guysonfilms:10 HiddenGems About Queer Male Desire1. L’Homme
guysonfilms:10 HiddenGems About Queer Male Desire1. L’HommeBlessé (Dir: Patrice Chéreau, 1983, France)Masterfullyacted by Jean-Hugues Anglade and directed by the great French filmmaker PatriceChéreau, this film is a daring and ahead-of-its-time portrait of the anguishesof a young gay man in love with a manipulative criminal.2. The Garden (Derek Jarman, 1990,United Kingdom)The greatDerek Jarman delivers a visual and metaphorical narrative about the struggles ofthe gay community having to face oppression, criminalization, stigmatizationand society’s homophobia. With his current collaborator, Tilda Swinton, Jarmanmakes an experimental movie that is very poetical, haunting and unique. 3. Young Soul Rebels (Isaac Julien,1991, United Kingdom)A great exponentof the New Queer Cinema. This film touches the subjects of racism, homophobia, blackand queer identity, contracultural movements, police violence, punk music, loveand desire. A rare kind of film that speaks of themes rarely seen on the bigscreen even nowadays. It tells the story of the friends Chris and Caz, who runa pirate radio station from a tower block in Dalston, East London.4. Dong gong xi gong (East Palace, WestPalace) (Yuan Zhang, 1996, China)The firstMainland Chinese movie with an explicitly homosexual theme. The film tells thestory of a young gay writer A-Lan who, being attracted to a young policeman,manages to have himself interrogated for a whole night. In placing the openly gayprotagonist and the homophobic policeman alone in a room, the movie was able toexplore the relations of power, masculinity, and repressed desire with a hauntingand, at the same time, sensual atmosphere.5. Wild Side (Sébastien Lifshitz, 2004,France)The film isa tender and melancholic portrait of three outsiders who love each other: Stéphanie,a transsexual prostitute; Djamel, an Egyptian hustler and Mikhail, a Russian manwho works in a restaurant. Fluid and working like an everyday simple tale, themovie showcases these three characters in a very intimate and sincere way.6. Soundless Wind Chime (Kit Hung,2009, Hong-Kong/ Switzerland/ Germany)Animpressionist tale of love, grief and regret which tells the story of Ricky, wholeaves Hong-Hong to look for the lost soul and the past of his deceased Swisslover, Pascal. Ricky struggles with the confusion of memories, reality andillusion.7. L’Arméedu Salut (Abdellah Taia, 2013, France/ Marocco)The Moroccanwriter Abdellah Taia, debuts his filmmaking with an autobiographical adaptationof his homonymous novel. A crude, realistic and intimate coming-of-age about theformation of identity, sexuality and desire and that showcases the difficulties ofimmigrants in France.8. Onthakan (The Blue Hour) (AnuchaBoonyawatana, 2015, Thailand)A genre-bendinglove story about a bullied loner, Tam, who finds solace in the arms of Phum, aboy he meets at a haunted swimming pool. The Blue Hour is a thriller with glancesof horror and teenage romance. Sometimes tender, sometimes disturbing, thisfilm is very unlike and unique.9. Spa Night (Andrew Ahn, 2016, UnitedStates)Thisminimalistic sensorial film is a hauntingly blurry study on repression,tradition, foreignness, desire and family bound. It tells the story of David, aKorean-American teenager who starts working in a spa to help his strugglingfamily. There he has contact with gay men who uses the spa for sex, and this newreality both scares and excites him.10. Corpo Elétrico (Body Electric) (Marcelo Caetano,2017, Brazil)This filmis a fluid and naturalistic study of the every-day-life of factory workers inthe northeast of Brazil. The protagonist is Elias, a gay young man who spendshis days working in a fabric factory, having love affairs and getting out withhis friends. This movie works like a chronic full of energy, love, truth and anelegant simplicity. -- source link