Flugt (Flee, Jonas Poher Rasmussen, 2021)
Whilst animation tends to make us think of Disney, there’s a whole world of adult animation such as Persepholis (Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, 2007) and Waltz with Bashir (Aru Folman, 2008) from the documentary genre. Flee is an autobiographical account of “Amin Nawabi” confessing his life history to a friend (presumably Poher Ramussen) in Denmark and New York.
Continue reading →Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness (1928)
Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt/Carol (1952)
So, it turns out I bought these books on the same day, in April 2000, in High Wycombe I assume, and chose the last couple of days of 2021 to finally read them. Both are, for better or worse, foundational lesbian novels.
Continue reading →Make Up (Claire Oakley, 2019)
So, there may be a spoiler here — it’s there, frankly, in the categories and tags (don’t look!) but it may well be there in other reviews. Stop, if you care. Maybe no one is reading, anyway.
Summerland (Jessica Swale, 2020)
It must be the end of the world — this is the second first time female directed lesbian themed film I’ve seen this week…
Querelle (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1982)
I think I’ve seen this before.
(There’s a spoiler in the final paragraph.)
Martin Sherman, Gently Down the Stream (directed by Sean Mathias, Park Theatre, Finsbury Park)
Forty years ago, Martin Sherman wrote the play Bent, which in its original version starred Ian McKellen (before he publically came out) and Tom Bell and was set in 1930s Berlin as Hitler was strengthening his power. McKellen’s then partner, Sean Mathias, directed a revival and a film version – although I have I suspect a false memory of seeing it on TV. Now Mathias has directed Sherman’s new play, which ranges across the last eighty years. It debuted last year with Harvey Fierstein in the lead, a production I wish I’d seen, directed by Mathias.
Girl (Lukas Dhont, 2018)
Trans issues are a hot button topic right now — not least because some feminists have an issue with people declaring themselves to be women and sounding in the process as if they have an essentialist view of women closer to the conservative side of the debate. A programme such as Woman’s Hour can have a presenter claiming that sportswomen will no longer succeed as suddenly a lot of male athletes will claim to be women. And a few years back there was a lot of controversy over the (problematic) The Danish Girl, since Eddie Redmayne was a cis actor. Were there any trans actors who could have played the role? Would the film have been funded with one?
Alison Bechdel, Fun Home (Music by Jeanine Tesori, book and lyrics by Lisa Kron, directed by Sam Gold. Young Vic)
I confess I know little more about Alison Bechdel than the Bechdel-Wallace Test and its origin in Dykes to Watch Out For. This is a failing, as I have read Maus and have copies of some Joe Saccho and Harvey Pekar, which is almost like having read them.
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This was commissioned for a project that seems to have vanished, but I needed to write a couple of sentences for a chapter on the topic… I thought this text would be on my harddrive, but it’s hiding if it is. Fortunately I rarely delete emails.
Welt am Draht (World on a Wire/World on Wires) (Westdeutscher Rundfunk, 1973)
Adapted from Daniel F. Galouye, Counterfeit World/Simulacron-3 (1964)
(Dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder; Sc. Fritz Müller-Scherz and Rainer Werner Fassbinder; Pr. Peter Märthesheimer and Alexander Wesemann; Cin. Michael Ballhaus and Ulrich Prinz; P.D. Horst Giese, Walter Koch and Kurt Raab; starring Klaus Löwitsch (Fred Stiller), Barbara Valentin (Gloria Fromm), Mascha Rabben (Eva Vollmer), Karl Heinz Vosgerau (Herbert Siskins), Wolfgang Schenck (Franz Hahn), Kurt Raab (Mark Holm)) Continue reading →
Matthew Lopez, The Inheritance (directed by Stephen Daldry, Young Vic)
Inevitably, when faced with a two part, seven-hour play about young gay men in New York, the memory returns to Angels in America. But this is twenty years later, new rather than revived, and focuses on a generation of gay men for whom AIDS is more treatable and preventable, given the right connections to health care. Coming out is less of an issue now, the anxiety is over whether to marry and how to adopt — a transgressive gay culture has been replaced with a nice apartment, kids and a weekend home somewhere upstate. For better or worse. In fact, some of the characters express nostalgia for the community in the era of HIV and ACT UP, as the heterotopia of the gay bar, the bath house, the sauna and the heath are replaced by Grindr (other apps are available).
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Subject to Change 