Suddenly Last Winter from Italy was one of 120 films screened last week during “Kashish” Mumbai International Queer Film Festival 2010. Festival site describes the 2008 documentary by Gustav Hofer and Luca Ragazzi: “Partners for more then eight years, the life of Gustav and Luca changes when the Italian government presents a draft law that grant rights to unmarried and gay couples, prompting a wave of homophobia in Italy.”

The four-day “Kashish” Mumbai International Queer Film Festival 2010 closed Sunday after screening 110 films from 25 countries.

It wasn’t India’s first queer film festival, but it was hailed as a significant step forward for the country’s LGBTQ people, nonetheless.

  Mumbai International Queer Film Festival director Sridhar Rangayan

“There have been gay film festivals before… but this is the first gay film festival in the mainstream,” organizer Vivek Raj Anand told AFP.

“We’ve got partners to work with us and we found that it wasn't so difficult,” said Anand, who is chief executive of The Humsafar Trust, a gay and transgender sexual health charity based in Mumbai. Humsafar, one of India’s first LGBTQ groups, was co-founded by the festival director Sridhar Rangayan.

For Kashish, films were screened for the first time in mainstream movie venues, rather than the community centers where many other festivals have been held.

Organizers were also able to attract celebrities to the events, including famous actor Celina Jaitley (aka “Celina”), who made a much-photographed walk-through during the festival’s premiere night.

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Three films sent to an Ottawa LGBT film festival were held for "review" last weekend by Canadian customs officials. The films are Clapham Junction, I Can’t Think Straight, and the PG-rated Swedish comedy Patrik Age 1.5

On Nov. 20 three films shipped to Ottawa’s Inside Out LGBTQ film festival were held for review by Canadian customs officials. The films weren’t released until Nov. 25, three days after the festival had ended, which left festival organizers scrambling to find replacement copies.

Because one of the paper’s staff writers was in the audience during the first scheduled screening for one of the quarantined films, the Canadian queer newspaper Xtra quickly reported the seizure and has followed the story intensively in the week since then.

Members of parliament contacted this week by Xtra worried that the actions of the customs agency hearkened back to a long running legal battle between the agency and Vancouver LGBT bookstore Little Sister’s Book & Art Emporium.

“How long does this battle have to go on?” NDP House Leader Libby Davies said to Xtra’s Marcus McCann when asked about last week’s film seizures. “There's been thousands, maybe millions of dollars spent on litigation [and] court battles by Little Sister's. Why are they holding up material that is totally acceptable?”

Jason St. Laurent, programming director for the Inside Out festival told CBC that he learned that the films were stuck at the border when he called the courier company on Thursday to confirm tracking numbers for their shipment.

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Source: Durango Herald, Huffington Post, Denver Post, Two Spirits website

Fred Martinez, who was murdered in June, 2001 near his remote hometown in southeastern Colorado, is honored and remembered in a documentary that premiered Saturday at the Starz Denver Film Festival.

Some proceeds from the film Two Spirits have been dedicated to helping his family buy a permanent headstone for his grave.

In a Sunday feature for Durango Herald, reporter Joe Hanel movingly recounts the story told by the film, Two Spirits:

Fred Martinez was anything but simple.

He was, at various moments, a boy, a girl, a Navajo, a Montezuma-Cortez High School student, gay, transgendered, nadleehi.

In June 2001, in a ravine just south of Cortez, he became a murder victim.

Now, he’s the subject of a movie, and, if the filmmakers have their way, he will become a window onto a view of gender that is at once new to American society and older than America itself….

As a teenager, Fred resisted categorizing himself, calling himself gay and transgendered, dressing as both a boy and a girl. He told his mother he wanted to be both.

She told him there was a word for him in Navajo - nadleehi. It’s the third of the four Navajo genders, used for a person with a male body and female character traits.

The producers of the documentary explain their purpose on the website for their film:

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Source: New York Times, Reuters, London Telegraph

Publicity shots from Universal for Sacha Baron Cohen’s new film, Bruno

Reuters’ Alex Dobuzinskis summarizes the new film:

Cohen, who scored a surprise hit in 2006 with "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan," portrays a flamboyant gay Austrian fashion reporter in the new film that premieres on Wednesday in London and opens in the United States on July 10.

The studio releasing "Bruno" says the film's intent is to satirize homophobia, but some gay advocates are wary.

In Sunday’s New York Times, writer Brooks Barnes examines some of the pre-release reactions to Bruno:

Gay groups are reacting with deeply mixed emotions, heightened by the recent triumphs (Iowa) and losses (California) in efforts to legalize gay marriage. Is the film then vulgar, inappropriate and harmful? Or bold, timely and necessary? All of the above?

Ultimately the tension surrounding “Brüno” boils down to the worry that certain viewers won’t understand that the joke is on them and will leave the multiplex with their homophobia validated.

“Some people in our community may like this movie, but many are not going to be OK with it,” said Rashad Robinson, senior director of media programs for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. “Sacha Baron Cohen’s well-meaning attempt at satire is problematic in many places and outright offensive in others.”

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         ::   A city-sponsored Christmas pageant in Amsterdam called "Pink Christmas" featured a nativity tableau with a drag queen as Mary and a hunky bear-fellow as one of her consorts. It's part of a 10-day festival organized by the Dutch Pro Gay foundation. Prior to the festival, organizers said the manger scene would feature two Josephs and two Maries. Associated Press, which focused more on cries of outrage from Christianist groups, was not clear about whether that aspect of the event had been staged, but reports the five-person manger scene was displayed off the street, in the courtyard of a nightclub. Later events in the ten days of Christmas include a holy mass for LGBT folk on Christmas Day. "Our objective is not to be offensive. This is about visibility," said Frank van Dalen, chairman of Pro Gay. Marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples was recognized in the Netherlands in 2001, while adoption rules are equal for all married couples. A recent study, however, found that homophobia and gay-bashings are an ingrained problem in Amsterdam, despite the city's freewheeling reputation

         ::   Ted Haggard was one of the top leaders of the US political/evangelical movement two years ago. All that collapsed when his frequent relationship with a gay prostitute was revealed, along with the pastor's fondness for crystal meth. Haggard now admits -- despite a lengthy and concerted effort by fellow pastors to "cure" him -- that he still "from time to time ... struggle[s] with same-sex attraction". The revelation comes in a new HBO documentary, "The Trial of Ted Haggard," which will air January 29th. Haggard is now an insurance salesman in Arizona. Colorado Springs Gazette critic Mark Bama writes, "Haggard, a 52-year-old father of five, careens from self-pity to self-loathing to self-aggrandizement in the documentary. Anger about his dismissal from the church he founded bubbles just below the surface."

         ::   A clean-cut Annapolis graduate, Navy booster, and retired submariner, Steve Clark Hall, is making a documentary called Out of Annapolis that he hopes will "tell our story and unveil the masks of who we are." For his documentary Hall is talking to other gay and lesbian alumni of the Naval Academy. Hall was is a 20-year veteran who retired from the Navy as a captain. Hall, 54, told Baltimore Sun that he finally ended his career because "I was tired of being single and not being able to live life the way I wanted to." Hall, who hopes to finish the film in the spring, told the Sun that he's he is determined to make a film that shows the Navy and the Naval Academy in a positive light.

          ::   Model John Kenney didn't survive long with his tribe-mates during the 2004 season of Survivor: Vanuatu – Islands of Fire. But his gig on the reality show caught the attention of big modeling agencies where he has, for obvious reasons, survived quite well. He's appeared on the editorial pages of several magazines, including DNA and Gus. And le gay blog has even more from his stunning portfolios.

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          ::   Nominations for Golden Globe Awards were announced this morning, killing much of the awards buzz that had surrounded Gus Van Sant's Milk. The bio-pic of Harvey Milk was all but shut out of the nominations, failing to earn nominations in any category except best actor. Things were looking better for the film yesterday, when the New York Film Critics Circle judged it to be "best film" of the year. The Big Apple critics also handed best-actor kudos to Sean Penn for his Globes-nominated role as Harvey Milk. 

         ::   The Golden Globes did, however, have some queer-friendly noms lower down the list, including a nod to out actor Neil Patrick Harris for his supporting role in How I Met Your Mother. Some gay-inclusive TV shows, including Ugly Betty, also got nods.

         ::   Speaking of out actors, the other one (well... not quite), T.R. Knight of Grey's Anatomy, is reported by Entertainment Weekly to be itching to get out of his contract on that ABC show. "Multiple sources confirm that T.R. Knight has asked to be released from his contract, a request that both ABC and Grey's show-runner Shonda Rhimes appear poised to grant," the gossip mag writes with appropriate breathlessness. "They're working out the details now," whispers an ABC insider, according to EW.
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