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Week 11: Digital Scrapbook

Hello! My name is Skate Courduff (she/her). I am a screenwriting major and queer studies minor at CSU Northridge. For this week, I will be discussing current representations of queer in international films.

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“Ignorant stereotypes suggest that Japan is a strange, futuristic utopia populated by anime-obsessed businessmen, but in reality, the Land of the Rising Sun is like any other country, full of diverse people who live and love and strive to be happy. Unfortunately, these differences aren’t always celebrated.

There’s a common phrase in Japan known as kūki o yomu, or “reading the air,” which describes how people are taught early on to assess social situations and conform accordingly. Those who refuse to do so are often ostracized and in the most extreme cases, marginalized and left to fight for their civil rights, despite how advanced their society is as a whole.

Even though they’re working within a system that’s rigged against them, Fumi and Kazu’s enduring optimism for the future and the egalitarian power of justice should still give us hope. Love and law are intertwined in ways that Japanese society might not account for just yet, but it’s reassuring to know that there are people out there willing to fight by combining them both into one powerful force for good.”

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Of Love & Law - Rokudenashiko Clip

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Of Love & Law presents a cohesive narrative that demands social justice while depicting how natural would it be to be just as accepting as Fumi’s ward, Kazuma, is. “I don���t see where the problem is. It’s normal,” he says in one of the last sequences of the film, while talking about how loving and happy the two lawyers are as a family. These are the words we should treasure. These are the words we should carve in our hearts and by which we should live our lives. Everything that could scare us, everything that could seem different to what we’re used to it’s just normal as it undoubtedly is for the people involved. It only took the pure love shared by Fumi and Kazu to realise it.

https://screen-queens.com/2019/06/12/review-of-love-and-law/

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Among the many merits of the film is the total defiance of any labelling of sorts. Of Love & Law is not a queer film, nor a documentary on civil rights, nor a manifesto for a better and more inclusive Japan. It’s all of them together. It shows what it means to be a family, no matter the gender of the parties involved. It advocates for everyone’s right to be different and pursue their own ideals. It lingers on the rough edges of depression, not refraining from showing Fumi’s beautiful heart and all those insecurities that make him human.

https://screen-queens.com/2019/06/12/review-of-love-and-law/

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“Fumi and Kazu are partners in love and law; they run the first law firm in Japan set up by an openly gay couple. As lawyers driven by their own experience of being ​outsiders​, they attract a range of clients who reveal the hidden diversity of a country that prides itself for collective obedience, politeness and conformity. Their ‘misfit’ clients include a teacher who was dismissed for not singing the national anthem, and Rokudenashiko – the vagina artist, sued by the police for obscenity, for trying to escape the country’s patriarchal systems in a vagina-shaped canoe.”

This particular film is probably my favorite one that I included in this blog. It is such an interesting and unique story!

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Of Love & Law Trailer

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Of Love And Law (2017)

“Documentarian Hikaru Toda’s intimate look at the hidden gay world in strictly conformist Japan follows real-life couple Fumi and Kazu, an openly gay married couple who run a law firm together. As they attempt to change the status quo by taking on human rights cases, Toda captures a human portrait of grassroots activism.” - via https://www.indiewire.com/gallery/best-gay-foreign-films-queer-lgbt-international/426404/

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“Themes of abandonment, loneliness and yearning wash through Hard Paint, a hypnotically intimate character study examining a damaged young gay man's double life as an online sex performer... The mix of sexual explicitness and incisive social context with melancholy sensuality should put this distinctive work on the radar of queer film specialists beyond the festival circuit.Set in the co-directors' hometown of Porto Alegre, Brazil's southernmost capital, the movie at times recalls Moonlight, not just structurally, in its separately titled three-part breakdown, but also in its moving observation of a vulnerable gay male protagonist in an unaccommodating environment, who is less fragile than he initially appears. However, those similarities are more than likely unintended, as the voice here is very much the filmmakers' own.”

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“The Teddy Award is one of the most prestigious gongs in the LGBT film calendar. This year’s award has now been handed out and has gone to the Brazilian movie, Hard Paint (Tinta Bruna). The film comes from directors Filipe Matzembacher and Marcio Reolon, who have previously worked together on LGBT projects such as the movie Seashore, and the provocative short film, The Last Days Of Zanzibar.”

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Hard Paint (Tinta Bruta) - Berlinale 2018 - Teaser Trailer

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Hard Paint (2018)

“This moody Brazilian drama won the 2018 Teddy Award, the Berlinale’s coveted queer film prize. Set in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, the film follows a reclusive Pedro (Shico Menegat), a cam boy who uses neon paint to illuminate his body during shows. When he accuses a competitor of stealing his signature technique, the charismatic Leo (Bruno Fernandes) gets Pedro out of his shell.” - via https://www.indiewire.com/gallery/best-gay-foreign-films-queer-lgbt-international/screen-shot-2018-11-06-at-9-14-33-am/

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We have learned well to control our inner lives, our desires and emotions, and to be rational. If need be, we are willing to suppress parts of our inner lives to please the outside world. We think we can minimize risk in this manner. We think big but make ourselves small. However, authenticity requires confrontation, emancipation demands effort, progress needs courage. Traditional gender roles and sexual norms are enormously restrictive in this context and only slowly become more porous. Individual resistance, the courage to liberate one’s identity and sexuality from social norms of self-optimization and adaptation – that is the greatest revolutionary potential in our times.

Katharina Mueckstein via https://www.lanimale.com/en/

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L'ANIMALE - Trailer with English subtitles

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“While I was working on the script to L’ANIMALE I was preoccupied with one of the big contradictions of our times: we idealize individualism but at the same time subject ourselves to strong external constraints, often without even noticing. Not so long ago, it was absolutely clear what we should rebel against – conventions, injustice, subjugation. Today, it is more complex and more difficult to grasp what makes us unfree. The characters in L’ANIMALE are objectively free to do what they want. But internally, they fight against a feeling of not being free to choose and a longing for change and truthfulness. The utopia of L‘ANIMALE is a human fighting to find a fitting place for his/ her innermost essence in the external world. Someone who can combine the three forces of passion, desire and reason in order to become free.” -Katharina Mueckstein 

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L’ANIMALE (2018)

“If Celine Sciamma’s “Girlhood” and “Tomboy” had a baby, it might look a bit like this gutsy coming-of-age tale from Austrian director Katharina Mueckstein (“Talea”). Sulking tomboy Mati (Sophie Stockinger) spends her days riding motorcross with her gang of boys, fending off advances from her best friend but really eyeing the local girls. This coming-of-age tale doesn’t break the form, but it features stunning camera work, film references, and assured performances.” - via https://www.indiewire.com/gallery/best-gay-foreign-films-queer-lgbt-international/426733/

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“The personal is subtly political in Blerta Zeqiri’s compelling and compassionate relationship drama “The Marriage.” Paralleling the unquiet recent history of the contested nation-state of Kosovo with the lives and interactions of three of its inhabitants, Zeqiri has crafted an exceptionally well-performed, absorbing and empathetic first feature. Transforming gradually from an authentic and insightful portrait of middle-class life in contemporary Pristina into a gay love story, the film is guaranteed wide exposure, especially in festivals with dedicated queer cinema sidebars, following its well-received premiere at Tallinn’s Black Nights.”