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GAY WISDOM for Daily Living...
from White Crane
GAY WISDOM for Daily Living...
from White Crane
Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture
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THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY
SEPTEMBER 25
1828 – JEAN HENRI DUNANT, Swiss philosopher, born (d: 1910) He published his Un Souvenir de Solférnino ("A Remembrance
of Solférnino"), a description of the sufferings of the wounded at the battle of
Solférnino and a plea for organizations to care for the war wounded. There was
an immediate response, out of which grew the Red Cross. In 1901 Dunant shared
the first Nobel Peace Prize. It has long been suspected that after his death,
Dunant’s family not only bowdlerized the philanthropist’s memoirs, but outright
falsified them through the addition of material not written by Dunant himself.
He is widely believed to have been homosexual, but there is no documentary
proof.
1981 – Sandra Day O’Connor was the 102nd Justice sworn in as an Associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, the
first woman to hold the office.
1949 – PEDRO ALMODOVAR,
Spanish filmmaker, born; Almodóvar is the most
successful and internationally known Spanish filmmaker of his
generation. His
films, marked by complex narratives, and quirky stylings, employ the
codes of melodrama and use elements of pop culture, popular songs,
irreverent humor, strong colors
and glossy décor. He never judges his character's actions, whatever they
do,
but he presents them as they are in all their complexity. Desire,
passion,
family and identity are the director's favorite themes. Almodóvar is
openly –
dare we say brilliantly? -- Gay and he has incorporated elements of
underground
and gay culture into mainstream forms with wide crossover appeal,
redefining
perceptions of Spanish cinema and Spain in the process. At one time, it
is
believed, he owned the film rights to Tom Spanbauer’s mystical book, The Man Who Fell In Love With the Moon
(though we now believe Gus Van Sant has these rights.)
Around 1974, Almodóvar began making his first
short films on a Super-8 camera. By the end of the 1970s they were shown in Madrid’s night circuit and
in Barcelona. These shorts had overtly sexual narratives and no soundtrack: Dos
putas, o, Historia de amor que termina en boda (1974) (Two Whores, or, A
Love Story that Ends in Marriage); La caída de Sodoma (1975) (The
Fall of Sodom); Homenaje (1976) (Homage); La estrella
(1977) (The Star) 1977 Sexo Va: Sexo viene (Sex Comes and Goes)
(Super-8); Complementos (shorts) 1978; (16mm).
“I showed them in bars, at parties… I could
not add a soundtrack because it was very difficult. The magnetic strip was very
poor, very thin. I remember that I became very famous in Madrid because, as the
films had no sound, I took a cassette with music while I personally did the
voices of all the characters, songs and dialogues.” After four years of working
with shorts in Super-8 format, in 1978 Almodóvar made his first Super-8, full-length film: Folle, folle, fólleme, Tim (1978) (Fuck Me, Fuck
Me, Fuck Me, Tim), a magazine style melodrama. In addition, he made his
first 16 mm short, Salome. This was his first contact with the
professional world of cinema. The film's stars, Carmen Maura and Felix Rotaeta,
encouraged him to make his first feature film in 16mm and helped him
raise the money to finance what would be Pepi Luc: Bom y otras cgicas del monton.
Almodóvar's subsequent films deepened his
exploration of sexual desire and the sometimes brutal laws governing it. Matador is a dark, complex story that centers on the relationship between a former bullfighter
and a murderous female lawyer, both of whom can only experience sexual
fulfillment in conjunction with killing. The film offered up desire as a bridge
between sexual attraction and death.
Almodóvar solidified his creative independence when he started
the production company El Deseo, together with his brother Agustín, who has
also had several cameo roles in his films. From 1986 on, Pedro Almodóvar has
produced his own films.
The first movie that came out from El Deseo
was the aptly named Law of Desire (La
Ley del Deseo). The film has an operatically tragic plot line and is one of
Almodóvar’s richest and most disturbing movies. The narrative follows three
main characters: a Gay film director who embarks on a new project; his sister,
an actress who used to be his brother (played by Carmen Maura), and a repressed
murderously obsessive stalker (played by Antonio Banderas).
The film presents a gay love triangle and
drew away from most representations of Gay men in films. These characters are
neither coming out nor confront sexual guilt or homophobia; they are already
liberated, like the homosexuals in Fassbinder’s films. Almodóvar said about Law
of Desire: "It's the key film in my life and career. It deals with my
vision of desire, something that's both very hard and very human. By this I
mean the absolute necessity of being desired and the fact that in the interplay
of desires it's rare that two desires meet and correspond."
Almodóvar's films rely heavily on the
capacity of his actors to pull through difficult roles into a complex
narrative. In Law of Desire Carmen Maura plays the role of Tina, a woman
who used to be a man. Almodóvar explains: "Carmen is required to imitate a
woman, to savor the imitation, to be conscious of the kitsch part that there is
in the imitation, completely renouncing parody, but not humor".
Elements from Law of Desire grew into
the basis for two later films: Carmen Maura appears in a stage production of Cocteau’s The Human Voice, which
inspired Almodóvar’s next film, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown;
and Tina's confrontation scene with an abusive priest formed a partial genesis
for Bad Education.
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