Trailer

This week’s film was From the Edge of the City, directed by Constantine Giannaris in 1998. This drama follows the lives of young Pontic-Greek immigrants who are unable to fit into society and unapologetically commit petty crimes. The protagonist is the seventeen-year-old, Sasha, who breaks the law and sells his body to men. Throughout this film, he explores life as an outcast from his family, ethnicity, nationality, and sexuality. However, he finds a community with his friends who share the same experiences and values as himself.

Gianaris magnificently developed this drama by allowing his characters to explore their sexuality concerning gender, race, class, and age. The characters struggled with problems boys their age experience while fighting the alienation for being an immigrant. For instance, Sasha was still focused on working for low paying jobs for money and fantasizing about girls. Still, he also struggled to fit into the functioning society without committing petty crimes to get by. The movie’s aesthetics were influenced by migration, movement, and national identity. This cinema also pushes the boundaries of NQC with its combination of film styles. It included documentary, docudrama, cinema-verte, teen adventure, and pornography.

The readings this week were Michele Aaron’s New Queer Cinema, the article New queer Greece: thinking identity through Constantine Giannarie’s From the Edge of the City and Ana Kokkinos’s Head On by Dimitris Papanikolaou, and an interview of the actor, Stathis Papadopoulos, who plays Sasha. These are about the importance of the postmodern depictions of individuals, free from the pressure to conform to social normativity.

Aaron’s article explained the importance of real representation verse positive representation. New Queer Cinema aims to bring authenticity to the past film category, which focused more on combating the homophobic and harsh imagery of queers. NQC also shines a light on the marginalized subgroups of the gay and lesbian communities. Bringing forth these stories to the film industry gives those alienated by migration a voice and inclusivity. 

Papanikolaou’s writing explained the queer meanings behind Giannaris’s film. An interesting fact in the drama production is that the cast was a mix of local immigrants, with no acting experience, and professional actors. Papadopoulos was scouted while working at a gogo dance spot by Giannari himself. The combination of raw acting and trained performances produced an authentic vibe. The roles played by local immigrants resonated with the struggles and emotions their characters were facing throughout the film. This developed the blurring of the boundaries of fiction and reality.

In Papadopoulos’s interview, he described the film production and thought processes through his newfound acting career. Papadopoulos happened to be a Pontic-Greek immigrant himself. This role jumpstarted his acting career. He did mention that he and his castmates received negative feedback from fellow Pontic-Greek immigrants because this film depicts their people in a different light that is not accepted into society. Those hates felt their roles in the movie were disrespect their people. Papadopoulos also states that this drama’s audiences were not for mass media since it was a political piece. I found this interesting because the writers from the readings were suggesting that this film had more than just political power, that it can move the masses by accepting flaws that are overlooked in society. Papanikolaou even mentioned that the more mainstream audience created a “spectatorship dynamic” (Papanikolaou).

Film Trailer

Week 6 covered the film “All About My Mother,” directed by Pedro Almodovar in 1999. The drama depicts Manuela, a struggling mother who loses her son, Esteban, to a fatal car crash. Her initial mission of the drama is to find Esteban’s transgender father in Madrid to tell him about their past child, but instead, she gets sidetracked and builds strong relationships with three women. These women include the transgender truck driver Agriada, the lesbian actresses Huma, and the HIV positive pregnant nurse Rosa.

Throughout Manuela’s discovery to find another purpose in life, she redefines the meaning of motherhood by caring for and supporting the individuals she creates lasting bonds with. Manuela bandages up Agriada after they get beaten, and she helps keep tabs on Huma’s drug-addicted girlfriend. She also further takes on the motherhood role by taking care of Rosa while bedridden during pregnancy and by adopting the nun’s child after she, unfortunately, passes during childbirth. In honor of Manuela’s kindness, Rosa even named her son after the one Manuela lost to the car accident.

This film has a progressive society with diverse characters regarding sexuality and gender. Characters can openly dress and behave as they choose. Agriada, who has undergone multiple plastic surgeries to get their ideal appearance, explains how “The more authentic you are, the more you resemble what you dreamed you are” (108). I find this new meaning of authenticity, beautiful and accepting.

This week’s readings Friendship as a Way of Life” by Foucault, In a Queer Time and Place by Judith Halberstam, and Forms of Being by Leo Bersani and Ulysee Dutoit dove into the meanings of Almodovar’s past films, and about the broader interpretations of motherhood. The basis of the writings was the Almodovar created a progressive society in All About My Mother, which positively depicted women. Bersani and Dutoit wrote that women “are not fantasy-construction of a repressed, distorted and vengeful heterosexual desire” (121). I greatly appreciate Almodovar’s approach to depicting women who are free to their desires without the need for a man’s approval.

Almodovar also implemented repetition throughout this film, from Manuela’s occupation as an organ transplant coordinator, to the changing setting, and to the birth of Rosa’s child, who happens to be fathered by the same man as Esteban. Bersani and Dutoit stated that “his many repetitions – both intertextual and intratextual- are a way of re-initiating identities and situations rather than emphatically reconfirming them” (117).

The only thing I wish All About My Mother had covered was the theme of toxic masculinity. A trait that restricts some to express themselves fully is the issue of toxic masculinity. It has harsh repercussions for people of all genders and sexualities. I also feel as though the film would have been more liberating if it addressed something applicable to a larger audience. By catering to a slightly bigger audience, the overall message could spread faster. Some may argue that the exclusion of toxic masculinity means there was no such thing in Almodovar’s society, but I feel like leaving a few easter egg lines would have sufficed.

Film Trailer

The course material covered in Week 4 was on the French film “Tomboy,” directed by Céline Sciamma in 2011. It is about a young individual, Mikäel, who experiments with gender, preferring to be a boy rather than a girl. Mikäel and his family move to a new neighborhood, the perfect scene to modify one’s identity. He starts to create relations by using gender performativities like playing rough and taking his shirt off in public to become his ideal self with the neighborhood kids. They believe and see him as Mikäel. However, his parents, unaware of his decisions, still refers to him as his cis name, Laura. Mikäel’s younger little sister is the only one that knows the truth and is happy to support her brother’s life choices. The support and love from his younger sibling shows that people are conditioned through performative language and time to what should and should not be accepted. The fact that Mikäel was uncomfortable with older individuals knowing his secret means that he knows that they might not understand his desires because of the unaccepting overall gender conditioning society has forced upon everyone.

Some other gender performatives used by Mikäel to more clearly portray himself how he wants to are simple actions like saying I am Mikäel, dressing in swimwear relating to male suits, and using the bathroom outdoors like how other boys would do. All these actions that Mikäel did further produced his ideal persona. However, the longer Mikäel behaved as such, the bigger the risk of keeping the secret got.

The audience can feel Mikäel’s anxieties and fears of his secrets reveal by the way the film was shot. The movie had a lot of close-ups on Mikäel’s face to show his emotions and reactions to situations that could potentially expose him. 

Unfortunately, after some drama occurred, Mikäel’s secret was out to everyone, including his mother. Mikäel’s mom was extremely disappointed. She shamed Mikäel to conform to female performativities like going by his feminine name and wearing dresses.

A vital factor that Sciamma was able to accomplish in her film was the sense of timelessness. There are no forms of high technology, like video games or iPhones. The kids interact by physically playing, rather than through deceives. This allows audiences of all ages to relate to Mikäel and the neighborhood kids.

Another critical realization to recognize with this french film is the different social normalities there are with the French language compared to the English language. The term tomboy in English is a girl who transgresses into male territory. In French, it means garçon manqué or failed boy. Garçon manqué has a strong negative connotation against tomboys. This negativity creates higher risks for Mickäel about others discovering his secret. The French language also assigns genders to objects, which sets a more significant binary divide in gender normativity. I appreciate Sciamma’s decision to change the title’s language because the French meaning would have significantly altered the meaning of Mickäel’s story in a negative manner.

The readings were from Critically Queer by Judith Butler and Gender Performativity by Sarah Chinn. The articles introduce how gender performativity shapes how we view and treat others based on their gender and sexuality. Gender performativity are actions or spoken phrases that cause a result. For instance, promoting blue colors for a newborn baby is a gender performativity for a boy. It also dives into how shame is used to force individuals to conform to binary gender identities.

Film Trailer

Week 3 covered the film “Law of Desire,” directed by Pedro Almodovar in 1987. This film is about Pablo, a gay film director’s life, and how a psychopathic lover threatens the safety of Pablo’s daughter and his transgender sister, Tina. The lover, Antonio, makes crazy unreasonable decisions to become closer with Pablo. He murders Pablo’s love Juan, and while Pablo is recovering in the hospital, he lures Tina into a relationship to get back into Pablo’s life. This film displays love with total obsession and infatuation. Almodovar believes that everyone is in real life queer. He tries to incorporate this idea by having the characters’ romantic relations not typical with heteronormativity.

The filmmakers were attentive to details throughout the movie to create symbolism. For instance, the lighting in the establishing shot alludes that things within the film are not as they seem. The casting also mocks the ideas of authentic biological sex with the actor and actress choices of Tina and Ada’s mother. Tina, Pablo’s sister, is a trans woman in the film who is played by a cis woman, while Bibiana Fernandez, an openly trans woman in real life, portrays Ada’s mother. Characters in this movie were over the top, and the filmmakers were aware of this by having Pablo criticizing Tina for being too melodramatic.

This film showed that one’s gender and sexuality do not matter in terms of everyday life. Juan, Pablo’s first lover, was a straight man who realizes throughout the movie that he is willing to make a relationship work with Pablo. Unfortunately, to his demise, Antonio got to him first. The film also recognizes that one may have many similarities with an individual with different gender and sexual preferences. For instance, Pablo and Tina both deeply love Ada, have a drug addiction, and crave a relationship with a man.

The other materials were the readings from Queer Cinema in The World by Karl Schoonover, Tendencies by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and The Queer Art of Failure by Judith Halberstam. The studies introduced the practices of heteronormativity, some struggles that queer individuals have faced, and what the spaces are for queer cinema. 

According to Rosalind Galt and Karl Schoonover, queer cinema is more for the film festival or art-house theatres scenes. However, I believe as our society becomes more progressive in accepting others’ differences, queer cinema will be more prevalent in movie theatres as well. From the readings and lectures, I have learned that more individuals are shifting their identification from “gay” to “queer” to represent an aggressive impulse of generalization. Even celebrities like Ezra Miller, Rowan Blanchard, and Tessa Thompson have lead the way for younger individuals to also came out as queer.  

Some quotes that stood out for me from the readings are:

• “Failure preserves some of the wonderous anarchs of childhood and disturbs the supposedly clean boundaries between adults and children, winners and losers” (Halberstam, 3).
• “The negative thinker can use the experience of failure to confront the gross inequalities of everyday life” (Halberstam, 4).

Documentary Trailer

The course material covered in Week 1-2 was the documentary “The Celluloid Closet,” directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman in 1995 and the readings from Queer Studies Intro by Robert Corber and Stephen Valocchi and The Culture of Queens by Richard Dyer. The articles introduced ideas of heteronormativity, the unconscious dominance of heterosexuality, and the environment queer culture creates for individuals. These ideologies grant audiences some prior knowledge to further understand the film.

The documentary discusses the misrepresentations and lack of representation of the LGBTQ community throughout 100 years of cinema history. Epstein and Friedman incorporate interviews and clips of iconic scenes to grant the audience visual evidence of queer exposure in cinema. Interviewees are actors and actresses who have played the LGBTQ roles incorporated in the documentary, many of which identity as queer in real life. Some of the misrepresentations include portraying queer characters as creeps, mentally ill, psychopaths, villains, perpetrators, or chronically depressed peoples.

The documentary starts about how films represented transvestism differently between gay sissy individuals and lesbian male dressing drag individuals. The sissy actors were used for comedic relief, while the women dressed in masculine attire were respected in their films. Quentin Crisp, an actor who plays sissy roles, responded to the negative connotations his characters receive by stating, “Mainstream people dislike homosexuality because they can’t help concentrating on what homosexual men do to one another. And when you contemplate what people do, you think of yourself doing it. And they don’t like that”. On the other hand, Marlene Dietrich’s transdressing lesbian character in “Morocco” was highly praised and admired. There have always been lasting stigmas of homosexuality between genders, and it is evident in films.

The documentary then discusses the Haze code, which was a film censoring system in the 1920s that banned obvious homosexual references in cinema. This ban sent a message that society did not want queer individuals, increasing the dominance of heterosexuality. Films soon began the portrayal of queers as the predatory villain, drawing a negative picture for society to perceive the LGBTQ community as. 

Around 30 years later, films start to depict tough lesbians and miserable gay males. Even though they began to gain more positive representation, their roles often had grave endings. As time passed by, queer roles were depicted more real; however, intimacy or relations between lesbian or gay characters were more assumed than shown. 

Filmmakers would sneak in queer characters to bring representation without large backlashes. They also began casting famous straight actors with trusting characteristics for queer roles to gain bigger audiences. For instance, Tom Hanks, a renowned actor who often plays friendly, respected straight characters, was cast as Andrew Beckett, in the film “Philadelphia.” Andrew Beckett is a gay individual who battles HIV. Tom Hanks speaks about this role in Epstein and Friedman’s documentary. He explains how audiences are more willing to empathize with others when they can trust who is portraying the story. “Philadelphia” was one of the first films in cinema history to represent the queer community accurately while displaying their oppressions due to homophobia.

Welcome to my Queer European Cinema Blog! Here I will discuss my thoughts on course material from CINE 350. My goal is to share insightful content while creating a safe environment.