INKLUSIV Film Festival, 5th Edition

presented by ACCEPT-Romania

Bucureşti, România - May 19 to 24, 2008

To view the following program in Romanian (Românǎ), please visit the GayFest2008 Web site.

The Gymnast

USA 96 min
2006, Drama
Directed by Ned Farr

The talented Jane Hawkins (Dreya Weber, Lovely & Amazing) was an impressive gymnast at the top of her game until a devastating injury ended her career. Now she pours the passion, strength and discipline that once fueled her sport into maintaining both a tedious job as a massage therapist and a loveless marriage. A chance meeting leads sets Jane on a new path: performing a CirqueDu Soleil style aerial act with a mysterious and beautiful dancer named Serena (Addie Yungmee).

She's a Boy I Knew

Canada, 70 min
2007, Artistic Documentary
Directed by Gwen Haworth

Using interviews, animation, old family footage, and voice mail, Vancouver filmmaker Gwen Haworth documents her male-to-female gender transition partially through the voices of her anxious but loving family, best friend, and wife. Calling for a new era of DIY transgender self-representation, Haworth’s feature debut is a comic, heartbreaking, and uplifting autobiography that breaks away from the marginalized depictions of transsexuals that populate mainstream media and focuses on the interpersonal relationships of a family who unexpectedly find their bonds strengthening as they overcome their preconceptions of gender and sexuality.

The End of Second Class

Canada, 2006
90 minutes, Documentary
Directed by Nancy Nicol

The End of Second Class is a powerful documentary that traces the debate on same sex marriage in Canada up to the passage of equal marriage legislation on July 20, 2005. The story is told from the perspective of three couples from B.C., Ontario and Quebec and lawyers and activists who sought to uphold the Charter rights of lesbians and gay men. The End of Second Class vividly paints the context in which gays and lesbians fought to overcome a history of discrimination and second class status and sought to persuade both the courts and the Parliament of Canada to affirm their right to marry.

Trembling Before G-d

Israel/ USA, 84 min
2001
Directed by Sandi Simcha Dubowski

Trembling Before G-d is an unprecedented feature documentary that shatters assumptions about faith, sexuality, and religious fundamentalism. Built around intimately-told personal stories of Hasidic and Orthodox Jews who are gay or lesbian, the film portrays a group of people who face a profound dilemma - how to reconcile their passionate love of Judaism and the Divine with the drastic Biblical prohibitions that forbid homosexuality. As the film unfolds, we meet a range of complex individuals - some hidden, some out - from the world's first openly gay Orthodox rabbi to closeted, married Hasidic gays and lesbians to those abandoned by religious families to Orthodox lesbian high-school sweethearts.

Innocent

Canada/Hong Kong, 80 min
2005, Drama
Directed by Simon Chung

A Hong Kong teenager newly immigrated to Canada stands at the brink of adulthood, against the backdrop of conflicting cultures, familial discord and the exploration of his own emerging sexuality. The men he encounters - his handsome cousin, a classmate, an older man, and finally a kitchen help in his mother's restaurant, represent different stages in his emotional and sexual awakening, from infatuation, sex, love, to a sense of responsibility.

Un amour a taire

France, 102 min
2005, Drama
Directed by Christian Faure

A young Jewish girl looking to escape the clutches of the Third Reich after seeing her parents and sister brutally slain while attempting to make their way to England, is sheltered by an old friend Jean and his faithful lover Philippe, whose status as members of the "third" sex soon leads the Gestapo pounding on their door as well. Though safe for the moment thanks to Jean's quick-thinking plan to pass her off as a Gallic employee of his family's laundry business, Sara watches in horror as her homosexual protector is forced into a Nazi labor camp as a tragic result of a bad decision made by Jean's troublesome brother Jacques.

Les chansons d'amour

France, 100 min
2007, Drama
Directed by Christophe Honore
with Louis Garrel, Ludivine Sagnier, Chiara Mastroiani and Clotilde Hesme

An emotional and strange story from Paris, a ménage a trois, 180 degrees turnarounds, lots of café and cigars, love scenes and many songs. This movie, despite its small budget, made a big impression among the French youth and not only.

Au dela de la haine

France, 86 min
2007, Drama
Directed by Olivier Meyrou

A moving documentary about the efforts of Jean-Paul and Marie-Cécile Chenu to move beyond the hatred for the 3 skinhead killers of their son François, while also ensuring that such homophobic incidents will never happened again.

Monsieur Max

France, 90 min
2007
Directed by Gabriel Aghion

Max Jacob is a fascinating and tragic figure in the history of the first half of the 20th century. Born a Jew, homosexual, he was a well-known poet and an art expert, living in the exuberant boheme of Paris in the first decades of the 20th century, famous and befriended with the well known artists, poets, playwrights of the era. Although converted to Catholicism tens of years before he was still considered a Jew by the racial laws of occupied France, and died as a Jew in the camp in Drancy, waiting for deportation to Germany.

Dos miradas

Spain, 70 min
2007
Directed by Sergio Candel

“Dos miradas” takes place during one day, in the San Pedro de Atacama desert (Chile). Sofía and Laura decided to spend their vacation together and to enjoy the beautiful and quit landscape, but things take a different turn.

553 Statements

Canada, 70 min
2005
Directed by Tori Foster

Follow 22-year old filmmaker Tori Foster as she grabs her camera and travels 7000 kilometers across Canada to talk to 20 young women about what it's like to be queer where they live. Each woman she meets has a unique perspective on all things queer - stereotypes, hairstyles, gender mishaps, and community life, to name a few. These young women’s warm and candid stories provide intimate and personal glimpses into what makes each of us who we are.

Succubus

Canada, 14 min
2006
Directed by Alison Reid

Lilith, a cat-rescuing entrepreneur, and Athena, a genetic engineer, desperately want to have a baby. The catch is the two women want their child to be a genetic combination of them both. They have attempted to conceive using a scientific technique that Athena developed, but it’s been unsuccessful. Lilith takes matters into her own hands, and goes for the next best thing.

Finn's Girl

Canada, 88 minutes
2007, Drama
Directed by Dominique Cardona & Laurie Colbert

Doctor Finn Jefferies is a thoroughly modern lesbian - far too feisty and happy to ever bother hiding her sexuality. Nothing had ever rocked Finn's passionate, committed life until the untimely death of her beloved partner, Nancy. As Finn flounders in grief, she takes risks that jeopardize her relationship with the only person she really loves - eleven-year-old Zelly Bean, the daughter she co-parented with Nancy. However, like in any respectable American movie, all is well when it ends well.

Below the Belt

Canada, 13 minutes
1999
Directed by Dominique Cardona & Laurie Colbert

Two seventeen year old girls fall in love with each other. Just when their minds are completely preoccupied with themselves, one of the girls makes the astonishing discovery that her mother, whom she always believed to be happily married to her father, is having an affair...

Heneini

USA, 62 minutes
2005, Documentary
Directed by: Irena Fayngold

Hineini (Hebrew for 'Here I am') chronicles the story of one student's courageous fight to establish a gay-straight alliance at a Jewish high school in the Boston area and the transformative impact of her campaign on everyone involved. Beyond the struggle to create a supportive environment for gay and lesbian students and teachers at the school, this is the story of a community wrestling with the very definition of pluralism and diversity in a Jewish context.

boston-keshet.org/hineini

Sofie & Selma

Sweden, 15 min
2001
Directed by Mia Engberg

An erotic story about Selma, a young woman with a boring boyfriend, meeting Sofie at the pool and madly falling for her.

The Night Is Mine

Sweden, 15 min
2002

Documentary about a Swedish painter, Stockholm scenes, nudes.

Lucky Blue

Sweden, 30 min
2007
Directed by Håkon Liu

Two young men meet during the summer vacation, in a camping.

Smalltown Boy

UK, 14 min
2007

An educational movie about a young gay man from a small village in England, confronting the negative attitudes of his community.

Spell It Out

UK, 19 min
2007

An educational movie about combating homophobic attitudes in schools.

Daddy and the Muscle Academy

Finland, 60 min
1991
Directed by Ilppo Pohjola

The film gives voice to the life and creative impulse of the gay erotic artist known across the gay world as 'Tom of Finland'. Essentially an interview documentary with some very brief 'enactments' inspired by Tom's artwork, this is a long way from fetish pornography but is thought-provoking nonetheless.

Not That Kind of Christian!!

USA, 80 min
2007
Directed by Andrew Grossman

In his thought-provoking first film, Andrew Grossman brought together a number of major players in the Anglican sexuality debate, each of them representing a different place on the spectrum of sexuality and religion: Louie Crew, the creator of Integrity, the Episcopal Church’s first LGBT rights organization, founded in 1974; Bishop Gene Robinson, the world’s first openly homosexual bishop and an icon of gay civil liberties; Bishop John S. Spong, a pro-gay bishop with a uniquely agnostic, heretical approach to Christian dogma; Douglas LeBlanc, a conservative Anglican journalist who attempts to understand gay rights issues despite his fundamentalist beliefs; and David Virtue, the Anglican Communion’s most influential conservative layperson, who believes any gay Christian activism will sabotage the Church’s evangelism in Africa, where a majority of Anglican bishops still adhere to 19th century, colonial-era definitions of homosexuality.

Der Einstein des Sex

Germany, 100 min
2000
Directed by Rosa von Praunheim

This is a film that should be seen. It may shock, certainly, but it will enlighten and educate. It is also a part of German history. Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, a Jewish homosexual, set up an Institute in 1921 to research problems concerned with sexuality. This was an unexplored field. People from all over Europe consulted him about their own sexual problems, including the young Austrian Baron Hermann von Teschenberg who became his lover. In 1933 the Nazis destroyed the Institute of Sexual Science. Research papers and museum pieces were lost for ever.

Top of the World

Israel, 15 min
2005, Fiction
Directed by Maya Kenig

Somewhere in Jerusalem, two girls share an apartment for 2 years. One of them is moving out while the other, although is looking for another room-mate, cannot give up on their relation.

A Prayer in January

Israel, 12 min
2006
Directed by Ofir Raul Graizer

One Sunday morning, in a remote area in Israel, two lovers end their relation after one of them decides to choose a religious life.

Recruiting

USA, 9 minutes
2005
Directed by Bobby Roger Poirier & James Hoban

An unexpected proposal for a gay everyman. What is identity, and what is its price? What could be a very low-key pick-up scene soon morphs into a bazaar revelation and proposition.