Gay & Lesbian Fest 2
Film screenings, exhibitions, performances, debates

At the time of 28th annual ILGA-Europe (International Lesbian & Gay Association) conference thet is taking place in Sofia this year, for a second time we give a voice to the art of difference.

In co-operation with BGO "Gemini", Bilitis Lesbian and Bi-women Resource Centre, De Balie – Amsterdam, LesGaiCineMad – Fundacion Triangulo, Spain, Open Mind Foundation, French Institute – Sofia, Red Bed & Breakfast and with the financial support of Bulgarian Fund for Woman.

Special thanks to: Jankees Boer, De Balie - Amsterdam, Clarissa Gonzalez - Programming Coordinator LesGaiCineMad, Lucas Casanova - Supervision & Coordination LesGaiCineMad
Ivan Yankov - International Coordinator OPEN MIND

The films are in their original version with subtitles or simultaneous translation in Bulgarian.
Tickets per screening: 6/5 и 4/3 BGN
Subscription: 15/13 BGN

Exhibitions by: Alexandar, Amenum Geneva, Awen Art , Boian Dimiev, M. Rahneva, Silvia Pavlova

Lili Handel
queer performance, Bulgaria, 2003, 60`
Idea, staging and performance – Ivo Dimchev

Lili Handel – Blood, Poetry and Music from the Boudoir of the White Whore
The author is the Audience and Jury Awards Winner at the Margarita Arnaudova Contest for Contemporary Choreography, 2005

Beautiful Daughters
documentary, USA, 2006, 61’
Josh Aronson & Ariel Jordan

Beautiful Daughters is a breakthrough film about an historic stage production, and about the extraordinary women who made it happen. It documents the first-ever all transgender performance of “The Vagina Monologues” on Saturday evening, February 21, 2004 at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood. The benefit performance showcased the trans community's best and brightest women from all over America. These women had all been born as boys and had struggled mightily to gain their places in life as women. Many were still living in stealth and chose this performance to “come out”.

Pashke and Sofia
documentary, Germany, 2003. 28`
Karin Michalski
A rare window into Albanian culture and an even more remarkable glimpse at the age-old custom that allows Albanian women to change their gender by taking the oath of a “sworn virgin”. 62-year-old Pashke is one of the women who promised not to marry, bear children and to remain celibate in return for the status and respect deemed worthy of a male. Artfully weaving together interviews with Pashke’s family and neighbors with rarely-seen footage on the subject of “sworn virgins”, Michalski creates a compelling story about gender roles, with universal implications. Award for Most Promising Newcomer in International Documentary – ICA London 2005

Straight Out, Stories from Iceland
documentary, Iceland, 2003, 60’
Hrafnhildur Gunnarsdottir



The film portrays 9 young gay people from the age of 18 to 28 who testify to their experiences of emerging from the Icelandic closet. The images and words in the film mirror the experience of the many who have come before them, yet they reveal truths rarely before spoken in this society. Their stories and memories paint a picture from the edge of Icelandic society and from the edge of the inhabited world. Yet their experiences are somehow familiar. We watch them recall their first feelings of not fitting in, their first crush, their first thoughts of self hate, fucking the opposite sex, suicide attempts, drinking, standing up to their parents, love, alcohol treatments, all in the attempt of finding self respect and at last creating their own community. In this cunningly sincere documentary the Icelandic gay and lesbian experience is accurately described with out beautifying it or dramatizing it. This documentary film is the first gay film to come out of Iceland.
The usage of photographs and home video add to the texture of time. Only the kids speak and no outside views are expressed. The film is an insider film as the two filmmakers are both gay, which creates the relaxed and honest atmosphere as difficult subjects are broached.
Awarded the Stu&Dave Excellence Documentary Award at the SFILGFF 2003 and “Best Youth” Documentary at the Indianapolis Lesbian and Gay Film Festival.

Drole de Felix / The Adventures of Felix
feature, France, 2000, 95`
Olivier Ducastel & Jacques Martineau



A tale revolving around the carefree and bon-vivant, Felix, who is content living with his boyfriend, Daniel in the town of Dieppe in Northern France. When Felix is laid off from his job, he decides to take a road trip to Marseilles to track down the father he's never met. Backpack in tow, Felix sets out walking, hitching and borrowing cars to get to the south of France. Springtime is budding, nature is at its best, and some unique characters await Felix along the dirtroads and byways of the French countryside.
Awards: Teddy and Reader Jury of the "Siegessaule" – Berlin International Film Festival, 2000, Best new actor / Sami Bouajila – Cabourg Romantic Film Festival, 2000, Best Film – Milan International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, 2001, Audience Award - Toronto Inside Out Lesbian and Gay Film and Video Festival, 2000.
LesGaiCineMad Short Film Programme – Les

Hold Up
Madeleine Olnek, Canada, 2005, 9’
“Hold Up” is the 2005 winner of the “Audience Award for Best Short” at “NewFest: The 17th New York Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Film Festival.” It had its world premiere in NewFest in June, at the Loews theater on 34th St in Manhattan.
“Hold Up” considers identity, confusion, the proximity of hostility and love, of horror and comedy, and the awful losses we are all forced to face eventually.

What hot guy
Mary Thompson, USA, 2006, 4`

In memory of Me
drama, USA, 2006, 22’
Samantha Lavin
When a young woman returns to her home town after eight years, the memories of an affair she had with another woman in high school resurface and her present starts to unravel.

If you lived here, you’d be home now
Tamar Glezerman , Israel, 2006, 11`

Peace Talk
Jenifer Malqvist, Sweden, 2004, 15’



Jonna wants to play war with her friend Emelie. A short film about intimacy, love and respect.
Awards for Best Film, Screenplay and Director - Skane Video Film Festival "Pixel" 2004, Helsingborg, Sweden

Je Souhaite un autre desir un autre encore
Experimental movie by Eugenio Lasserre, Argentina, 2004, 11’
Sophie, a young french girl tells how she is going to realize her 3 wishes or desires for her birthday. The story is presenting a continuous game with the meaning of wish/desire and its representation in the protagonist’s everyday life.

Inclinations
Jen Simmons & Shelley Barry, USA, 2005, 13’
Aspiring young writer Mia struggles to find the perfect plot for an erotic short story while a diversity of unexpected characters encourage her to try out some exotic explorations of her own.

The Piper
Abbe Robinson, UK, 2005, 11’
Sick and tired of the infestation of cockroaches in her house, but unwilling to kill them, Amy drunkenly wishes for the Pied Piper to come and whisk them away. However, she isn't prepared for the mythical character to appear at her door in the middle of the night, or the effect it will have on her...

LesGaiCineMad Short Film Programme – Gay

Eargasm
Dave Quantic, USA, 2004, 5`

Daddy’s Boy
Tristan Hamilton, Australia, 2006, 9’
WIN STAFFORD is in for a shock when his attempts to hide his sexuality from his father results in a hilarious outcome.

You’re Such A Blind Fold
Tony Osso, USA, 2004, 23’
When Valerie, a middle-class mom in New York City.s East Village, is chastised for doting on her son Jasper instead of monitoring the students at the school where she.s employed, she turns to her husband Jim for comfort. What she discovers sets in motion a long night of sorrow, confusion, and a desperate attempt to hold the family together.

Spaceboy
Keith Dando, UK, 2005, 7’
Spaceboy is the story of Jason, who is surprised when a handsome astronaut crash lands in the woods near his home. Is this a dream, fate or just plain old good luck?

No ordinary Joe
Jules Nurrish, UK, 2004, 13`

New Balls Please
Richard James, UK, 2003, 4’



Defending tennis champion Kurt Bruckner is struggling to stay in the quarterfinals against the up-and-coming tennis star Jorge Romeo. Bruckner loses his serve and his temper when Jorge inadvertently triggers a courtside competition he didn’t expect.

Older
Mark Chapman, UK, 2005, 9’
Older is an unusual, enigmatic and disquieting film focusing on a day in the life of Younger
Man and Older Man. Through two seemingly random narrative threads linked by a village bus
stop – a vicious fight between youths and an elderly man preparing for a day out - the story
explores themes of aging anxiety, false nostalgia, inexplicable violence and ritualistic behaviour.

Love never dies
Frank Aron & Eirik Tyrihjel, Norway, 2003, 3`

Hitchcocked
David M.Young, USA, 2006, 8’



Al and Fred discover that online hookups can be lots of fun... until somebody gets hurt.
Though brief, this hot casual-sex encounter stirs up some surprising truths about Internet-dating, love, life... and death.

Good Boys
Yair Hochner, UK, 2005, 12’
17-year-old Meni wears only the most fashionable clothes, interested in music, loves the cinema and works as a rent boy. He had a baby from Mika, a young drug addict prostitute. He has an adoptive mother who is also a trans-gender prostitute and clients that contact him on his cell-phone.
One night he meets Tal, also a hustler and they decide to spend the night together. During that night their lives get a new meaning, but can the little hope change the life they are used to from early age?

Cabalerno
Jarrah Gurrie, Australia/USA, 2006, 5’
An awkward guy coming to terms with his sexuality, gets caught pointing a video camera at his strapping young crush; an olive skinned skateboarder. After an initial awkwardness, the two boys must deal with unanticipated feelings.

Tan de Repente
drama comedy, Argentina, 2002, 94’
Diego Lerman
Marcia is young and fat and lives a grey, routine life in the city of Buenos Aires. Mao and Lenin, a punk girl couple, run into Marcia and for some strange reason decide to express their love for her. Fanciful Mao declares she's in love with Marcia and offers to prove it. "The love which has no explanation can be proved, and proof is worth as much as love," Mao tells her. From there on, the three (daring couple and bewildered Marcia) leave Buenos Aires on a journey whose end and date of return keep been delayed due to all the unforeseen things that happen to them. The journey they're on gets stranger and stranger, with constant changes of landscape and pace, and with fantasy and lots of humour. A search for a place that's impossible yet eternal, a place they keep on leaving behind.
Awarded 6 times in 2002: Winner of the FIPRESCI Prize at the Viennale Film Fest, Winner of the Silver Leopard Special mention of the jury for the whole cast at Locarno, Winner of the Public Award & Jury Special Award at the Buenos Aires Film Fest among other international prizes.

Miracle - everyone is curious what’s going on in Spain
documentary, Spain, 2006, 50`
Clarissa Gonzalez

A Knock Out
documentary, Germany, 2005, 50’
Tessa Boerman
Michele Aboro was successfully contracted by Universum Box Promotion (Hamburg, Germany), the biggest Box promoter in Europe. Nevertheless, her contract abruptly ended in 2002 because she was found ‘not promotable’. Aboro took an unusual step in the world of boxing and took her case to court. She wants justice. Not an easy task to fulfill, since the shady contract, has even led the German court to pass it on from one court to another like a hot potato. If she wins this case it will have a huge impact on the (future) contracts of all other boxers with Universum. The power of Universum promotor Klaus Peter Kohl was once described as ‘the Long Arm of the Godfather’, by a journalist of the prominent German newspaper Die Welt. A description that applies to the power of many box promoters and affirms the notorious image of the boxing world.
In her last fight with Universum Box Promotion, Michele Aboro will stand up to fight for justice and fairness in the boxing sport. Date of the court case: february 8, 2005.

La Repetition
feature, France, 2001, 96`
Catherine Corsini
Nathalie (Emmanuelle Beart) and Louise (Pascale Bussieres) are friends from childhood. While studying drama at University Louise becomes hopelessly obsessed with her friend. Jealous of the male friends she breaks up the friendship, followed by a suicide attempt. Later Louise marries, but finds time to see Nathalie. They fight through the years. La Repetition following them as their friendship comes together and breaks up frequently, while never actually reaching anything that can be called a climax.
Nominated for Golden palm at Cannes Film Festival, 2001.

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