International Film – Page 78 – Discover great gay stories.

DEKKOO DISPATCH 049 – ‘YEAH, KOWALSKI!’ AND ‘SEAT IN SHADOW’

Title – ‘Seat In Shadow‘

Director – Henry Coombes

Starring – Henry Coombes, Ross Hunter, Jonathan Leslie, Marcella Mclntosh

Release Date – 2016

Title – ‘Yeah, Kowalski!‘

Director – Evan Roberts

Starring – Cameron Wofford, Conor Donnelly, Kaitlyn Knippers, Annamarie Kasper

Release Date – 2013

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Happy Wednesday Dekkoo’ers! We’re getting closer to the holidays which makes everyone go a little crazy so here are a pair of movies that you might sympathize with:

‘Yeah, Kowalski‘ is a super adorable short film about puberty and first crushes by Evan Roberts. A festival darling back in 2013 it traces a week in the life of 13-year old Gabe Kowalski. He’s a bit of a late bloomer who has two obsessions: Growing armpit hair and impressing his dream-boy, Shane. Shane seems the polar opposite of Gabe. He’s tall, outgoing, and proud of his armpit hair. There’s a lot to love about this film especially the honest depiction of a gay crush at such a young age which hopefully becomes the norm in this day and age.

Next up for your double feature pleasure is ‘Seat In Shadow‘ a film hailing from the UK that has a decidedly mind-bending bent to it. I wouldn’t expect anything less from the feature film debut of artist Henry Coombes whose work has been presented at the Venice Biennale among other prestigious art shows. Collaborating with David Sillars on the screenplay who also plays the role of the therapist Albert they’ve crafted a unique study of mentor-student relationships that can go off the rails.

Albert is an older gay painter and self-proclaimed therapist that lives his own life and doesn’t seem to care what anyone thinks of it. He studies unique ways of living and thinking through YouTube videos like how to make your own toothpaste with charcoal and random lectures on Jung. He also gets very high and talks to his plant he’s named Priscilla. When an old friend of his comes to his apartment he reluctantly agrees to help her grandson named Ben who’s going through a rough time and could use someone to talk to. You’d think Ben would have everything going for him. He’s young, good-looking, and goes to parties. Unfortunately Ben is in love with a guy that’s simply a big ‘ole jerk! He uses Ben and then criticizes everything about him.

The film is comprised primarily of one on one sessions between Albert and Ben. In the sessions they delve deep into human emotions like love, sex, and the desire to consume drugs. You can tell that the director has a deep fondness for hallucinogenic drugs. The movie definitely worships them and the filmmaking style reflects a very twisted and warped view of reality. The best part of the film by far is Albert. He’s painted very realistically with all manner of human flaws inherent in an older gay artist. He’s part monster/part angel and the director really manages to delve into that with a real honesty that’s refreshing.

Well I think you’ve got two extremely interesting films to dig into today/tomorrow/this weekend so I hope you’ll do that and let us know what you thought! 🙂

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Watch ’em with: Your mentor

Mix it with: Absinthe!

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DEKKOO DISPATCH 044 – ‘BROTHERS OF THE NIGHT’

Title – ‘Brothers of the Night‘

Director – Patric Chiha

Starring – Stefan, Yonko, Asen, Nikolay

Release Date – 2016

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The dark of night, the smoke-filled alleyways leading to neon-lit signs beckoning with promises of youth, money, and sex, the men lined up waiting for a hot trick or two (or three). Europe is full of such places and it’s usually not the local boys and men that make up the workforce in this sector of business. Immigrants, usually the illegal kind, are most of the hustlers you’ll find in the western European countries.

Enter Patric Chiha’s ‘Brothers of the Night‘ – a docu-fiction hybrid that explores the realm of Buglarian Romani prostitutes in Vienna. While there are many documentaries about male prostitution (we gay men do seem to be fascinated with that topic…) already available, Patric’s movie takes a very different approach in respect to honoring the mystery of the ‘men of the night’. Just like you can’t trust the man you hire in real life to reveal who he really is, we can’t trust the men in this movie to completely tell the truth of their lives.

The men in this movie have all come from Bulgaria, a country that has the highest percentage of Romani people in all of Europe. Over the course of the movie we follow gypsy men like Stefan who after marrying young and incurring debts decided to come to Vienna to find higher paying jobs. Upon arriving he figured out that there weren’t any jobs and was introduced to hustler bars like ‘Rudiger’ where older men and younger hustlers mix and make deals in bathrooms.

Patric Chiha who previously directed the sensuous film ‘Domain’ with Beatrice Dalle weaves many inspirations from previous films into his creation, but the one that strikes me as having the most influence is the director Wiktor Grodecki known for his work on the male hustler documentaries ‘Body Without Soul’ and ‘Not Angels But Angels’ and also the fiction film based on male hustling, ‘Mandragora’. Grodecki’s films combined a precise mix of compassion, voyeurism, and above all an appreciation of stylized cinematography and lighting that I find extremely present in ‘Brothers of the Night‘. Although we could say that Grodecki took that technique from Fassbinder who doused the famous film ‘Querelle’ in yellow, orange, and pink to highlight the hedonistic playground that the handsome sailor wandered through which is obviously a gigantic influence on Chiha’s vision of the hustlers that live near a large river.

To end this rant I’ll leave you with a statement from the director, but lastly my advice is to get lost in the world that Chiha is created. Don’t think too much about it, but enjoy the sights, sounds, and personalities of these wild Romani boys. Ciao!

Director’s Statement:
When I found myself stuck in a very strange pub in Vienna one evening, I knew I’d found my next film: The bar was sleazy yet aesthetically pleasing in a tacky kind of way, as if from a different time. Lonely old men sat while proud, capricious young men pranced around the pool table, immediately reminding me of Pasolini or Fassbinder’s broken heroes. It had been a long time since I’d seen bodies like theirs in film, the playful way in which they moved, danced, loitered and chatted away. I wanted to get to know these people and to film them.

The boys are young Bulgarian Roma who have left behind poverty, their families and social customs. But they’re not really free in Vienna either. They’re divided. On the one hand, they have to have sex with men they find physically repulsive, but, on the other hand, they can finally be young here, far away from their wives and children, far away from their responsibilities.

I didn’t want to make a film about them, but rather with them. It had to be full of energy and playful. They play roles when they’re at work. In their everyday lives, they’re always acting. Their lives are full of fiction, full of the stories they tell each other. They’re proud. Generous. Imaginative. Irresponsible. On the hunt. So I went in search of a style that would do them justice. We decided on everything that was directed and staged together. Fiction can be truer and more real than having a camera that just stares at economic or social ills. But in this film – as is the case with the boys’ lives – the boundaries between reality and fiction, between looking in the mirror and fantasy, become blurred. Brothers of the Night is above all else a film about feelings.

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Watch it with: Someone you’ve paid for

Mix it with: Viennese beer

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New This Week – 11/10/17

Hard partying and wild love affairs lead to some serious soul-searching when a group of close-knit friends are forced to come to terms with the unexpected death of a loved one. Sort of like a pansexual version of ‘The Big Chill’, ‘Even Lovers Get the Blues‘ offers a sexually explicit portrait of a group of young Belgian friends.

In this gay short, an intense “bromance” between a gay football player and a straight military solider confronts the meaning of friendship and masculinity. Watch ‘Forces’ now on Dekkoo.com!

Thomas is blindsided when his estranged brother, Seth, shows up unannounced to the annual family vacation… with his boyfriend. Despite a well meaning attempt to surprise everyone, things do not go as planned, throwing Thomas and the family into an awkward week long vacation where everyone has problems and no one wants to talk about them. ‘An Ordinary Family’ is available now on Dekkoo.com!

Take a peek at the brand new, behind-the-scenes Dekkoo-exclusive video from photographer Marco Ovando. This time, Marco trains his lens on the absolutely gorgeous Andrew Vecchio. We guarantee it will have your blood racing within the first 5 seconds!

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Coming next week: “Had Fassbinder shot a documentary about Viennese prostitutes, it would look like this” – Filmstarts

One Great Gay Shot – ‘Brothers of the Night’ (2016)

‘Brothers of the Night’ arrives on Dekkoo this month!

DEKKOO DISPATCH 042 – ‘PYOTR495′

Title – ‘Pyotr495‘

Director – Blake Mawson

Starring – Alex Ozerov, Alanna Bale, Juliana Semenova, Max Rositsan

Release Date – 2016

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How was everyone’s Halloween festivities last night? Did you have to take the day off work to recover? Over here at Dekkoo we’re still clinging onto the vapors of October with this week’s short film that really packs a wallop: ‘Pyotr495‘.

The beginning of ‘Pyotr’ starts out simple enough, a really really cute guy named Pyotr (played by Alex Ozerov) is cruising on Grindr one night and is invited over to an older muscle stud’s apartment (decorated in terrible/amazing Russian fashion), but since this is a horror film he of course runs into some trouble, namely a few anti-gay Russian Nationalists that believe that it’s their responsibility to rid Russia of ‘degenerates’ like the gays. A twist towards the end makes the short film extremely enjoyable 😉

There are lots of reasons why this short film has played all over the world: great direction, fantastic cinematography, a great horror twist, and a really cute lead to name more than a few, but it’s the films social commentary about LGBTQ bullying that really ties everything together. The films starts with a message, stylized like the beginning of a Disney fairy tale: “Russia, 2014 – The country’s military has been ordered to invade the Ukrainian territory of Crimea, while the newly-instated LGBT Propaganda Law makes it illegal to present gay life in Russia as normal. President Vladamir Putin’s approval rating is at a six-year high.”

This film paints a reality for many LGBTQ people living in Russia. They don’t feel safe in the same spaces that most of us in the U.S. feel safe in. The wrong hookup can lead to devastating consequences. Charlie David from Border2Border (who helped bring Pyotr to a wider audience online) interviewed the director Blake Mawson and asked a question about why the film is so important in this day and age:

With what we’ve seen is happening in Chechnya with the anti-gay purge and concentration camps for gay men, these human rights abuses by Chechen authorities where journalists covering the story are receiving death threats and being forced to flee the country – this is obviously a very clear sign that things are not getting any better and are in fact worsening in many parts of the globe. While I’m not claiming that our short film is solving any of world problems, I do think it is important that we use our voice as artists and as people in any way possible to draw attention to these injustices and continue to raise awareness.

I think if I can use genre-type film to put an audience in the shoes of the people who are experiencing this type of terror and hatred, make them uncomfortable and have them realize that this is actually not so make-believe in the end, that this type of horror is real – then we can begin to open people’s eyes and reach an audience in unexpected ways.

Check out ‘Pyotr495‘ tonight and do your part in kicking the asses of Russian bigots!!

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Watch it with: Your horror buddies.

Mix it with: Russian Vodka of course!

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DEKKOO DISPATCH 041 – ‘FURIOUS DESIRES’

Title – ‘Furious Desires‘

Directors – Simone Bozzelli, Denisse Quintero, Ricky Mastro, Rodrigo Alvarez Flores, Fabio Leal

Starring – Edilson Silva, Carlos Eduardo Ferraz, Gregorio Musatti, Jose Pescina, Hoze Melendez, Fabio Leal

Release Date – 2017

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Just one more week until Halloween!! Do you have your costume picked out yet for that gay rager? Since I’m a bit of a movie nerd I think my Halloween celebrations will be quite classical and consist of pumpkin carving, movie watching, and scaring as many trick-or-treaters as possible with a ‘Goodnight Mommy’ mask I have somewhere in my closet.

This week on the dispatch I’m diving into the year’s sexiest collection of short films: ‘Furious Desires‘. The collection covers the gamut from first love to the perils of immigration to Mexican coming-of-age rituals. There are five in total. I’ll break ’em down below and I guess I’ll give them a rating too, why not!

1. ‘Daytime Doorman’ – Well if you like nudity this is the short film for you! Marcelo is your typical constantly horny Brazilian guy who loves to hang out with friends and party. Marcio is a little more reserved and is the doorman of Marcelo’s building. When Marcelo invites the ‘straight’ Marcio out for a drink they end up hooking up which starts a string of hot (and sometimes sweet) encounters. I enjoyed all the sex, but I couldn’t really connect with the main character. He’s definitely painted as a bit ‘ditzy’ which did annoy me slightly. But like I said earlier – very sexy and tons of nudity!
3/5

2. ‘Xavier’ – This is a very sweet film about a father who while trying to understand why his son is being anti-social at school comes to the realization that he might be gay. The evidence presents itself to him as he spies his shy son suddenly smiling and opening up to an older boy, but his theory is confirmed when he invites family friends over who bring a boy that Xavier can’t keep his eyes off of. The father’s understanding and acceptance of his son’s feelings is really adorable and makes the short film a gem.
4/5

3. ‘The Other Side’ – Probably the highlight of the collection, ‘The Other Side’ covers a wealth of topics in its short run time including immigration, closeted relationships, and young love. Felipe & Claudio meet randomly while cruising on a bus and eventually fall in adorable puppy love. After shit goes down Felipe is forced to make the decision between staying home or following his love across the border to ‘The Other Side’.
5/5

4. ‘The Tigers Fight’ – I always enjoy films that feature a heavy dose of history and culture and this one does that by exploring the customs involving the transition from childhood to manhood and also pledging your romantic interests towards another. The story focuses on Nicolas as he prepares for his ‘Tiger Fight’, a custom that encourages young men to spar with each other in full costume which by doing so invigorates the spirits to provide water for crops. He gets help from his best friend Pablo who is still mourning the death of his father. The short film has a great balance of family life, village life, cultures, customs, and boys wrestling in the rain 😉
4/5

5. ‘Loris is Fine’ – I’m a sucker for gorgeous cinematography and gorgeous guys and this Italian short film has both! Sadly that’s about all it has in my opinion. The main character (while he is extremely hot) is self-absorbed like whoa and pretends to have a boyfriend (Or is he real? Can someone enlighten me??) who’s HIV positive, but can’t love him fully until he’s HIV positive as well which then leads to Loris inviting HIV positive men over so he can seroconvert. I don’t think it’s the worst thing ever, but I just didn’t understand a lot of what was going on. Oh well.
2/5

So there you have it! A nice strong collection of sexy short films that you should definitely binge tonight or this weekend.

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Watch it with: A bunch of friends that love short films

Mix it with: White wine all around!

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New This Week – 10/20/17

Intense and deliciously homoerotic, ‘A Closer Walk With Thee‘ is an award-winning new thriller follows Jordan, a strange young Christian missionary who gets caught watching his handsome and equally young Pastor take a shower. Disturbed by these “sinful” urges, Pastor Eli becomes convinced that Jordan is under the influence of a demonic force. The two men get unusually close as an amateur, bizarrely erotic exorcism soon begins!

In the gay short film ‘The Morning After‘, Harry’s world is turned upside down when,after a drunken night out he awakens to discover a naked man in his bed.

From director Michael J. Saul, the prolific filmmaker behind ‘The Surface‘, ‘True Love’ and ‘Go Go Reject‘ comes ‘The Daydreamer’s Notebook‘, an anthology of seven short, experimental works. These visually inventive short films reflect the filmmaker’s obsession with daydreaming in the work he’s created over the past 40 years.

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Coming next week: An erotic an luxurious feast for the eyes.

New This Week – 10/13/17

A hilarious dark comedy about the deep, loving bond that exists between brothers…even ones who despise one another. ‘Elijah’s Ashes‘ follows Lawrence, a somewhat lost gay man, who embarks on an unexpected family road trip with his gruff, homophobic older brother to scatter their father’s ashes.

An apartment renter lusts after his doorman, a father comes to realize that his son is attracted to other boys, two horny men find themselves literally just beyond one another’s reach, a guy declares his attraction to his best friend and two young lovers go to great length to prove their affection in this stunning and supremely sexy new collection – featuring five award-winning short films that deals with the topic of desire in various forms. Watch ‘Furious Desires’ now on Dekkoo!

In the aftermath of WWII, a former Nazi doctor and child molester finds himself confined to an iron lung following a failed suicide attempt. Things get even worse when a mysterious, handsome young man, hired to be his caretaker, is discovered to be hellbent on revenge. An uncompromising psychosexual drama that’s erotic, painful and terrifying in equal measure, ‘In a Glass Cage‘ is a highly controversial classic.

When Andreas’ close friend Samuel meets Philippe, a highly respected colleague, Andreas finds himself in the awkward and uncomfortable position of watching his best friend fall in love…again. Watch ‘Alle Werden’ now on Dekkoo.com!

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Coming next week: A homoerotic Evangelical exorcism film. Need we say more?

DEKKOO DISPATCH 039 – ‘IN A GLASS CAGE’

Title – ‘In a Glass Cage‘

Director – Agustí Villaronga

Starring – Günter Meisner, David Sust, Marisa Paredes, Gisèle Echevarría

Release Date – 1986

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Darkness. A house containing evil and secrets. Innocence lost. A desire for revenge and murder. ‘In a Glass Cage‘ takes no prisoners and instead marches onwards through its self-made carnage towards a delicate balancing of art-house sensibilities and an exploration of twisted humanity. In fact this film is so disturbing that even John Waters said, “I’m too scared to show it to my friends!”

Agustí Villaronga made the harrowing film in 1985 and partially based it on Gilles de Rais, a companion to Joan of Arc and a notorious and self-confessed murderer of children (supposedly in the hundreds!). Like Pasolini’s ‘Salo’, Villaronga decided to set his tale at the end of WWII and utilizes a Nazi as the twisted figure at the center of the film. The film starts without remorse with Klaus (our resident evil dude) taking photos of a boy hanging from a rope. He’s naked and bears the marks of repeated tortures (I never said this was an easy movie to watch!!). After dealing the killing blow to the young boy Klaus seems to have some sort of revelation and immediately runs up to the roof of the house and jumps. Meanwhile someone was watching the proceedings and steals Klaus’ scrapbook/diary of his evils.

Fast-forward a few years and we’ve found that Klaus, while still alive, is now living inside a large iron lung. A device that controls his breathing. Without it he dies. His wife (played by Almodovar regular Marisa Paredes) and young daughter have been taking care of him in a country house in Catalonia where they try and avoid the Nazi witch hunt taking place in the rest of the world that would surely condemn them. Suddenly an invader boldly infiltrates the house and locks the door where Klaus is kept. When the wife demands to be let in she finds Angelo, a brooding young man petitioning to become Klaus’ nurse. Much to her dismay Klaus insists that Angelo stay to be his nurse and we eventually find out that it’s because Angelo is the one that knows all of Klaus’ secrets.

What follows is a dangerous lesson in power dynamics and the nature of evil itself. The beginning is dramatic, the middle is disturbing, and the end of the film is incredibly hypnotic and moving.

Besides the fantastic acting and writing, the cinematography is really what stands out to me in this film. Jaume Peracaula has lensed almost all of Agustí Villaronga’s films and he manages to find a perfect balance between light and dark and most of all the color blue which I’m sure has some symbolic meaning that I can’t quite figure out (I’m being honest at least!). The transfer that we’ve brought to Dekkoo is the latest High Definition remaster which really is miles better than the old DVD that used to exist where you could barely make out what was happening in half of the film.

While the themes are difficult to handle I truly love this movie. Top 25 for sure! To me it seems like ‘Salo’ as directed by Dario Argento and Pedro Almodovar and I’m crazy excited that it’s finally here on Dekkoo where you can challenge yourself to Agustí Villaronga’s masterpiece.

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Watch it with: Probably just yourself.

Mix it with: Water.

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New This Week – 10/6/17

Julian, a 13-year-old seminarian will endure a hard spiritual journey to reach ‘Perfect Obedience‘. The order’s founding father, captivated by his fragility and innocence, will take him to live together with him in his private home for a year. In that time Julian will wander the most intense and contradictory phase of his life while his mentor guides him to complete psychological and physical surrender. (subtitled)

In the award winning short film ‘Welcome to New York‘, five young New Yorkers visit the a therapist to work through their crazy first experiences in the Big Apple.

‘Child of the ’70’s‘ is the story of gay Italian-American Carlo Perdente who ends up working as a personal assistant to his 1970’s TV idol, the neurotic and over-the-top KiKi Lawrence.

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Coming next week: A profoundly entertaining (and often arousing) collection of stellar short films from an array of staggeringly talented international filmmakers.