In recent years many groups have tried to tackle homophobia in football (that’s soccer for all of you of a non-British persuasion), but it’s a sad fact the there are no out player in any of the UK professional leagues and it’s not uncommon to hear anti-gay heckles coming from supporters in the stands.

Now a short film is hoping to help challenge the preconceptions of masculinity in football and also to show the effects of homophobia. The film is called Wonderkid and it has launched a Kickstarter campaign in the hope of raising £25,000, which should allow the makers to film and complete the 20-minute short.

Once finished, the film will follow ‘the inner turmoil of an unnamed football prodigy as he comes to terms with his own identity, struggling to reconcile his sexuality with his issues with alcohol and OCD’, all in a hyper-masculine environment.

Wonderkid has already made plenty of friends, including getting Ian McKellen to narrate the Kickstarter video, as well as getting a grant grant from the Kevin Spacey Foundation. They’ve also teamed up with Galop, a charity which tackles abuse in the LGBT community, in the hope that together they can communicate/represent those that have suffered abuse / violence / hate crime. That includes coming together for a fundraising event called Looking for Changes – 7 Short Films, on Tuesday, October 14th at Cafe 1001, Brick Lane, London from 7pm.

Mel Stray from Galop comments, “The enthusiasm of the up-and-coming young filmmakers behind Wonderkid is infectious, and we are very much looking forward to working with them. Tackling homophobic stigma in football is incredibly important – this is a film that needs to be made!”

The main young filmmaker Mel is talking about is director Rhys Chapman, a keen football supporter himself, who’s been busy engaging with the LGBT community to get the movie made. If you want to help out, watch the McKellen-featuring fundraising video below and then head over to KickStarter. Your can also find out more at the short’s official website. [Read more…]

In the past there’s been a bit of a problem with mainstream movies de-gaying any gay characters or themes, so even if it’s acknowledged it’s made safe and straightened up. Nowadays there’s a little more diversity in cinema, but there’s still no defined boundary that says when a gay character is gay enough and not just homo in name only.

Unsurprisingly that subject has come up in relation to The Imitation Game, the new film about gay computing pioneer and codebreaker Alan Turing. Indeed it’s been a bone of contention since reports surfaced that early versions of the script were essentially a romance between Turing and a woman.

While Turing is undoubtedly gay in the finished film, there isn’t any sex, something Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays Turing, defends in an interview with TheWrap.

He says, “He’s [Turing] chemically castrated because he admits to being a homosexual; he talks about entreating a young man to touch his penis. I mean, it’s pretty explicit. If you need to see [sex] to understand that he’s gay, then all is lost for any kind of subtle storytelling. The conversations are so naked in themselves that the idea of having to see two naked men wasn’t something I ever thought was missing in the script.”

The actor elaborate with NME, “His sexuality is something contained that is expressed in the film but not shown explicitly. There is no heterosexuality expressed in the film. So what we show in his behaviour is sadly true to his story. He had to suppress his sexuality, make it private, make it something secret.

“When he talks about his sexuality in the film it shows his complete honesty, guilelessness, innocence. He was aware of the risks but at the same time wasn’t willing to cave in to the intolerance and potential permutations of confessing such a thing. Some people own him as martyr or as standard-bearer for a cause. I think he was just very true to himself, which is a form of martyrdom, but he didn’t make a political statement out of it.”

There is also disagreement over how much sex Turing had anyway, so to paint him as a highly sexual person may have been inaccurate.