Outlook Film Festival » Film Festival 2009

Women’s Shorts

outlook — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 17:57:16 +0000

Saturday 7th | 4.00pm | Gate Cinema 3

THE HITCHHIKER PROJECT

Dir. Cuong Ngo

Canada | 2008 | 15mins | colour

Beauty, lust and betrayal lurk around every corner in a world full of glamour. The Hitchhiker Project is a short film which portrays the superficial lives of young people who live in a world of materialism.

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BREEDERS

Dir. Douglas Brook

Australia | 2009 | 8mins | colour

Set in a surreal all-gay world, Breeders follows the fight for equal rights for heterosexuals. Prime Minister Susan Sanderson is passing a law banning blended births while the Natural Births movement is determined to stop her.

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MAKE A MATE

Dir. Jennifer Jordan Day

USA | 2009 | 4mins | Beta | colour

What matters most to you when picking a partner? Would you knowingly choose a cheater, back stabber or heart breaker? Does it matter what gender your partner is? Who knows how perfect partners are created… but wouldn’t it be nice if we had some control?

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THE SHEEP AND THE RANCH HAND

Dir. Loretta Hintz

USA | 2009 | 12mins | Beta | colour

A provocative sexy romp through the dream of a woman transformed into a sheep. In love and in lust with her handsomely butch ranch hand, she delights in being her bestial self, and finds a freedom both unexpected and profoundly empowering.

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I SAW PATRICK LAST NIGHT

Dir. Borja Alvarez Ramirez

USA | 2009 | 3mins | MiniDV | black & white

Veronika falls in love with her friend and they start seeing each other. But during a short morning walk she realises her girlfriend has many doubts…

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MEETING LAURA

Dir. Felix Stienz

Germany | 2009 | 12mins | Beta | colour

Eight young people speak about their lives. Tellingly, a young woman named Laura has a special part in all their stories.

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D’UNE RIVE A L’AUTRE

Dir. Maxime Desmons

A torrid lesbian affair is jeopardised as Mariell falls in love with a female co-worker; however, her devout brother demands that she marry a dear family friend to whom she’s been promised.

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THE DROWNERS

Dir. Catherine Taylor

England | 2008 | 12mins | Beta | colour

The Drowners tells the tale of two synchronised swimmers who fall for each other. Charlotte and her synchronised swimming team are putting on an innovative version of The Sleeping Beauty. Her world is thrown off-balance by the arrival of new swimmer Amanda.

Men’s Shorts

outlook — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 17:24:03 +0000

Friday 6th | 4.00pm | Gate Cinema 3

THE GOLDEN PIN

Dir. Cuong Ngo

Set in Canada’s multicultural milieu, Long finds himself struggling between the expectations of his Asian family and the demands of his heart. His father wants him to marry soon, but his mother hopes her son will stand up for what he believes.

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JOHN WAYNE HATED HORSES

Dir. Andrew T Betzer

USA | 2009 | 10mins | 35mm

A father and his young son share a house, a yard, and very different ideas about masculinity and appropriate uses of army toys.

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IN HIS SHOES

Dir. Ornette Spenceley

England | 2008 | 13mins | Beta | colour

After his beloved father commits suicide, Clifford and his family descend into chaos. His sister withdraws, his mum takes to her bed and Clifford decides he wants to be a girl. All he needs now is a pair of breasts.

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BOMBSHELL

Dir. Kim Farrant

Australia | 2009 | 15mins | Beta | Colour

A loaded bombshell is thrown into the laps of two Greek-Australian brothers forcing them to question their traditional beliefs and machismo identities as men. George and Yanni are ‘blokey’ in the extreme sense of the word – men’s men – but when their father is hospitalised after a brutal bashing, their family façade and the backbone of their masculinity comes crashing to the ground.

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WE – 1ST PERSON PLURAL

Dir. Vika Kirchenbauer

Poetically collaging images and sounds that she recorded with her familiy’s Super 8 archive, the filmmaker shares personal thoughts and doubts about repetitions in the context of identity, gender, political action and love.

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DEEP RED

Dir. Eddie Tapero

Israel | 2009 | 19mins | Beta | colour

Gur and Yuval will stop at nothing to make enough money for a fresh start in Berlin. As they approach their goal, the tension is growing between the two, until an unexpected event causes Gur to question both their plan and their relationship.

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MY FIRST KISS

Dir. Dermod Moore

Ireland | 2009 | 5mins | Beta | colour

Do you remember your first kiss? The experience of Tony Fitzpatrick, who was a teenager in the 1950s, is contrasted with the memories of young gay people today.

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LILY’S IMAGE

Dir. Susanne Stritch

Ireland | 2008 | 11mins | colour

Making art, a little girl finds magic in the muddle of her parents’ unusual separation.

Humpday

outlook — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 16:31:50 +0000

When Andrew unexpectedly shows up on Ben’s doorstep late one night, the two old college friends immediately fall into their old dynamic of heterosexual one-upmanship. To save Ben from domestication, Andrew invites Ben to a party at a sex-positive commune. Everyone there plans on making erotic art films for the local amateur porn festival and Andrew wants in. They run out of booze and ideas, save for one: Andrew should have sex with Ben, on camera. It’s not gay; it’s beyond gay. It’s not porn; it’s an art project. The next day, they find themselves unable to back down from the dare. And there’s nothing standing in their way -- except Ben’s wife Anna, heterosexuality, and certain mechanical questions.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMr_LQDlYH8

No End

outlook — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 16:30:19 +0000

THURSDAY 5TH | 6.00PM | GATE CINEMA 3

Dir. Roberto Cuzzillo

Giulia and Chiara have decided to take their relationship one step further and have a child together. But Italian law dictates that only married heterosexual couples are legally allowed to procreate through artificial insemination so the two women are forced to travel to Holland for this procedure.

However, Giulia’s mother is upset at the thought of her grandchild being raised fatherless while Chiara finds a lump in her breast and has to face up to potential sickness and death instead of birth and new life.

In this remarkably tender and touching feature debut, director Roberto Cuzzillo creates a subtly sensitive film about those particular moments that mean the very most.

The director will be in attendance.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWlkV_MYJ0o

www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6KmJWwlr44

The End of Love

outlookfilm — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 16:20:18 +0000

WEDNESDAY 4TH | 6.00PM | GATE CINEMA 3

Dir. Simon Chung

Hong Kong, China | 2008 | 95mins | Beta | Colour

A journey of a young man searching for his identity is confronted with the intensity of life.
The lives of two young men cross in a Christian rehab camp where they are supposed to be healed from their addictions. This is a story about friendship but also about the intense and often brutal reality of life when it comes to drug abuse.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8Dni9Ma1MA

Japan Japan

outlook — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 14:25:21 +0000

The movie tells the story of Imri, who at 19 goes to live in Tel- Aviv, but dreams of moving to Japan. Through his relationships and encounters and in diverse cinematic tools, we are introduced to the young man’s life. An exploration of living in the exotic city of Tel Aviv is presented through a hero who is himself in the midst of exploring his own choice of an exotic place. A unique correlation is formed between the hero’s misconception of Japan and ours of him. The movie was constructed by both improvised and pre-scripted scenes, as required by the nature of each scene.

Taking Woodstock

outlook — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 09:00:10 +0000

Monday 2nd | 8.30pm | Gate Cinema 2

Dir. Ang Lee

USA | 2009 | 110mins | 35mm | Colour

Academy Award-winning director Ang Lee’s new comedy stars Demetri Martin as Elliot, who inadvertently played a role in making 1969’s Woodstock Music and Arts Festival into the famed happening it was. Featuring a standout ensemble cast, and songs from a score of ’60s musical icons including The Grateful Dead, The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, and Country Joe and the Fish, Taking Woodstock is a joyous voyage to a moment in time when everything seemed possible. Upon hearing that a planned music and arts festival has lost its permit from the neighboring town of Wallkill, NY, Elliot calls producer Michael Lang to offer his family’s motel to the promoters and generate some much-needed business. Soon half a million people are on their way for ’3 days of Peace & Music in White Lake.’ With a little help from his friends, Elliot finds himself swept up in a generation-defining experience that would change his life -and popular culture -forever.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlLD_7k68BM

THE MAMAS AND THE PAPAS, followed by HOMO BABY BOOM

outlook — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 08:00:16 +0000

SUNDAY 8TH | 4.30PM | GATE CINEMA 3

THE MAMAS AND THE PAPAS

Dir. Janine Bakker

Netherlands | 2008 | 84mins | Digibeta | Colour

Children with two fathers or two mothers are not an exception these days. Lesbian and gay parents are more and more accepted. Lately a new form of parenthood develops; gay- and lesbian co-parenting. In The Mamas and the Papas director Janine Bakker portrays a gay and a lesbian couple who want to have a baby and do the upbringing together, with all four of them. Iris, Manon, Edward and Patrick will share parental rights. The film starts with their wish to become parents and follows them during pregnancy, childbirth and the first months of their newborn. During the pregnancy Iris and Manon, Edward and Patrick realize that good intentions are not enough. The juridical aspects are complicated. Iris, the biological mother, gets more emotional. She is not sure she really wants to share the baby and Patrick feels left-out because of the focus on the pregnancy.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=proA3U3H1QU

www.youtube.com/watch?v=G55VMclQp1M

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HOMO BABY BOOM

Dir. Anna Boluda

Ground-breaking legal changes in Spain in 2005 (same-sex marriage and adoption for homosexual couples) changed the lives of two-mom and two-dad families. Six of them from the Barcelona area tell their stories in this first-person documentary.

Greek Pete

outlook — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 07:00:43 +0000

Friday 6th | 6.00pm | Gate Cinema 3

Dir. Andrew Haigh

England | 2008 | 75mins | Beta | colour

Pete is a darkly handsome son of Greek immigrants, arriving in London with a simple plan – to make as much money as possible and become the world’s greatest male escort.

Brimming with revealing confessionals and intimate conversations, Greek Pete was filmed for over a year with young men working within and around the sex industry and the story is a representation of their world. The process blurs the boundary between fiction and documentary, giving an authentic and intimate insight into the boys’ lives. Honest, non-judgmental, and often tumescently explicit, the film offers an intense and fascinating portrait of a sub-culture hidden from view.

The director will be in attendance.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=nG1F4R9cymw

Stains & Stencils

outlook — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 06:25:17 +0000

4 1/2 Portraits of A Begum (2005)

Sun 01 Nov –Sunday 08 Nov | Triskel Arts Centre at Caroline St

The 54th Corona Cork Film Festival and Triskel Arts Centre are proud to present this video installation by the artist Qasim Riza Shaheen. Stains & Stencils is of a body of work that was born out of a two year process of working with the Khusra (transgendered) community of the red light district of Lahore, Pakistan from 2005-2007. Building relationships with a group of sex workers, the artist lived and experienced their unique transgenderism. This six screen installation is a beguiling, touching and vivid experience, as the artist invites us to not just observe, but to know and encounter each individual on their terms.

“Over the period that I was in Lahore I befriended six transgendered sex workers – Gogi, KumKum, Reena, Choti, Simi and Aashi. There was so much we wanted to say through these quiet narratives whilst immersed in internal spaces. Six rooms, their occupation and me. These are six adaptations of a negotiated transient friendship that existed between us. I am a world away from theirs yet become a mediation of sort between them and you: watching them watching me re-tell their stories through my gaze. I am in their clothes, made up by them and carefully positioned and postured. As their clients, friends, pimps and madams carry on with their chores I offer you these visions and soundscapes of seduction. Listening through rooms, peering over balconies and looking out of windows – searching” – Qasim Riza Shaheen

Biography

Qasim Riza Shaheen is an artist based in Manchester. His work has been programmed widely including at The National Review of Live Art, Glasgow; Liverpool Biennial and Rohtas Gallery in Lahore, Pakistan where he has recently taught.

He is currently Artist in Residence with CityArts/ Fire Station Artist Studios in Dublin, and has an upcoming performance Queer Courtesan (Live) at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

“Stains & Stencils bears witness to an artist, a human being profoundly human, who dances his way out of a state of immobilisation, who devises strategies of play that subverts the sense of the dutiful (often to our authoring sources) that ties us to this stagnation. This elegant spectacle of selfinventing, self-dis-inventing and self-reinventing through play is a salutary response and challenge to the late enlightenment project that is still very much with us, namely, to repress subjective desires by repackaging it as the performative, as something to witness in cultured detachment that is so often a form of self-denial. Against the totalitarianism of obsolescent but fiercely enduring, mostly masculinised, attitudes, this playfulness draws from a repertory of risks that becomes the poetic language of Qasim Riza Shaheen’s work” Dr J Rangasamy F.R.S.A Chair Shisha UK

Qasim Riza Shaheen will be resident throughout the week of the Festival. A public talk and an opportunity to meet the artist will be scheduled.
Please check this web site and www.triskelartscentre.ie