15h15 / SHORTS PROGRAMME 3 (82') (Shorts Film Competition)

And Thou Shalt Love, by Chaim Elbaum (Israel, 2008, 28’)
James, by Connor Clements (United Kingdom, 2008, 17’)
Tanjong Rhu | The Casuarina Cove, by Boo Junfend (Singapore, 2008, 19’)
Yo Sólo Miro | I Only Watch, by Gorka Cornejo (Spain, 2008, 18’)

In And Thou Shalt Love, Ohad, an Israeli orthodox soldier repents himself for the secret desires he hides from others. But when Nir arrives from the army, Ohad has to face his demons. Young James leads a tormented life and cannot find comfort, neither in his family, nor in school. Will an unknown man he meets in a public restroom be the answer to his problems? In a short film that is also a manifesto, a man seeks another man whom he’d met in a Singapore cruising area, just before a police raid, in The Casuarina Cove. Julia and Eduardo are a middle-aged couple with some secrets. But, after all these years, Julia is still able to surprise Eduardo, in I Only Watch. J.F.

17h15

(Shorts Film Competition)
Phedra, by Claudia Priscilla (Brazil, 2008, 13’)

Documentary about Cuban transsexual actress Phedra D Córdoba, who lives in downtown São Paulo.

(Best Documentary Competition)
Rainhas | Queen of Brazil, by Fernanda Tornaghi and Ricardo Bruno (Brazil, 2008, 71’)

Fabio is a small-town boy with a big dream: becoming the next Miss Brazil. The documentary follows Fabio as he sets out on his journey from his native town near the Amazon River to fabulous Rio de Janeiro, where a little known national beauty pageant, Miss Gay Brazil, mobilizes the lives of hundreds of guys around the country with the same dream: being crowned Brazil’s most beautiful girl.

19h15

(Best Documentary Competition)
Intimidades de Shakespeare y Victor Hugo | Shakespeare and Victor Hugo’s Intimacies,
by Yulene Olaizola (Mexico, 2008, 80’)

There is a lodging house, owned by Rosa Carbajal, at the intersection of Shakespeare and Victor Hugo streets in
Mexico City, a shelter that hides an intimate and passionate story. Twenty years ago, Rosa met Jorge Riosse, a young tenant who became her closest friend. For eight years he made an indelible impression on everyone he knew. But it was after his sudden death that some dark characteristics emerged. One night, in 1993, his room set on fire and Jorge died. Rosa undertook a personal investigation on this fatal accident and soon discovered different clues which related Jorge with a serial killer who had strangled at least 13 women in different hotels in the popular La Merced district. However, in spite of her doubts and suspicions, Rosa, the filmmaker Yulene Olaizola’s grandmother, still remembers him as the talented young man who shared with her his art, his music and, above all, his affection. A heartfelt portrait of two characters, lonely in their own way or in spite of
themselves, strongly and strangely entwined.

21h30

(Best Documentary Competition)
Fig Trees, by John Greyson (Canada, 2009, 104’)

In 1999, South African AIDS activist Zackie Achmat went on a treatment strike, refusing to take his pills until they
were widely available to all South Africans. This symbolic act became a cause celebre, helping build his group Treatment Action Campaign into a national movement – yet with each passing month, Zackie grew sicker... Fig Trees is a documentary opera about AIDS activists Tim McCaskell in Toronto and Zackie Achmat in Capetown. Narrated by an albino squirrel, an amputee busker and St. Teresa of Avila, it tells the story of Zackie’s treatment strike in song, and the larger story of the fight for pills on two continents, and across two decades. Fig Trees also performs musical and political inversion on the music and words of Gertrude Stein’s 1934 avant-garde classic Four Saints in Three Acts.

0h00

(Queer Art)
Tearoom, by William E. Jones (USA, 2007, 56’)

Tearoom consists of footage shot by the police in the course of a crackdown on public sex in a Midwestern city. In the summer of 1962, the Mansfield, Ohio Police Department photographed men in a restroom under the main square of the city. The cameramen hid in a closet and watched the clandestine activities through a two-way mirror. The film they shot was used in court as evidence against the defendants, all of whom were found guilty of sodomy, which at that time carried a mandatory minimum sentence of one year in the state penitentiary. The original surveillance footage shot by the police came into the possession of director William E. Jones while he was researching this case for a documentary project. The unedited scenes of ordinary men of various races and classes meeting to have sex were so powerful that the director decided to present the footage with a minimum of intervention. Tearoom is a radical example of film presented “as found” for the purpose of circulating
historical images that would have otherwise been suppressed.