C.M-S.: Bill, What is your impression of the Film Festival, this year ? ?
B.S.: I was very happy to see such a large number of "gay" films, documentaries, and short films. I would like to congratulate the organisers that they managed to bring so many films here, but at the same time there is a disappointment that there are so few films with lesbian themes. There is a lesbian film called Rosebud from Great Britain which is very good. It is the history of a coming out, after the main character moves into a new flat, and is very happy about the open sexuality of a lesbian couple in the neighbourhood - and she feels herself drawn to them. On the whole, however, there are many doc films which show various aspects of history, gay life-styles and some very good films among them.

C.M-S.: Which would you regard as the two best gay films ?
B.S.: There is a very fine film from Derek Jarman - Edward II. The homosexual King is prevented from having a love affair with his male lover at the royal court, is held prisoner, and finally killed. Here we learn some thing of the truth of our history again. Edward II was written by the Elizabethan English dramatist Christopher Marlowe in 1592 and is the earliest major work in English to deal with homosexuality. Jarman makes the political relevance of the film quite clear by setting the tragedy between concrete walls using modern dress and demonstrators carry appropriate banners.

Among the documentaries Voices from the Front is a wonderful film about the campaign of the people with AIDS and HIV who are fighting bureaucracy; the doctors; and the politicians in the USA: It is a film about the group Act-Up, which demonstrates, demands changes, and more medicines. The film has received many awards - at Houston, & Columbus Film Festivals, at the Lyons Doc Film Festival. Ten years of political irresponsibility is brought to the screen-

Another excellent film is Changing Our Minds about a heterosexual woman who researches into gay life and character in the USA in the 1950's, as it was still a wide-spread opinion that homosexuals were mentally disturbed. This woman, Dr. Evelyn Hooker, discovered from her students, as she was introduced top the gay world, that she as a psychologist was teaching untruths about that. She found the people she met, charming, intelligent and well-mannered. She conducted research, and asked her colleagues to examine her studies, and to determine who was gay, and who not - and the experts could not decide between well-adjusted heterosexuals and well-adjusted homosexuals. That had a big effect in the gay as well as the heterosexual world. Before her research only gays who were mentally disturbed or had problems were the subject of "research". For instance those who went to Freud or whoever, and had mental problems. No "normal", average, gays were researched. Dr Hooker is still alive, 84 years old, and is today recognised for the pioneer work she did, and ahs received many awards and prizes for her work. This film brought her to life for me and many others.

For decades the medical world tried to cure homosexuals by means of physical or psycho-terror, (brain surgery, electro-shock methods and castration. At first with some reluctance, but with increasing self-confidence and conviction Dr. Evelyn Hooker conducted research which sent shock-waves through the psychiatric world, and eventually led to a great success for gay human rights, In 1974 in connection with her and with other research findings, as well as gay "campaigns" like "Stonewall" the American Psychiatric Association struck homosexuality off its list of mental sicknesses.

Among the feature films there are some very good ones. One of those is Swoon. This is the story of two young men, elite students, who were homosexual and Jewish. They killed an 8-year-old boy and went to prison for that.

The Living End by Gregg Araki. A "Don't miss it!" Film, about two HIV-positive men who fall in love and each becomes more and more part of the consciousness of the other. A No Budget film, moving and with god acting which holds you until the powerful end. Together Alone - from P.J. Castellaneta - is for me an interesting film, but some find it boring. Here in Berlin it was awarded a Teddy Bear Prize, in San Francisco and Los Angeles it was voted the best feature film. Bryan, a young gay who is consumed with anxiety about AIDS takes refuge into chastity, but weakens and takes "Bill" home. Both enjoy the "dream-time", but the develop anxiety over what has happened - unsafe-sex. They argue, talk about god and the world, tell each other secrets that they never would tell anyone else. Their worries and problems become universal - not only for gays and men. Another "No budget" film -well $7,000 is as good as nothing !

C.M-S.: And non-gay films - is there anything worth watching there ?
B.S.: There is a film from Sweden - Il Capitano - which I found very interesting. It is about a young finnish couple - small time criminals who roamed around Sweden a few years ago. At the end of their journey a family of three is murdered. It is about violence in society and why so many people are disorientated and alienated. The man who made the films is called Jan Troell, and he has made a number of films examining this problem where even in an apparently "quiet" country violence is just under the surface and that, the oppression and discrimination lead - if not "solved" to self destruction.

A film from Iceland which has already been nominated for an Oscar as best foreign language film - looks at two older people - a brother and sister - who have to move from the countryside to a town. They yearn for their countryside and want to return to that place where nature dominates. Children of Nature is a very fine film about the need to defend your identity, and keep in contact with nature - despite the fact that man is under pressure to live in a city. It is also about the loss of contact to the world one knew as a child, and the world one wants to achieve as an adult - the world of nature.

C.M-S.: We have just watched a film which I found in certain places was "disturbing" - Daddy and the Muscle Academy - about Tom of Finland. What do you think of this film ?
B.S.: There is an element which is very disturbing in the works of Tom of Finland, but there is also a fine, liberating element, too. That is probably one of the complexities of nature. The film deals with a man from a country that was allied with (Nazi) Germany when Tom was young. His ideals were soldiers, policemen, men in uniform - the element of strength, brutality and at the same time the element of men who use strength but which can show a softness, and loving nature.

Tom of Finland is a "cult figure" because he drew male erotic figures, men at sex, men who look at each other very closely, who make contact - and that was decades before it was a fashion in his country. In Finland it was totally forbidden. Finland only decriminalised homosexual acts 10 years ago.
The film is both erotic and moving as well as disturbing. The man who made these drawings which were later spread throughout Europe and the USA, was however, a pioneer. Through his drawings it was possible for him to show that homosexuality is a product, a mixture of the maleness and "femaleness" - a mixture of the hard and the soft, and therefore should be excused or blessed by society. BUT that there is also a homosexuality which is extremely manly, and that there is a female homosexuality, as well as various in between stages. There are differences and diversity.
The heterosexual majority should not be permitted to lay down who we are and who we should be.

B.S.: Tom died last year (7.11.91) so the film is about someone who is no longer with us, but he made a big contribution. Many of his drawings have born fruit in the work of people like Robert Mapplethorpe, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder's film Querelle. People took these very masculine e figures and discovered themselves anew, identified with them, said that they don't have to be like they are portrayed in Hollywood films - suicidal, totally degenerate und in conflict about their homosexuality. Tom's figures are stereotypes, but sexually active, and proud of themselves. Even the element of fascism is a part of the bluff - and not the dominating influence. It is quite literally "peeled off" like a skin.

Colin de la Motte-Sherman