Cheang + Soukaz = sublimely strange
In this room, Cinema Queer presents a retrospective of two of the queer culture’s experimental film giants Shu Lea Cheang and Lionel Soukaz.
Oct 6-11: Shu Lea Cheang
Cheang’s work from the early-to-mid 1990s demonstrated an exciting fusion of identity politics and erotic exploration, making her one of the period’s most prominent queer media artists. This collection presents two of her solo works, along with two collaborations.
Sex Fish (1993, 6 min)
An erotic lesbian video involving swimming upstream, female power, and fish love. Made as a collaboration under the name E.T. (Ela Troyano) Baby (Jane Castle) Maniac (Cheang).
Sex Bowl (1994, 8 min)
All forms of human sport become sites for sexual play and celebratory eroticism. “The tape’s images are quick, suggestive, and sexy: fingers moving into bowling balls, shoe-smelling and toe-sucking, a dog wearing chain jewelry, fish being wrapped at…
Fingers and Kisses (1995, 5 min)
Cheang has taken her camera to the streets for a candid glimpse of lesbian public sexuality. If Asian women and lesbians share a certain amount of invisibility in the culture, Fingers and Kisses offers not only a bold representation of both, but a challenge to the question “What do lesbians do?” Tokyo’s own out-and-loud music by Chu punctuates the narrative as what begins in the streets continues under the sheets.
Coming Home (1995, 5 min)
This humorous video begins with two women—one white, the other Asian—attempting to fit into a Japanese bathtub. The awkward fitting of bodies into a small space is just one of the allegorical scenarios dramatized in a pressing appeal for lesbians to fit in.
Oct 9 at 00:00: Lionel Soukaz
Lionel Soukaz is the enfant terrible of the French LGBTQ movement. Censored and banned for his films that were often branded as porn, he is today a leading figure in the French queer movement and now we can for the first time present a program with his earliest short films. From the personal debut in 1974 about his dying mother to 1985 when, in the midst of a burning AIDS crisis, he criticized the gay movement for being without class analysis and racist.
Lolo Megalo Wounded in His Honor (1974), 25 min
I took a little Super 8 camera… I was having a hard time, my mom had cancer. I filmed what I was feeling, I disguised myself with my mother’s things, I transformed the apartment while she was in the hospital, I reinvested everything, I went up to jerk off on my mother’s bed in front of the Saint. Finally I was in a state like that of hysteria, of suffering which allowed me to overcome all that, and then to be able to speak about it … to be able to speak about the death of his mother or of a friend, it’s an experience of life, of death. Cinema helps to pass or helps to pierce, or helps to transcend personal experiences. (Lionel Soukaz)
The Sex of Angels (1977), 45 min
A condemnation of the repression and control of youth’s society by the seventies’ society. But also a call for the freedom of men to love other men.
The Gay March (1980), 12 min
Images of the first march on Washington for lesbian and gay rights.
Tino (1985) 26 min
Tino examines the ways in which gay rights can be an imperialist project, ignoring differences of race and class. A contemporary scenario, in which American journalist Doug Ireland visits Europe and meets an oppressed young Arab man, is played against the celebrated story of Emperor Hadrian’s relationship with his favourite Antinous. (Paul Clinton)
Many of the films have never been screened outside France and don’t have subtitles. We will provide printed text lists for the films. The Gay March is the only film with English subtitles.
