Films
God loves Uganda
Jan 22nd
A documentary premiering today at the Sundance film festival explores the evangelical campaign to change African culture with values imported from America’s Christian Right. The film follows American and Ugandan religious leaders fighting "sexual immorality" and missionaries trying to convince Ugandans to follow Biblical law. A statement from its director reads:
I thought about following the activists-brave and admirable men and women-who were fighting against these policies. But I was more curious about the people who, in effect, wanted to kill me. (According to the provisions of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, I could be put to death or imprisoned.) Notably, almost every evangelical I met – American or Ugandan – was polite, agreeable, even charming. Yet I knew that if the bill passed, there would be blood on the streets of Kampala.
What explains that contradiction? What explains the murderous rage and ecstatic transcendence? In the well-known trope about Africa, a white man journeys into the heart of darkness and finds the mystery of Africa and its unknowable otherness. I, a black man, made that journey and found – America.
0Ronan’s Escape
Dec 28th
Love 100°
Dec 24th
A word of warning: This film contains a few explicit scenes and quite some moaning so you might want to lower the volume a bit if your parents/siblings/friends are around 
+4The Queer Harold & Maude?
Dec 12th
Gay film maker Bruce LaBruce (Otto; or, Up with Dead People) got a new project, Gerontophilia, that he describes as a queer Harold & Maude and you can help funding it on Indiegogo. Here’s the plot:
Lake is an unusual boy: he is a young man with an old soul who discovers he has an odd fixation on the elderly. Although Lake has a girlfriend his own age, named Desiree, he wonders sometimes if his fixation on old men is unnatural and unhealthy – perhaps even sexual.
When his mother, who is a nurse, takes on a management job at an old folks home, Lake jumps at her offer of a summer job as an orderly there. Gradually, Lake comes to discover that the old people in the institution are being given psychotropic drugs to keep them in a catatonic state. Lake befriends one old man in particular, Mr. Peabody, who still seems to have some fight left in him. They begin to form a strong bond. Mr. Peabody charms Lake with romantic stories of his youth and confesses his dreams of seeing the ocean one last time. Avoiding the vigilant eye of Nurse Stonehenge, who administers shots and pills to the old folks, Lake starts to wean Mr. Peabody off his medication.
Eventually, Lake springs Mr. Peabody from the institution. Together they embark on a road trip telling everyone they meet that the old man is his grandfather and that they’re driving to the ocean. After numerous life-changing escapades, Lake is finally ready to accept his true feelings for Mr. Peabody, but everything changes when the trip takes an unexpected turn. Read on….
0The Boy Who Couldn’t Swim
Nov 29th
The Boy Who Couldn’t Swim is a short film (featuring the lovely Jonas Wandschneider) about two teen boys who meet in Copenhagen and team up to find one of the boys’ mother. Instead they end up finding themselves – and each other.
Original Title: Drengen der ikke kunne svømme | Submitted by Johan
+8Dans La Maison
Nov 28th
A bored French Literature teacher gets too close to a talented student; woe ensues… so far, so familiar. But whereas other films of this ilk, such as Notes on a Scandal or The Wave focus on questions of sexual and pedagogic impropriety respectively, Dans La Maison (In the House, in its English translation) is a thoughtfully joyful story about story-telling; a delicate thriller so wonderfully innocent, but simmering with méchanceté.
Germain Germain (great name) starts the new academic year with a class of dunces, until one student -- Claude -- eschews a humdrum piece of homework in favour of a very intimate study of his classmate Rafa’s family. The seditious piece ends with a tantalising: “À suivre…” or “To be continued…” Germain is soon drawn into Claude’s tale, tutoring his young prodigy in the art of story-telling, but from that moment on we’re never entirely sure whether what we’re seeing is actually happening, or is just part of Claude’s story. Read on…
0Kiss Me Softly
Nov 22nd
17-year-old Jasper lives in a boring, small town. In his family, he can’t be himself. Jasper’s dad is a singer, named Lukkie Luk. All the attention in the family goes to his career. Jasper looks for a way to handle this and is faced with the typical questions in the life of an adolescent. Questions that will not be answered when he stays in his usual routine.
Original Title: Kus me zachtjes
0Three Summers
Nov 19th
Jørgen lives abroad, but every summer he and his wife come back to Denmark. As usual they invite the neighbours and their teenage son Thomas over for dinner. Only, this time there is a strange tension in the air between the adults. After dinner, Jørgen and Thomas go for a walk and discover that both have problems they can’t share with anyone. Disclosing their secrets to each other is what starts the friendship between them but through the course of the next two summers their relationship develops in a way they didn’t expect.
Original Title: Tre Somre
+5Benny’s Gym
Nov 15th
Alfred gets bullied. Benny is a bully. Through a series of events they become friends, but Benny keeps their friendship a secret. Benny wants to teach Alfred to hit back. But after an accident, it turns out maybe Alfred also has something to teach Benny.
+6Billy’s Dad is a Fudge-Packer
Nov 12th
Laced with more double entendres than a host of Carry On films and complete with a tongue-in-cheek narrative from D C Douglas, here writer and director Jamie Donahue takes us back to the 1950s to deliver a spoof styled b&w public service announcement that proudly proclaims that Billy’s dad is a fudge-packer! 
And he is! Working hard all day at the local candy factory, busy supervising all the men under him, whilst his darling sweetheart with the ample assistance of Betty the grocer’s wife, a woman who is more than happy to service the needs of the local girls, gets ready to receive her man with his favorite dish of meat and two veg. But wait, what’s that I hear? For could it be Billy about to ask his father the burning question that all boys of his age want an answer to. Namely, will he be a fudge-packer when he grows up? Only time will tell on that one Billy, but oh what a subject for discussion on careers day!
+1
