Queer Film Season of the Americas, OAS 2023

First of all, I want to greet all the audience and especially the diplomatic representations of our countries that are present here, and I want to congratulate the LGBTI Core Group and the Colombian embassies for this initiative, for this Queer Film Season of the Americas.

As you know, from June 29th to August 4th every Thursday and Friday at 6pm (Eastern Time), the Organization of American States will present a selection of films that celebrate the diversity and achievements of the continent for the rights of the LGBTIQ+ population. These words that I share with you today are an introduction to this film exhibition and the reasons why we are here.

This morning, on public radio in Washington DC. I heard a chronicle about the first African-American girl who was able to attend a racially segregated school in the state of Tennessee, which, as you know, is a very tough story: that little girl had to endure terrible things; and, in the midst of this history of courage and achievements for a society with freedom and justice for all, I heard a phrase that has everything to do with the reasons that bring us together today: “We are the history makers. The history was written by ordinary people making decisions.”

I want to start this invitation to our Queer Film Season with a second thought: tolerance is a beautiful and necessary word, but it is a weak word. Humanity should not tolerate difference; humanity should celebrate difference: diversity is the true strength of human species. Today we are gathered to celebrate human diversity.

This is not a cinematheque or art house, today we are in the auditorium of an embassy that works with the Organization of American States, an institution dedicated to defending democracy and human rights, and promoting economic, social and culture of our countries. This is a fact and, being so, it is worth asking ourselves why these films are important to the OAS and why a film exhibition like this is necessary for all of us. To answer the question, I am only going to give you an example of what can be achieved thanks to encounters like this one: my example is el Ciclo Rosa (The Pink Cycle, or The Pink Season if you will).

In 2001, when I directed the Bogotá Cinematheque, we created the Ciclo Rosa together with the Goethe Institut Kolumbien, the Instituto Pensar of Universidad Javeriana, and the Colombo American Center in Medellín, the Ciclo Rosa is the Colombia’s first queer film festival. The name “Rosa”, “Pink”, is a reminder of an infamous fact: the Nazis not only tried to exterminate the people of Israel, they also burned homosexuals, men and women whom they marked with a pink triangle. The Ciclo Rosa, that queer film exhibition and the international academic meetings that accompanied it, had many achievements that were not only aesthetic: one of them, a very important one, is that the Ciclo Rosa was a space that contributed to the construction of public policies for LGBTIQ+ people in the Mayor’s Office of Bogotá, in the capital of Colombia. The construction of public policies: that is the horizon of a meeting like the one we are starting today under the auspices of the OAS and the Embassy of Colombia.

I would like to share with you a bit of the cinematographic context in which our selection of films is found: throughout the history of cinema, films made by queer people or focused on this population have been as diverse as humanity itself, but two frequent characteristics have been to explore new aesthetics and to be a window for the claim of rights. The examples are many and brilliant: the brilliant British Derek Jarman who explored and broke multiple aesthetic moulds, the Germans Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Rosa von Praunheim, the Italian Pier Paolo Pasolini, the sparkling Californian Barbara Hammer whom we once had as a guest at the Ciclo Rosa, and the Thai Apichatpong Weerasethakul who has just co-produced a film with Colombia, among many others. From both perspectives, from cinema as an aesthetic exploration and as a window to the claim of rights, this small selection is an example, but also from the facts that cinema is an art that bears cultural heritage and is a source of entertainment.

This selection of films is an sample of the plurality of LGBTIQ+ cinema: we have a Mexican classic that is a reference for filmmakers and academics from all over the world alongside a documentary that reflects on intersex people and their challenges, and with these films a story where imagination is the space to restore the lives of young people with terrible childhoods, and next to it a road movie that covers the landscapes of southern Argentina and female bodies, together with these films several documentaries that record the struggles for the rights of LGBTQ+ population. Films from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico and the United States of America, eight films that have received dozens of awards at international festivals.

And I return to the brief context that I want to share with you: in 1919 was filmed in Germany what is considered the first film that presents homosexuality in a positive way: Anders als die Andern by Richard Oswald (distributed in Spanish as: Diferente de los demás and in English as: Different from the Others). In 1995, the filmmakers Epstein and Friedman made in the United States the documentary The Celluloid Closet, a film that is based on the book by Vito Russo The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies. The focus of both works is the way in which Hollywood films and in general the United States film industry portrayed gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender characters. Both the book and the film are very important to rethink cinema and human diversity: throughout most of its history Hollywood, like other cinematographies in the world, represented queer realities as something negative, sick and worthy of punishment.

Our classic film in this Queer Film Season of the Americas is the Mexican movie Lugar sin límites (The Place without Limits) released in 1978. This film directed by Arturo Ripstein, one of the most important Mexican creators, is based on the Latin American Boom novel El lugar sin límites by Chilean writer José Donoso: the story is that of a small town in which a gender-fluid woman, Manuela, runs a brothel with her daughter, Japonesita, and they both set out to seduce Pancho, a man who feels threatened because of it his manhood, while the brothel and the entire town are harassed by another threat: that of a powerful man who is buying up all the property in the place. You can already imagine that it is a very painful film, it is not the type of film with which you leave the theater smiling and with optimism, but it is an important film for many reasons: El lugar sin límites is one of the riskiest LGBTIQ+ films that have been shot during the 1970s, it is a pioneering film that, together with the work of Jaime Humberto Hermosillo, pointed out a possible path for cinema.

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El lugar sin límites (Arturo Rípstein, 1978. México)

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Queer film historian and academic B. Ruby Rich wrote of The Place without Boundaries in her book New Queer Cinema: The Director’s Cut:

“Ripstein’s El lugar sin límites represents an ingenious study in the intrinsic connection between overstated masculinity and the homosexual desire that underlies it. Set in a small town with a claustrophobic moral code, the film focuses on the characters of Manuela, a drag queen and brothel owner, and Pancho, a hot tempered drifter with an attraction/repulsion thing for Manuela. The overpowering pressure of the macho social order to which Pancho feels obliged to prove his allegiance will become fatal for Manuela by the end of the film, but until then its a breathtaking ride through gender allegiances. Though its narrative drive and tragic resolution would seem to place El lugar sin limites squarely in an older category of films that stigmatize homosexuality, it differs in its solicitation of the audience’s sympathy for Manuela and in convincingly denigrating the machismo that warps what could have been a love story. Indeed the film scholar Sergio de la Mora has argued that it is «the first Mexican film to take homosexuality seriously”.”

As you can imagine, it was very difficult to choose the films for this film exhibition from among the wide variety of existing films, and it was difficult to choose a single Mexican film: Jaime Humberto Hermosillo’s films from the eighties are essential in queer cinema, and there are great contemporary creators like Julián Hernández, and there are very important documentaries like Muxes: autenticas, intrepidas y buscadoras de peligros (Muxes – Authentic, Intrepid Seekers of Danger, 2005) by Alejandra Islas Caro that shed light on realities that are not new, but rather, have roots in the traditions of the original peoples of America.

The questioning of gender roles is not a recent issue in American cinema: the actress and tango singer Tita Merello embodied these criticisms in her music and in extraordinary Argentine films such as Mercado de abasto (Abasto Market, directed by Lucas Demare in 1955), where she represents an independent woman who distances herself from men and rebukes her sister in court because the only thing she expects from life is to get married and have children. Another antecedent of our queer cinemas is that of the Mexican female director Matilde Landeta with La negra Angustias (1949), a film based on the novel by Francisco Rojas Gonzáles, and on a real character: Angustias, a woman who was a colonel in the insurgent army of Mexican Revolution.

The theme of other forms of femininity and masculinity is not new in our cinemas.

I want to continue these introductory words to our Queer Film Series of the Americas, leaving the historical context to present all the films we have chosen: the film chosen to represent queer cinema in Argentina is Margen de error (Margin of Error), film written and directed by Liliana Paolinelli that premiered in 2019, and won the AADA Award for best art direction during BAFICI. This movie, made as a romantic comedy, tells the story of Iris, who has been in a relationship with another woman for 23 years until the arrival of a friend’s daughter seems to be about to transform everything forever. The film by this Argentinian filmmaker is fresh, entertaining and at the same time profound. She relies on the most classic traditions of cinematographic narration to present a world of her own that for decades was off the screens. Liliana Paolinelli is a writer, film director and producer, and has received various awards for her film work. She has made documentaries and fiction films and her work recover the voice of multiple women from her country.

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Margen de error (Liliana Paolinelli, 2019. Argentina)

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As happens in each of our countries, there are many other possible films: Argentina has a wealth of queer cinematography spanning almost every genre of film, and a multitude of names including award-winning filmmakers Albertina Carri, Anahí Berneri, Marco Berger, Julia Solomonoff, Lucía Puenzo, and Santiago Loza, among others. The film Las hijas del fuego (The daughters of fire), for example, directed by Albertina Carri and released in 2018 it is a erotic and a road movie that travels through the south of Argentina with few words and with a lot of space for the landscape of the country and for the landscapes of diverse bodies. Albertina Carri is also a plastic artist and is the daughter of two political activists and university professors who disappeared from the Argentine dictatorship in 1977. Carri has built a body of work where her life is a constant inspiration: films and installations on state terrorism, on native languages from Argentina, films that question the subjection of women, heteronormative roles and film genres: Las hijas del fuego is a travelogue, it is a road movie and it is an erotic film that does not respond to the conventional rules of history of the cinema.

The film chosen from Costa Rica is Callos, an important documentary in their country, which was shot in 2018 and presents the lives of three queer men using contemporary audiovisual writings on social networks, thereby creating the portrait of three people and a country in the struggle to become a place where diverse loves are treated with respect and equal rights. About this film Rafael Guilhem wrote:

“In the case of Callos (2018), Nacho Rodríguez’s first film, poetry is linked without mediators with Social Networks. The film replicates Instagram stories or Messenger messages from three young homosexuals from different generations who, in the midst of the 2018 presidential election campaigns in Costa Rica, which also meant a fight for the rights of the LGBTTTIQ community, expose their bodies ideas, passions and fears”.

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The story that represents Canadian cinema is Love, Scott, a documentary by Laura Marie Wayne released in 2018. Love, Scott explores through images and a soundtrack full of poetry a harsh reality: the story of Scott Jones, a gay musician who was paralyzed from the waist down after being stabbed in October 2013. This documentary made by Scott’s best friend accompanies the young man for three years in an intimate and lyrical story that is that of a man who rebuilds his life, who leads activism against homophobia and hate crimes, and who at the same time try to forgive. Both Scott’s story and the film are a portrait of a queer existence, and are a critique of a judicial system that refused to prosecute this attack as a hate crime. It is a painful but at the same time inspiring documentary, it is a film that the Canadian organization Cinema Politica presents with this phrase: «The wound is the place where the Light enters you.» The film’s music is by Sigur Rós, the Icelandic avant-rock band.

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We have important films and a classic film, but there are also great films of very recent production: three of the films that we present are first-run films: the Colombian Alis, which was released in theaters in the first half of 2023 and at the Berlin International Film Festival won two awards including the Teddy Award that recognizes the best LGBTIQ+ film of each year. Alis is a warm and endearing documentary, we who have received so much in our lives, we who are so lucky, can see the world through the eyes of the protagonists of this documentary, of adolescent women who have lived on the street, prostitution, sexual abuse and misery. We can see their past and discover with them, between music and smiles, that even such hard lives can have happy futures.

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The Brazilian documentary Corpolítica, which premiered in Brazilian cinemas on June 8th, is another sign that the future can change: this film follows a group of young LGBTIQ+ people who enter politics without fear, with the certainty that their country must defend the rights of all Brazilians. Corpolítica is a direct documentary without artifice: interviews, shots of political meetings and public events, the intimacy of its protagonists who learn from their homes about courage and about being themselves. The documentary was shot during the year 2020, which is a unique date in Brazilian politics: it was the year in which the elections had the largest number of LGBTIQ+ candidates in its entire history. The film crew wrote about this film:

“At a time when the far-right is rising to power around the world, the 2020 Brazilian municipal elections saw an astonishing and unprecedented record of LGBT candidates. This film follows four young queer politicians during their election campaigns and reveals their struggle to assert their rights to exist and be heard.»

About Corpolítica, its producer Marco Pigossi also declared: «A film has the power to touch, to humanize and make you reflect, and this documentary moved me because of the relationship of these young people with their mothers, this film humanizes these bodies, often raped by lies, defamation and a false and violent idea of ​​sin”. Corpolítica was selected by more than ten international festivals.

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And the third novelty, our preview, is a film from the United States of America: Every Body, a documentary directed by Julie Cohen that will be out this week in movie theaters in the country. In a review of this documentary, Variety Magazine and the first images of the film recalled that according to the UN Human Rights Office, around 1.7% of the world’s population is born with intersex traits, that is, they are born with physical sexual characteristics that do not meet the definitions typical of male or female. Every Body focuses on the stories of three of these people who underwent surgery throughout their childhood to make their bodies fit into the mold of male or female bodies. As Cyrus Cohen writes:

“In a country obsessed with gender, intersex people are often erased entirely. Sean Saifa Wall, Alicia Roth Weigel, and River Gallo are here to change that. Recounting their individual experiences with stigma, social pressure, and nonconsensual surgeries performed on them as minors, these three make the case for the much-needed rethinking of both archaic medical practices and binary ideas of gender and sex.

Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning filmmaker Julie Cohen (RGB, My Name Is Pauli Murray) allows her documentary participants to guide this intimate portrait of life in between and outside binaries and creates something wholly unique in the process. Combining personal testimony with archival footage, Cohen directly engages with our country’s transphobic history and exposes how little has evolved in the way intersex people are viewed and treated by medical professionals and society at large. However, as these three incredible individuals show in this fearless film, a better future is not only possible but near.”

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In total we have eight films in our Queer Film Season of the Americas and today we cannot talk in detail about all of them, but I want to make a final recommendation: don’t miss the Chilean film Lemebel, does anyone in this room know the plastic artist, Chilean writer and activist Pedro Lemebel? I am sure you do. This documentary by Chilean Joanna Reposi was made in co-production with RTVC, with the Colombian public media system, and is a loving exploration of an irreverent artist. The film plays with different aesthetics and textures to preserve the flavours of the documentary materials that were recovered to narrate the life of Pedro Lemebel who was born in 1952 and died in 2015. Lemebel won the Guggenheim Grant in 1999 and participated in the 1994 Stonewall Festival in New York, her provocative performances and installations challenged the dictatorship, Chilean literature, and various forms of discrimination. Lemebel published a dozen books with poetic, irreverent, baroque and kitsch prose, books that include the non-fiction short stories La esquina es mi corazón: crónica urbana and the novel Tengo miedo torero (published in English as My Tender Matador: A Novel), a novel that in 2020 was taken to the cinema under the direction of Rodrigo Sepúlveda. Joanna Reposi’s Lemebel won the Teddy Award at the Berlin Film Festival and has toured the world through festivals such as the Ciclo Rosa de Colombia.

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I want to share two last ideas, the first one you already know: we want to celebrate diversity, diversity is the true strength of humanity.

And one final idea: cinema is an empathy machine. Cinema allows us to see and to hear the world from the place of other people. The cinema is a screen to the wide multiplicity of lives and cultural heritage of our planet. Cinema can change thought and only a new thought can change the world.

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Julián David Correa

Curator

Queer Film Season of the Americas

LGBTI Core Group

Organization of American States, 2023

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