SLEW OF SEXY SUMMER FLICKS AT OIA

The 19th Out In Africa Gay & Lesbian Film Festival is back for its third and final outing for 2012.

This edition runs from Friday 19th to Sunday 28th October in Cape Town and Johannesburg, with the opening nights taking place on 17th October in Joburg and 18th October in the Mother City.

The festival has a great line up of shorts from SA, Brazil, Morocco/UAE, UK, USA and Kenya as well as nine features from the USA, France, Canada, Belgium and Spain, many of them award winning films.

The event opens with Vito, Jeffrey Schwarz’s biodoc on Vito Russo, a leading gay activist, film scholar and author of the groundbreaking book on gays in the cinema, The Celluloid Closet. Through interviews, rare clips and well chosen archival footage, Schwarz makes his subject a dramatic focal point in the history of gay rights from the Stonewall riots to the AIDS epidemic.

If you enjoyed the delightful original Bear City, then look forward to Bear City 2: The Proposal. Roger proposes, Tyler (reluctantly) accepts, so they and their group of friends descend on Provincetown to celebrate their nuptials in a town overrun by Bears and their Cubs. It’s a good-humoured, guilt-free, well-packaged celebration of man love. Not to be missed.

Gigola, Laure Charpentier’s melodrama of Paris in the 60s, is about a woman for hire to older, rich women. She’s an impressive figure with her monocle and silver-topped sex-toy cane, but what drove her down there? It’s pulpy, racy and delightfully camp; capturing the seediness of the Parisian underworld.

Elliot Loves moves skilfully between Elliot’s pre-teen life and his early twenties. Director Terracino presents multiple situations in which Elliot’s naïve but optimistic personality is moulded by his insatiable drive for love, acceptance and, later, the perfect boyfriend. Delightfully set within the quirks and the complexity of Latino gay culture on the US East Coast.

Dominique Cardona and Laurie Colbert direct Margarita. A live-in nanny to the only child of a dentist and doctor couple in Toronto, Margarita is hotly romancing student lawyer Jane. But then she’s fired and a series of mishaps leads to deportation. It’s a funny lesbian tale neatly wrapped up in other contemporary issues.

Though handsome, at thirty, Parisian hustler Vassilli’s career is over. Thus he turns to murder. Directed by Gaël Morel, Our Paradise is a tour around the pathetic and peculiar of Paris, as we follow the murderous Vassilli. Superb performances from Stéfane Rideau (Wild Reeds) and Béatrice Dalle (Betty Blue).

The Sex of the Angels, directed by Xavier Villaverde, is a provocative scenario of where a Barcelona love triangle might go. It explores the limits of post-queer sexual fluidity, but it’s also an opportunity to see three astonishingly gorgeous people, sans clothes, enjoying the romp of being young and in love.

The festival will play host to two international guests.

There’s director Guy Lee Thys, who will present his film Mixed Kebab, about a Belgian / Turkish Muslim who tries to negotiate his way through the contradictions of opposing cultural influences. His life is offset by the easy relationship his love interest, the gorgeous Kevin, has with his mother. A satisfying, sexy romance.

Eldar Rapaport will present his award winning film August, set in LA. Troy returns to LA from Barcelona after years away and looks up his old flame, Jonathan. The reunion throws up all manner of complications as Troy faces the consequences of his selfishness and past behaviour. Issues of infidelity, trust, honesty and the foundations of love play out against the backdrop of LA’s gay village and beaches. Thought-provoking, contemporary – and very good looking.

Out In Africa screens at Nu Metro V&A Waterfront in Cape Town and Nu Metro Hyde Park in Johannesburg. For screening schedules and more information visit www.oia.co.za.

View trailers for some of the films in the festival below.

August

Bear City 2

Elliot Loves

Gigola

Mixed Kebab

Our Paradise

The Sex of the Angels

Vito