Tag: Marcel Gisler

The provocative queer punk classic ‘Fögi is a Bastard’ gets a brand-new HD restoration

Set in Zurich during the early 1970s and boasting a killer soundtrack that includes the likes of punk legends The Stooges and The Velvet Underground, Fögi is a Bastard is an unflinchingly honest depiction of teenage infatuation and obsession from director Marcel Gisler.

Vincent Branchet stars as Beni, a sensitive 15-year-old romantic who has become completely besotted by Fögi (Frederic Andrau), the super-sexy front man to a local punk outfit called The Minks.

The wide-eyed, seemingly innocent Beni – who begins his courting of Fögi with lovingly penned letters – is welcomed into the gay punk musician’s world of partying and playing gigs. However, as Fögi slowly drifts from an ambitious music career to the addictive world of drugs, a wedge forms in their relationship.

Soon enough, Beni has become a submissive “dog” in their relationship and also begins supporting his lover through sex work.

With its raw depiction of urban life, ghettoized youth, working class angst and kinky gay male sex without compromise, Fögi is a Bastard is a must see for fans of coming-of-age cinema with alternative queer teen sensibilities and aesthetics.

Originally released in 1998, the film has been given a brand-new restoration by the cult distribution label Altered Innocence. It’s now available to stream on Dekkoo. Watch the trailer below.

A fascinating fluid life is chronicled in the documentary Electroboy

Jimmy Cliff once sang “You can get it if you really want.” If this sentence applies to anyone, then it most definitely applies to model, snowboard pioneer, advertising whiz, author, party organizer and composer Florian Burkhardt, who managed to talk everyone around him out of their own goals and into achieving his own.

A documentary by Swiss filmmaker Marcel Gisler (Mario, Fogi is a Bastard), Electroboy tells the breathtaking true life story of a young man who leaves his claustrophobic Swiss surroundings for the wide world in search of fame and recognition.

In a series of success stories he reinvents himself time and again, changing settings and careers like other people change their shirts. Yet Florian’s life on the fast track turns into an escape from his own biography, which finally catches up with him at full force.

Watch the trailer for Electroboy below. The film is now available on Dekkoo.