even morbid, though never fully cleared, despite a fleeting kiss.

La nave delle donne maledette by Raffaello Matarazzo (Italy 1954, 94’)
A group of deported women sails towards American colonies on Spanish ship in the 18th century. Uncensored version of a flaming melodrama, with rather explicit lesbian innuendos.

Morte di un amico by Franco Rossi (Italy 1959, 86’)
Bruno and Aldo are longtime friends. The former lives on the money of a prostitute, as will do the latter very soon. Pier Paolo Pasolini collaborated to the screenplay of this story of good vs. evil, love vs. violence. Very dense of meanings are the scenes in which the two friends find themselves body-to-body, either during a fight or in the moving final sequences.

Nudi per vivere by Elio Montesti (Italy 1964, 90’)
Directed under pseudonym “just to make money”, this is a docu-drama nearer to realism than to exploitation movies, where in the trip around a sinful Paris by night, it’s impossible not to meet and visit homosexual spots and clubs.

Il tramontana by Adriano Barbano (Italy 1965, 80’)
The main character, a rebellious kid, is forced to go into a boarding-school when his parents leave for Switzerland. The school, run by Capuchin friars, has all the typical elements one can imagine: long dormitory rooms, long dark corridors, male-bonding and friendship among the boys… and some friar looking at them in a morbid way.

Screenings Schedule

LIDO DI VENEZIA
3 SETTEMBRE / SEPTEMBER
11:00 SALA GRANDE Great Directors by Angela Ismailos (Usa, 2009 – 90’)
14:30 SALA VOLPI Il tramontana by Adriano Barbano (Italy, 1965 – 80’)
16:30 SALA PERLA 2 Apan (The Ape) by Jesper Ganslandt (Sweden, 2009 – 81’)
19:45 SALA GRANDE Life During Wartime by Todd Solondz (Usa, 2009 – 96’)
21:30 SALA DARSENA Francesca by Bobby Paunescu (Romania, 2009 – 94’)

4 SETTEMBRE / SEPTEMBER
11:00 SALA PERLA 2 Celda 211 (Cell 211) by Daniel Monzón (Spain/France, 2009 – 111’)
17:00 SALA PERLA 2 L’amore e basta by Stefano Consiglio (Italy, 2009 – 75’)
22:00 SALA GRANDE Lei wangzi (Prince of Tears) by Yonfan (Hong Kong, 2009)
24:30 SALA GRANDE Valhalla Rising by Nicolas Winding Refn (Denmark, 2009 – 90’)

5 SETTEMBRE / SEPTEMBER
14:00 SALA PERLA 2 Domaine by Patric Chiha (France/Austria, 2009 – 110’)
19:00 SALA DARSENA Pepperminta by Pipilotti Rist (Switzerland/Austria 2009, 80′)
19:30 SALA GRANDE Persécution (Persecution) by Patrice Chéreau (France, 2009 – 100’)
21:30 SALA DARSENA Io sono l’amore (I Am Love) by Luca Guadagnino (Italy, 2009 – 120’)

6 SETTEMBRE / SEPTEMBER
11:00 SALA PERLA 2 Gordos by Daniel Sánchez-Arévalo (Spain, 2009 – 121’)
14:00 SALA PERLA 2 Good morning Aman by Claudio Noce (Italy, 2009 – 103’)
17:15 SALA VOLPI Morte di un amico by Franco Rossi (Italy, 1959 – 86’)
21:30 SALA DARSENA Choi voi (Adrift) by Thac Chuyen Bui (Vietnam, 2009 – 110’)

7 SETTEMBRE / SEPTEMBER
17:00 SALA PERLA 2 Qu’un seul tienne et les autres suivront by Léa Fehner (France, 2009 – 119’)

8 SETTEMBRE / SEPTEMBER
11:00 SALA GRANDE Il compleanno (David’s Birthday) by Marco Filiberti (Italy, 2009 – 106’)
16:30 SALA DARSENA Villalobos by Romuald Karmakar (Germany, 2009 – 125’)
22:00 SALA DARSENA Repo Chick by Alex Cox (Usa, 2009 – 90’)

9 SETTEMBRE / SEPTEMBER
11:00 SALA GRANDE Poeti by Toni D’Angelo (Italy, 2009 – 69’)
17:00 SALA VOLPI La nave delle donne maledette by Raffaello Matarazzo (Italy, 1954 – 94’)
17:30 SALA PERLA Sinner by Meni Philip (Israel, 2009 – 28’)
22:00 SALA GRANDE Survival of the Dead by George A. Romero (Usa, 2009 – 90’)

10 SETTEMBRE / SEPTEMBER
14:45 SALA GRANDE L’oro di Cuba by Giuliano Montaldo (Italy, 2009, 74’)

11 SETTEMBRE / SEPTEMBER
14:30 SALA VOLPI Nudi per vivere by Elio Montesti (Italy, 1964 – 90’)
19:30 SALA GRANDE A Single Man by Tom Ford (Usa, 2009 – 99’)

VENEZIA

5 SETTEMBRE / SEPTEMBER
16:30/19 CINEMA GIORGIONE (sala A) Francesca by Bobby Paunescu (Romania, 2009 – 94’)

6 SETTEMBRE / SEPTEMBER
21:00 ARENA DI CAMPO SAN POLO Persécution (Persecution) by Patrice Chéreau (France, 2009 – 100’)
21:30 CINEMA GIORGIONE (sala A) Valhalla Rising by Nicolas Winding Refn (Denmark, 2009 – 90’)

7 SETTEMBRE / SEPTEMBER
16:30 CINEMA GIORGIONE (sala A) Io sono l’amore (I Am Love) by Luca Guadagnino (Italy, 2009 – 120’)
19:00 CINEMA GIORGIONE (sala A) Lei wangzi (Prince of Tears) by Yonfan (Hong Kong, 2009)
21:30 CINEMA GIORGIONE (sala A) Domaine by Patric Chiha (France/Austria, 2009 – 110’)

8 SETTEMBRE / SEPTEMBER
21:30 CINEMA GIORGIONE (sala A) Good morning Aman by Claudio Noce (Italy, 2009 – 103’)

10 SETTEMBRE / SEPTEMBER
21:30 CINEMA GIORGIONE (sala A) Il compleanno (David’s Birthday) by Marco Filiberti (Italy, 2009 – 106’)

12 SETTEMBRE / SEPTEMBER
21:00 ARENA DI CAMPO SAN POLO A Single Man by Tom Ford (Usa, 2009 – 99’)

MESTRE

6 SETTEMBRE / SEPTEMBER
19:00 CINEMA PALAZZO (sala 2) Francesca by Bobby Paunescu (Romania, 2009 – 94’)

7 SETTEMBRE / SEPTEMBER
17/19:30/22 CINEMA PALAZZO (sala 1) Persécution (Persecution) by Patrice Chéreau (France, 2009 – 100’)
21:30 CINEMA PALAZZO (sala 2) Valhalla Rising by Nicolas Winding Refn (Denmark, 2009 – 90’)

8 SETTEMBRE / SEPTEMBER
16:30 CINEMA PALAZZO (sala 2) Io sono l’amore (I Am Love) by Luca Guadagnino (Italy, 2009 – 120’)
19:00 CINEMA PALAZZO (sala 2) Lei wangzi (Prince of Tears) by Yonfan (Hong Kong, 2009)
21:30 CINEMA PALAZZO (sala 2) Domaine by Patric Chiha (France/Austria, 2009 – 110’)

9 SETTEMBRE / SEPTEMBER
21:30 CINEMA PALAZZO (sala 2) Good morning Aman by Claudio Noce (Italy, 2009 – 103’)

11 SETTEMBRE / SEPTEMBER
21:30 CINEMA PALAZZO (sala 2) Il compleanno (David’s Birthday) by Marco Filiberti (Italy, 2009 – 106’)