Getting money to make a queer themed film isn’t exactly easy, which is why we’ve highlighted quite a few crowdsourcing campaign for LGBT movies in the last few months. It’s not even as if these are amateur efforts made by people with no experience – it’s just difficult to get the cash!
Once such example is Der Samurai, a German movie that’s currently trying to find cash via IndieGoGo. It’s directed by Till Kleinert, who helmed the excellent short film Cowboy, which won the Iris Prize (the world’s largest competitive gay short film festival, held every year in Cardiff) and was featured on Boys On Film 2: In Too Deep (we gave it 8 out of 10 in our review). However despite the accolades for his earlier work, he still needs help getting Der Samurai made.
Here’s what Till has to say on IndieGogo, ‘Der Samurai is an independent feature film due to be shot this September in the deep forests of rural East Germany close to the Polish border, starring the amazing young actor Pit Bukowski in the titular role, with whom I have already worked on the award-winning medium-length film ‘Cowboy’ (see trailer)…
‘Ever since I was a small child, I have been most drawn to the adventurous, the mysterious and the uncanny in fiction, be it in the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tales or in films like the Swedish ‘Ronja Rövarsdottir’. The dark forests and abandoned, desolate estates around Berlin, although appearing very frightening to me at first, later became favourite places of mine to explore. Somehow, the feeling that the world was filled with wonder and awe for me always went hand-in-hand with the subliminal fear of something dangerous lurking at its edges.
Here’s the synopsis: ‘JAKOB, a young policeman from a remote village in the middle of nowhere, finds his small world unhinged and shattered as one night an ominous, nameless stranger in a woman’s dress emerges from the forest and commences a wave of destruction, descending on the unsuspecting town like a supernova of irrational violence.
‘Both appalled and drawn by the frightening young man and his self-proclaimed mission to liberate people (incidentally and disconcertingly by cutting off their heads with a Katana, a Samurai’s sword), Jakob propels himself for a roller coaster of reflection and revolt as he relentlessly pursues the SAMURAI through the night. There is something about the mysterious offender that strikes a hidden chord within him – threatening to unlock and reveal his own innermost demons…
‘DER SAMURAI tells a thrilling tale of fear, seduction, loss of control and liberation – a cautionary tale, if you will, about the precarious relationship between the conscious and the unacknowledged and about the consequences that ensue if you don’t confront your inner monsters. The androgynous Samurai acts as a threateningly wild and untamed alter ego to Jakob’s compulsively ‘straight’, dutiful self, confronting the young policeman with all the raw, irrational, antisocial and sexual urges that lie repressed and buried within him. It is the intense, almost romantic struggle for prevalence between those two seemingly antipodal characters that fuels DER SAMURAI’s fiercely beating heart.
As the film peaks to it’s zenith, when blood erupts in orgasmic geysers, heads tumble over asphalt and the village square is set ablaze by an all-consuming fire, the audience will find themselves shocked and exhilarated in equal measure by the small-scale apocalypse the Samurai has set forth in front and behind both Jakob’s and our own eyes.’
If you want to help out, head over to IndieGoGo and there are even rewards available depending on how much you give!
Some of the most interesting LGBT filmmaking work is coming out of India, partly because homosexuality was only decriminalised recently, making it a huge social issue. As a result gay filmmakers are now able to openly make films about their experience on being gay in India, which touches on the immense difficulties LGBT people face in the country.
A decade ago if people came out, they normally did it with a big, splashy interview where they had to explain everything and where it was controlled enough they could guarantee a sympathetic hearing. Nowadays the tendency is to go far subtler, just slipping it in as if it were the most natural thing in the world – as it should be.
21 May 2012: Sheffield Doc/Fest 2012 film programme includes three feature films about queer culture, including one European premiere, along with a number of shorts. Many films will be followed by a question and answer session by the filmmaker.
It seems Colin Firth is going to spend much of the next year or so playing gay. Just yesterday we reported
Alan Ball won a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for American Beauty, but since then he’s stayed in the world of TV, creating the likes of Six Feet Under and True Blood. Now he’s coming back to cinema, and not only has he written a new screenplay, but the gay writer is also planning to produce What’s The Matter With Margie?
Noel Coward is a quintessentially English character, but the film Mad Dogs and Englishmen is set to give him a bit of a fish out of water spin, with 
Cate Blanchett must like novelist Patricia Highsmith, as she’s already starred in an adaptation of the author’s The Talented Mr. Ripley and now she’s taking on another of her books, as she and Mia Wasikowska are set to star in a new take Highsmith’s novel Carol (aka The Price of Salt).