INTERVIEWS

We’ve been having an interesting time interviewing the actors and directors involved in the new LGBT short film collection, Boys On Film 9: Youth In Trouble. We’ve chatted to Prora actors Tom Gramenz, The Wilding director Grant Scicluna and It’s Not A Cowboy Helmer Benjamin Parent.

Now we get to out final interview, with Together actor Lucas Hansen. He’s recognisable to horror fans from his role in The Human Centipede II and has also been seen on Psoro and the recent TV documentary, Murder on the Victorian Railway.

In Together, Hansen plays one half of a gay couple who’ve just moved in a new flat. When his partner goes missing, he thinks he’s just wandered off for a while, but the truth is far more disturbing.

We talks to Lucas about the film and whether he thinks we’re seeing a new breed of LGBT-themed movies. [Read more...]

Boys On Film 9: Youth In Trouble is out today, and over the last week we’ve been catching up with some of the actors and directors whose LGBT themed short film are included in the collection, such as Prora’s Tom Gramenz and The Wilding’s Grant Scicluna.

Today we have Benjamin Parent, the French director of It’s Not A Cowboy Movie, a short about straight teenagers and their reaction to watching Brokeback Mountain. It’s a smart film, looking at ideas of masculinity and how actually being faced with homosexuality can change a young person’s ideas about it, especially if they’ve only previously thought about it as an abstract idea.

Here’s what he had to say: [Read more...]

Grant Scicluna’s short film, The Wilding, has been making a splash at film festivals around the world, including winning the Iris Prize, the world’s biggest LGBT short film award, which provides funding and support for filmmakers to make another movie. BGPS’ Adrian Naik adored The Wilding when he caught it at Iris in Cardiff, giving it a rare 10 out of 10 score!

However not everyone is able to get to film festivals to see great LGBT shorts like The Wilding, which is where the Boys On Film DVD series comes in. The latest release, Boys Of Film 9: Youth In Trouble, is released in the UK on April 29th. The disc features eight shorts, including The Wilding, allowing a wider audience to see its tale of love in the violent and difficult world of an Australian Youth Detention Centre.

We caught up with Grant to talk about The Wilding, how it felt to win the Iris Prize and the importance of gay film festivals. [Read more...]

Boys On Film is back with its ninth collection of gay-themed short films, Youth In Trouble, and one of those shorts in Prora, which stars young German actor Tom Gramenz. He plays a young man called Jan who, along with his friend (Swen Gippa), go inside the incredible abandoned German resort, Prora, which was built by the Nazis but never fully used. Once there, the feelings of Jan for his friend are revealed.

We chatted with Tom about the short. [Read more...]

One of the best documentaries at this year’s London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival was undoubtedly Taboo Yardies, about the life of LGBT people in Jamaica.

It’s a powerful look at the issues faced by gay people in a homophobic society, although not without notes of hope and an acknowledgement that Jamaica is more complex than it  first appears. BGPS’ Adrian Naik managed to catch up with the film’s director, Selena Blake, at the LLGFF to ask her about the film and the challenges she faced making it.

It’s certainly interesting, so take a look above. [Read more...]

Ira Sach’s Keep The Lights On has been getting massive amounts of praise on the festival circuit, with rave reviews and adoring audiences. It even won the Teddy award for the best gay-themed film at the Berlin International Film Festival. The movie, about a relationship between two men which faces huge difficulties over the course of a decade, has now reached UK cinemas (you can read our review here). Director Ira Sachs was in the UK last month for the movie’s screenings at the London Film Festival, so we took the opportunity to catch up with him.

You’re in the UK for the London Film Festival. I believe there was a screening of Keep The Lights On last night. How did the audience react?
I think the audience was really engaged with the film, and they had lots of good questions. It always sort of sparks the viewer’s introspection, I think. [Read more...]

There are a lot of bloggers who dream of writing a movie, but few who actually manage it, especially teaming up with the producer of Paranormal Activity and the director of The Exorcism Of Emily Rose. However that’s what’s C. Robert Cargill has done. After writing for the likes of AintItCool, Cargill got together with Scott Derrickson to write Sinister, which stars Ethan Hawke and hits cinemas today. You can read our review of the film here. We caught up with Cargill to find out a bit more. [Read more...]

With Boys On Film 8: Cruel Britannia hitting disc last Monday, we’ve been having a bit of a Spring week, which is one of the short films on the disc – and one that’s played festivals such as Sundance and Berlinale. We’ve already chatted to Spring director Hong Khaou and one of the film’s stars, Chris O’Donnell. Now we’ve asked the same questions to the other actor in the piece, Jonathan Keane, who fans of queer cinema will know from Unhappy Birthday and Seafood.

So what did he have to say about getting nude and delving into the world of S&M?

How did you get involved with Spring?
I’d know Hong was thinking of this film for many years and I was always interested in playing a role in it. When I found out he was doing it I auditioned and got the part.

What most struck you about the script when you read it?
What wasn’t said – it’s great when a script hints that so much of what you’ll be playing is going to be discovered while you’re working out the relationship between the characters – what is felt, about movement, looking and touch – that really excited me about Spring.

Is it difficult to portray the sort of intimate power-play in the short, especially with a film crew around?
Yes and no – in some ways it is so performative, it was good to have an audience to play against and to; but in other ways, it such, as you say, an intimate relationship, you have to work hard at blocking out everyone so that you can keep it true.

Did it help that the characters aren’t supposed to know one another, so the journey you’re on as actors is somewhat similar to what’s happening to the characters?
Yes very much, you don’t have preconceptions of who someone is when you don’t know them, apart from what the actor gives you – but you don’t get to know each other as actors, more as characters and that’s very powerful.

Did you look into the world of S&M before you shot the film?
Yes, I chatted to a few men who were into it, to understand what they got out of it, what were their motivations for ‘doing’ S&M – it was a bit alien to me, so it was like learning another language and translating yourself into it.

Did you mind the nudity?
It was surprisingly good fun to get your clothes off in front of lots of people!

Do you just get used to being in your pants all the time after a while?
No, wearing pants was weirder than being naked – especially the tight ones I had to wear for the shoot – you feel exposed in front of people in a pair of pants.

There’s a lot going on in the film that has to be packed into a very short running time. Is it tough making sure you get across what’s going on with each of the characters when you have so little time to express it?
Yes, but we rehearsed the scenes enough to have a sense of what we would be feeling and how we would react, and Hong allowed us to play the scenes many times during filming so what you see is a true snapshot of a lot of time spent finding how and what we were communicating to each other.

Do you have a particular favourite aspect on Spring?
Yes, really love the bit where I’m pushing Chris’s face with my hand, felt very intense and real. Chris was great to work with – very trusting, generous and a gifted, intuitive actor.

Jonathan, you were also in Unhappy Birthday, which was also a fairly small independent project. Do you think it was easier to get that film out to audiences, as it was feature-length, or is there plenty of room for interesting shorts at festivals?
I actually think it’s easier to get shorts out to festivals when they’re good like Spring – more places will show them and they come as part of a gang of shorts that audiences will take a chance on. Features are far more difficult, although Unhappy was great too so it had a good festival outing.

Did you go to any of the festivals where Spring played? Were you pleased with the audience reaction?
Yes I went to Berlin – I loved seeing it on such a big screen – it looked beautiful – the audience seemed to really like it, but it’s always a film that gets a thoughtful, quiet response.

Do you think audiences are missing out, as most people wouldn’t think to spend time searching out and watching short films?
I think short films are THE genre for queer cinema, so much of queer life is about feelings and happenings that we don’t see on screens and we rarely express in life to others or to ourselves – short films can capture those moments beautifully.

Thank you Jonathan.