GAY INTEREST TRAILERS

Oy Vey My Son is Gay has a great cast, including Warehouse 13’s Saul Rubinek, Lainie Kazan, Vincent Pastore, John Lloyd Young, Jai Rodriguez, Bruce Vilanch, and Carmen Electra!

Now we can take a look at the trailer for the upcoming gay-themed rom-com.

Here’s the synopsis: ‘A Long Island couple struggles to come to terms with the fact that their son is gay after he comes out of the closet at his cousin’s wedding. When every attempt to understand their son’s lifestyle ends in failure, Nelson’s (Lloyd-Young) parents decide to have dinner with the boyfriend’s parents, and discover the power of compassion. Trying their best to keep Nelson’s sexuality a well-guarded secret, Shirley (Kazan) and Martin (Rubinek) realize that all bets are off when their son and his partner attempt to adopt a child, blowing the lid off the closet door!’

It’ll be out in the US from Breaking Glass Pictures later this year. [Read more…]

In the 1980s and 1990s there was a spate of accusations and prosecution based around the idea that children had been abused (or even murdered) as part of Satanic Rituals. These investigations often involved entire communities, resulting in numerous people being convicted and imprisoned.

However nearly all these cases have since been debunked, with virtually no evidence Satanic abuse ever took place (and tragically it often stemmed from individual children who were abused, whose suffering got swept up in hysteria that enveloped other children and adults who had nothing to do with it).

It is perhaps not too surprising that those who were primed to see Satanic abuse were often keen to see it amongst those living ‘alternate lifestyle’. This hysteria resulted in four Texan women, all lesbians, spending 15 years in prison. They were eventually freed ahead of an appeal, with the State dropping the case against them after they admitted that the medical evidence used to convict them was indefensible in court.

The documentary Southwest of Salem: The Story of the San Antonio Four looks at the story, and you can watch the trailer here. Work In Progress screenings of the film are currently underway. [Read more…]

There’s a tendency to think gay rights started at Stonewall and before that, there was absolutely nothing. However before the riots on Christopher Street, various organisations in different countries laid the groundwork for the emergence of the gay rights battles. Whether it was the Mattachine Society in the US, the Minorities Research Group in the UK or the Swiss journal Der Kreis, there was social and political movement for gay people for several decades before 1969.

The new film, The Circle, looks at Der Kreis, which was the only gay publication in Europe to publish during the Nazi era (interestingly Germany had been home to several gay groups that had seen quite a lot of success in the Weimar era, but they were brutally suppressed once Hitler took over).

Here’s the movie’s synopsis: ‘Zürich in the mid 50’s: The young shy teacher Ernst Ostertag becomes a member of the gay organization DER KREIS. There he gets to know the transvestite star Röbi Rapp — and immediately falls head over heels in love with him.

‘Röbi and Ernst live through the high point and the eventual decline of the organization, which in the whole of Europe is seen as the pioneer of gay emancipation. Ernst finds himself torn between his bourgeois existence and his commitment to homosexuality, for Röbi it is about his first serious love relationship. A relationship which will last a lifetime.

‘The film looks back from the present to the time when the „Mother” of all European homosexual organizations had its high point to the time it slowly fell apart. While the repression against homosexuals became increasingly more intense in Zurich, two young and very different men fight for their love and — together with their friends — for the rights of gays.’

Following its premiere at the Berlin Film Festival, the movie is currently screening at film festivals. [Read more…]