How to Win at Checkers (Every Time)

The 23rd Mardi Gras Film Festival from Queer Screen promises to set hearts beating and pulses racing in Sydney next year, with a raft of exciting Australian premieres, award winners and an Oscar contender, which have been announced as part of its teaser program.

The Festival will open on Thursday 18 February with the Australian premiere of the sensual French film Summertime. Other Australian premieres to be screened include the hauntingly beautiful Thai Oscar entry for 2016 How to Win at Checkers (Every Time), Addicted to Fresno starring Natasha Lyonne, the captivating Venezuelan lesbian film Liz in September, and Coming In, a comedy from the director and star of gay classic Summer Storm.

Remembering the Man, a new documentary of the tragic tale of Australian lovers Timothy Conigrave and John Caleo, will make its Sydney debut at the Festival.

Running from 18 February to 3 March 2016 at Event Cinemas George Street and other venues, this year’s festival promises to deliver something for everyone.

“2016 is a universal festival and caters for everyone under the rainbow,” explains Festival Director Paul Struthers. “Film subjects range from athletes and dancers to local heroes and features straight, gay, lesbian, trans, and bi-sexual characters from across the world. Whatever genre you are into from lighthearted comedies to surreal horror we have it covered. It’s definitely our most wide-ranging and exciting festival yet”.

The Opening Night film Summertime, follows farm girl Delphine as she heads to the bright lights of Paris to create her own life during the dawn of 1970s activism in France. Screened recently at the highly esteemed Toronto International Film Festival, and winner of the Variety Piazza Grande Award at the Locarno International Film Festival, this sensual film will move everyone who sees it.

Further exploring the relationship between Australians Timothy Conigrave and John Caleo as detailed in Holding the Man, Remembering the Man is a bittersweet documentary featuring previously unseen footage of John Caleo and looks at Timothy’s life after John.  This film was the winner of Most Popular Documentary at the Adelaide Film Festival.

Genre fans won’t want to miss multi award winning Everlasting Love, Spain’s answer to Stranger in the Lake but even weirder. A winner at LA’s Outfest, this film is set in the woods in the wake of a grizzly murder, so why can’t the cruisers keep away?

The Thai entry for the 2016 Oscars, How to Win at Checkers (Every Time), is a stunning drama about a young boy who worries about losing his openly gay brother to the army draft. A compelling and beautiful film, which recently played at the Berlin International Film Festival, it’s easy to see why this was chosen to represent the country on the international stage.

Game Face is a must-see documentary exploring the lives of LGBT athletes. Featuring transgender lesbian MMA fighter Fallon Fox who competes in a less- than-trans-friendly environment and Terrence Clemens coming out as a college basketballer, this documentary brings us up close and personal with the athletes during their most challenging times.

Orange is the New Black’s Natasha Lyonne and Jamie Babbit re-join forces to bring us the comedy Addicted to Fresno that premiered at Sundance. Featuring sex and murder, the movie looks at how far you will go for sisterhood.

Coming In, a new comedy from the director and star of gay classic Summer Storm explores what happens when a hip gay hairdresser at the top of his game falls in love with a woman.

Documentarian Jack Walsh brings us a funny and frank look at the life of revolutionary choreographer, artist, filmmaker and feminist Yvonne Rainer as she goes through political, professional and personal struggles in Feeling are Facts: the Life of Yvonne Rainer.

The striking supermodel and actor Patricia Velásquez comes to the screen in the Venezuelan lesbian film Liz in September. Winner of the audience award at Miami’s queer film festival, this film is captivating and touchingly real.

Featuring some of the hottest sex scenes from any LGBTIQ film this year, Beautiful Something is a sexy and tender glimpse into life for the contemporary gay man as the stories of Brian a poet and Jim, an actor intertwine.

The full Festival program will be launched on Thursday 14 January.

Tickets for the first 10 films are on sale now including flexi passes to 5 or 10 films. Visit queerscreen.org.au for more info.

In the last couple of weeks British tabloids have been criticised for articles that feel like they come from another age where, without specifically naming names, they’ve said an ‘a-list’ star in HIV+, and then reeled off similarly cryptic lists of people with no names who they say that he’s slept with, inviting people to play guess who they’re talking about.

Now reports suggest the man behind the blind items may have decided to take control of the story, after a US tabloid named him and said he’s known his HIV status for years, but has been keeping the diagnosis secret.

The Today Show in the US has confirmed that Charlie Sheen is set to sit down for an interview with them on Tuesday November 17th and make a ‘revealing personal announcement’. TMZ has said that the announcement will be that he his indeed HIV+.

Although it looks like his hand has slightly been forced, assuming that the reports are true it’s a significant development, as Sheen will become perhaps the highest profile figure ever to reveal they are HIV+. While several well-known stars have had the disease, from Rock Hudson to Freddie Mercury, their status was only revealed shortly before or after they died of AIDS, which tended to have the effect of further stigmatising those with HIV.

Although Sheen’s hard partying image is likely to have some unfairly blaming him for own disease, the fact he is still largely well-liked and his admission probably won’t have too much of an effect on his career could genuinely help people look at HIV in a different light.