THEGAYUK

Author: Roger Walker-Dack

  • FILM REVIEW | Folsom Forever

    ★★★★ | Folsom Forever

    Mike Skiff’s illuminating new documentary on the Folsom Street Fair, one of San Francisco’s iconic gay events, starts off by dispelling a few of the myths that surround its 30-year history.

    Initially, the Fair was created in 1984 as part of a growing protest movement that objected to the enforced gentrification of what previously had been one of the most blighted areas of the city. The inhabitants of the skid row houses and the working men bars were being forced out as the authorities bulldozed their way through the area to put up shiny new expensive buildings.

    This was also the height of the AIDS crisis, which would go on to decimate the city’s gay population so the advent of the Fair created an opportunity for much-needed fund raising. Audrey Joseph a local activist stressed the point that the presence then of so many women supporters, who were the most accepting of AIDS victims, helped create a crucial space without judgments at the Fair.

    The whole area known as South of Market was already home to a plethora of leather bars which local historian Jack Fritscher Ph.D. explained had sprung up as bolt holes for gay hyper-masculine men who were not interested in the stereotypical roles that were most prevalent in the community at the time. Dr Fritscher who also worked for Drummer the now defunct leather magazine talked about the oft-misunderstood leather and BDSM community who came into its own then by promoting their safe sex practices. He explained said the whole concept of successful BDSM is sexual acts within agreed lines of limits to make sure each part is safe and pleasurable. It wasn’t an argument that sat well with the Authorities who at the time were panicking like everyone else and wanting someone to blame for this uncontrollable epidemic.

    Skiff added: “In the 1970s, Folsom Street was the West Coast’s mecca for anyone on their leather journey in life and his movie goes on to explore why the Folsom Street Fair couldn’t have got started anywhere else but San Francisco.”

    When someone talks about Folsom Street Fair now, the leather and fetish elements of the historic outdoor celebration of sexual diversity are likely what come to mind, and it follows the tradition of where members of the LGBT community are given the space to explore the full spectrum of their sexuality and queerness.

    It’s the one time of the year when those into kink and fetish can literally dress anyhow and do anything they want and the Fair security staff who police the streets will only stop them if they engaging in full on sex. Evidently that you can do in any of the bars on the strip.

    Nowadays the Fair is not only a major social event it is also one that has an enormous economic impact on the city. Demetri Moshoyannnis the Executive Director estimates that San Francisco benefits to the tune of some $35.4 million in revenue, and the Fair itself raises some hundreds of thousands in profits that it distributes to fund important local non-profit organisations.

  • Marilyn Monroe Movie Retrospective

    For the whole of the month of June the BFI are running a retrospective of movies of one of world’s greatest gay icons: Miss Marilyn Monroe.

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  • FILM REVIEW | Italy

    ★★★★★ | Love It or Leave It. In 2009 I remembered being totally enamored with an irrepressible young Italian gay couple that documented the struggle of acceptance of gay rights in their country and being totally horrified about the vitriol and power of the far right political parties that seem to make the American Evangelistic Conservatives seem like real sweethearts by comparison.

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  • FILM REVIEW | Candid Love

    ★★ | Candid Love

    Filmmaker Kurtz Frausun’s voyeuristic record of an ill-fated relationship between two desperately troubled men is a disturbing sight that raises all sorts of questions.

    The first one of which is why they even allowed the intrusive camera into their lives at a time when they are both clinging on to the last vestiges of hope as their worlds continue to unfold in front of their (and our) eyes. Frausun even jumps in front of the camera at one point to question the morality of being a witness to this highly personal situation especially when it soon becomes apparent to us, if not the two men themselves, that it is doomed.

    Jon is gay and bi-polar and Daniel his partner is a recovering alcoholic and suffers from depression and has still not recovered from the love of his life who is his (ex) wife of 11 years. He doesn’t identify as gay per se but admits to dating gay men in the two years since his marriage fell apart. Jon is his second boyfriend and they are fast approaching their first anniversary when Daniel’s father is suddenly taken to hospital with an aneurysm.

    The ‘story’ starts after Daniel has rushed from the apartment he shares with Jon in Texas to his father’s bedside in Wisconsin. A quick session of events follow resulting in the father’s death and Daniel needing to deal with both planning the funeral and taking care of his mother even though it is clear from the morose and confusing phone conversations with Jon that his depression has really kicked up a notch or two and that he will not be able to resist slipping back into hitting the bottle again.

    In all of his conversations, first on the phone and then when he eventually comes back to Texas, he uses Jon as a verbal punching bag, although judging from his disclosures, sometimes in the past he resorted to physical violence as well. His is obviously a deeply unhappy man struggling with his mental health issues who makes no secret that his ‘relationship’ with Jon started falling apart just after two months and as he goes into detail of its disintegration, it’s remarkable that he even considers continuing wanting to be with someone he has such scant regard for and seems to positive loathe.

    Jon is not much better as all he does is complain to the camera about how miserably unhappy he is with the state of affairs between the two of them and the only thing that makes it all bearable is smoking. Legal and illegal cigarettes.

    It’s infuriating at times watching these two people’s obvious pain as they just stumble around directionless and as the totally unsatisfactory compromise that they clumsily piece together hasn’t a chance in hell in succeeding, doesn’t make their reality any less unpalatable. I simply have no idea why they put themselves through it all let alone why they allowed the camera to record it. I for one, wished they hadn’t.

    ‘Candid’ means straightforward and honest, and frankly, neither Daniel nor Jon were capable of really ever being this. Plus of all the emotions they showed in the 60 minutes of this film there was very little ‘love’, if any at all.

  • Top 10 Gay German Films

    Since it produced one of the world’s first ever explicitly gay films called Different From The Others back in 1919, Germany has been at the forefront of making really good LGBT movies. To mark the occasion of the release of the German-produced Futuro Beach made by Brazilian filmmaker Karim Ainouz, we have named our Top Ten German Gay Movies.

    gay german films

    1) Futuro Beach

    This stunning new movie is light on plot as it focuses much more of the sensuality of each moment. There are certain pivotal scenes that are sparse of dialogue where he allows the camera to remain much longer than the norm with such riveting effect. Whether it be Donato letting off steam dancing rather manically in a club, or when he and Konrad are making rough and passionate sex together, or in the closing scene of the final motorbike ride. This story about the search for self-identity is one that will linger with you for a long time after you have seen it.

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  • Want To Give Up Blood In The US? Give Up Gay Sex

    If you are gay, then the US’s powerful Food & Drug Administration still does not want your blood.

    That is unless you can prove you have been celibate for a whole year. After years of pressure to reform the ban, the FDA announced plans in December 2014 to ease the rules slightly and officials issued a formal recommendation on Tuesday which effectively still stops gay men from donating blood.

    The FDA has banned blood donations from men who have had sex with another man anytime since 1977, a rule approved more than three decades ago during the AIDS epidemic. However, as blood screening and HIV testing have made advances, the policy has been criticised as unscientific and discriminatory by some medical organisations, Congressional Democrats, and advocacy groups.

    “The FDA may have had good intentions behind this policy, but asking gay and bisexual men to be celibate for a year before donating blood is in practice still a lifetime ban,” said a statement issued by Kelsey Louie, the CEO of LGBT health advocacy group Gay Men’s Health Crisis. “By contrast, the new policy does not require heterosexuals to be celibate for one year in order to donate blood, even if their sexual behaviour places them at high risk for HIV.”

    However the out gay US ambassador to Spain may be banned from donating blood at home in the United States but he appeared eager to post a photo of himself donating blood in Spain, where the rules are different. Smiling and giving a thumbs up, James Costos appears in a photo on his Instagram account wearing a tourniquet and giving blood along with a glowing message to his followers. “I joined Team U.S. Embassy Madrid donating blood. Please join us, it feels good to give, trust me!” he wrote. The Instagram account belongs to Costos and his partner, Michael S. Smith, an interior designer who have been together for 15 years.

    In Spain, however, being gay does not disqualify potential blood donors. The donors are screened based on the individual’s risk factors, such as how recently they became intimate with a new partner and other behaviors that could raise chances of exposure to HIV.

  • Sexy Lingerie For Men Is Here

    Sexy Lingerie For Men Is Here at Last (!)

    According to a report in The Independent today it appears that is not just women who are interested in wearing sexy lingerie nowadays. In fact some Australian men have been wearing it for years, and now the brand HommeMystere that was launched in 2008, was recently was made available to buy online and has since been attracting customers from across 30 countries.

    The label was created by couple Brent and Lara Krause who wanted to give men more choice beyond our standard tighty whities. They offer a wide variety of lace-trimmed boxer briefs, suspenders, racy thongs and even bras, also known as manssieres, and whilst all the lingerie pieces look like women’s underwear, they are specifically designed to fit a male body.

    HommeMystere describe their customers as “male, married and older than 40 with impeccable taste.’ “He has discerning taste in underwear and wants luxury garments, but does not need to show it off to others. He wants something new and exciting to buy. Our goal has always been to offer an alternative style of underwear for men, based on their physique rather than their sexuality,” the company says on its website.

    Despite many people thinking the designs are meant to cater primarily for the LGBT community, a survey carried by the brand has actually revealed that 90% of customers are in heterosexual relationships.

    Explaining why men like to wear sexy hosiery, founder Brent recently told ‘The Huffington Post’ ”I think bras are just something they [men] like the feel of. I don’t know whether it’s the tightness around the chest or what it is, but it’s definitely the feeling that they’re after.’

    The Jury is definitely out on this one at TheGayUK but if this your ‘thing’ then shop away at https://www.hommemystere.com

    @RogerWalkerDack

  • FILM REVIEW | Rosewater

    This rather tense drama opens with Iranian journalist Maziar Bahari been awoken by Investigators in his mother’s house in Tehran and subsequently hauled off to jail. Then in a flashback, we see Bahari in London 11 days previously with his heavily pregnant English wife discussing his assignment from Newsweek Magazine to cover the impending Presidential Elections in Iran. They are both aware of the danger particularly as both his late father and sister had both been imprisoned by Ayatollah Khomeini for being communists.

    When Bahari arrives in Tehran a chance meeting hooks him up with a young driver who zips him around the city on his motor bike introducing the Journalist to his own liberal minded friends who are concerned that the present corrupt regime will rig the Elections to insure that their Candidate running against the incumbent President fails completely. When their worse fears are realised and the Government falsely declares that the President has been reelected with a landslide majority, the streets of the city are overrun with hundreds of thousands of protesters. The authorities react by sending out armed troopers to fire into the crowds, and when Bahari captures some of this on video that is shown on US TV, he has become a wanted man.

    He is thrown into solitary confinement in Evin prison and is accused of being a spy for the CIA, the MI6, or any other Western organisation his captors claim are set on bringing the downfall of the Iranian Nation. Its a combination of paranoia and panic as the Investigator clutches at straws to make his claims stick. Bahari is blindfolded most of the time, and he establishes some sort of relationship with his tormentor…. known as Rosewater for his predilection for spraying himself liberally with the scent … who seems to bumble his way through their daily sessions of interrogation without gaining any information or a ‘confession’ from Bahari after several weeks.

    As time passes and ‘Rosewater’ is pressured by his Superior to get a ‘result’ he taunts Bahari more and deprives him of anything to read and feeds him with ant infested food, but beyond depriving him of his liberty and hope, he surprisingly never really resorts to physical torture that one may have expected

    This re-telling of the ghastly imprisonment of London based Iranian Newsweek Journalist Maziar Bahari in a Tehran jail for 118 days is the directing/writing debut of US TV journalist Jon Stewart whose own celebrity rather overshadows that of his subject.

    Whilst Stewart does an admirable job, he still doesn’t quite succeed in overcoming his main difficulty in maintaining the tension in a true story the greater part of which is just about these two men in jail, that we already know the outcome off, and that Bahari will survive.

    Gael Garcia Bernal however does an excellent job portraying the scared imprisoned journalist, and Shohrer Aghdashloo steals all her scenes in the cameo role of his mother.

  • Cate Blanchett Admits To Relationships With Women

    When we wrote about Todd Haynes’s new movie ‘Carol’ that premieres this week at Cannes about two ‘straight’ women who fall in love, we knew that the project had been ‘in the closet’ for 15 years before it made it to the screen.

    It turns out that now that it was not only thing in there too. In a very frank and wide-ranging interview with Variety Magazine the movie’s Cate Blanchett now admits that she has had her fair share of girl on girl action too off the screen.

    When asked if this is her first turn as a lesbian, Blanchett curls her lips into a smile. “On film — or in real life?” she asks coyly. Pressed for details about whether she’s had past relationships with women, she responds: “Yes. Many times,” but doesn’t elaborate.

    Like Carol, who never “comes out” as a lesbian, Blanchett doesn’t necessarily rely on labels for sexual orientation. “I never thought about it,” she says of how she envisioned the character. “I don’t think Carol thought about it.” The actress studied the era by picking up banned erotic novels. “I read a lot of girl-on-girl books from the period,” she says.

    Ms Blanchett married to playwright and director Andrew Upton and mother of 4 children, has already been nominated for an Oscar six times (she’s already won for2004’s “The Aviator” and 2013’s “Blue Jasmine”) and the pre-Cannes buzz is that the new performance could net her another one.

  • Rugby Player Grabs BIG WILLIE

    During a Rugby match seen live on Australian TV this weekend Newcastle rugby player Korbin Sims walked up to Eagles player Willie Mason and grabbed his balls.

     

    The baffled commentators asked: “What is going on out there? ” as were others watching at home.

    Mason, who has previously played alongside Sims, said said after the game he thought it was “hilarious”.

  • David Hockney Says Too Many Gay Men Want To Be Boring

    Too may gay men have become ‘boring’ and ‘conservative’ according to Britain’s most famous living artist David Hockney in an interview this week in The Daily Telegraph.

     

    “They want to be ordinary – they want to fit in,” said Hockney, “Well I don’t care about that. I don’t care about fitting in. Everywhere is so conservative.” He added too many gay men were determined to lead ‘ordinary’ lives by entering into civil partnerships and having children through adoption or surrogate mothers.

    When he was asked if he would ever have marry a man, he was aghast at the suggestion. He admitted that he stayed in contact with former lovers, except when they had become “so boring” that he didn’t want to spend time with them.

    Hockney disclosed that despite a string of lovers, the love of his life was “maybe” Gregory Evans, his 62-year-old manager.

    Hockney and Evans had been lovers for about a decade through the 1970s but have worked together for 40 years.

    On a recent visit to San Francisco he was dismayed that the bohemian lifestyle of the city’s large gay community had seemingly vanished.

    “It’s a very boring city now. Where are the Harvey Milks,” he asked, in reference to the gay rights campaigner who was shot and murdered after becoming the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California.