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PLEASE NOTE:  Past Guest Commentary/Opinion articles can be viewed [[Past Guest Commentary/Opinion Articles | here]].
 
PLEASE NOTE:  Past Guest Commentary/Opinion articles can be viewed [[Past Guest Commentary/Opinion Articles | here]].
  
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==THE UNFINISHED BATTLE FOR LGBT EQUALITY==
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==10 LGBT Films We're Excited To See at the 2014 Toronto Film Festival==
  
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'''Contributor:'''  ''John Maguire, Interview with [[Peter Tatchell]]''
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'''Contributor:'''  ''[[Peter Knegt]]/Bent - a queer blog, Indiewire''
  
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The University of Liverpool continued its celebrated Flagship public lecture series in May with ‘The Unfinished Battle for LGBT Equality: The flaws of same-sex marriage law and other inequalities that remain to be overturned.’
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The Toronto International Film Festival kicks off tonight in Canada's biggest city, and while we've already offered this list of potential fun nights out, we thought we should probably get to the films too. Because there's quite a few of considerable LGBT interest, most of them having their world premieres. Here, in alphabetical order, are 10 in particular we are excited for.  
  
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The event was hosted by The School of Law and Social Justice. The talk was given by the exemplary activist, [[Peter Tatchell]]. Tatchell last visited Liverpool in 1984. A very different social and political landscape.
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==Cut Snake==
  
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Peter was born in 1952 in Melbourne, Australia, and has been campaigning since 1967 on issues of human rights, democracy, civil liberties, LGBT equality and global justice.
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'''Who made it?''' Chinese-born Australian gay director Tony Ayres, probably best known for 2002 drama "Walking on Water."
  
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In an interview with 'ten minutes hate' after his lecture, Peter Tatchell discussed his years of campaigning and the influences that have shaped his outlook:
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'''Who's in it?''' A bunch of very attractive actors we hadn't really heard of -- Alex Russell, Sullivan Stapleton, Jessica DeGuow -- but are looking forward to remembering from hereon in.
  
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'''PT''': Parliament has usually been the last place to get the message. It’s taken extra parliamentary action to push MPs to legislate equality and civil rights. My inspirations are people like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, they pioneered non-violent direct action as a way of pushing human rights issues onto the public and political agenda. Their strategy was very effective, the strategy I sought to pursue pushing forward LGBT rights.
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'''Why are we excited?''' There's been lots of strong buzz for this noir drama about an ex-con (Russell) whose seemingly happy wife with his wife (DeGuow) is interrupted by a mysterious man from his past (Stapleton). Noted as an "inspired variation on 'A History of Violence," it sounds like it also might have a bit of a "Brokeback Mountain" twist…
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'''10mh''': Can you discuss your early campaign work with OutRage! and  its impact on LGBT rights?
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'''PT''': With a protest every other week, it helped normalise LGBT issues, raising public awareness about the scale of discrimination, putting political leaders under pressure to change their policies.
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==Do I Sound Gay?==
  
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'''10mh''': UKIP and other far right parties are gaining votes due to public disenchantment with mainstream political parties. What would your advice be to non-voters?
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'''Who made it?''' Brooklyn-based journalist David Thorpe, impressively making his feature film debut with a TIFF world premiere.
  
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'''PT''': Support for more conservative right-wing parties is still significant, a worrying trend if that is sustained over an extended period of time. The support UKIP is getting is a protest vote, people disaffected by the main parties.
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'''Who's in it?''' Um… like all our favorite people: Dan Savage, David Sedaris, George Takei, Margaret Cho and Tim Gunn.
  
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My response is if people are disaffected by the main parties, why not vote for a more progressive party like the Greens? It is worrying that people who are disenchanted by the political system choose to gravitate towards a party that certainly has a lot of prejudiced members, even if their policies are not avowedly negative.
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'''Why are we excited?''' Thorpe uses the documentary to take a journey of discovery to confront his anxiety about "sounding gay," bringing along those noted famous names for perspective. It sounds both a hilarious and thought-provoking take on a much more complex issue than we might think.
  
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'''10mh''': The T in LGBT is sometimes overlooked, what are your views on this?
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==The Duke of Burgundy==
  
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'''PT''': Transgender rights are the new frontier, the new front line: gender identity, not just for Trans people, for everyone. ‘Behave a certain way because you are a man, because you are a woman’ impacts on the spontaneous nature that we may have.
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'''Who made it?''' British indie filmmaker Peter Strickland, known best for his acclaimed 2012 film "Berberian Sound Studio."
  
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People should be free to express their gender and sexuality in whatever way they see appropriate, we need to break down masculine/feminine – it inhibits people from fulfilling their true potential.
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'''Who's in it?''' Sidse Babett Knudsen (who you might recognize from Danish TV drama "Borgen") and Chiara D'Anna (who was in "Berberian").
  
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'''10mh''': Some Universities have allowed far right Islamist preachers, or hate clerics, into campuses to provide lectures on the grounds that they can talk but cannot preach hate crime. Is this acceptable?
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'''Why are we excited?''' As one might expect from Strickland, this looks like quite something. TIFF compared it to Luis Buñuel's "Belle de Jour" and Joseph Losey's "The Servant" and called it "by turns kinky, dryly comic and compelling surreal." So what it's about? An intense, sadomasochistic relationship between a wealthy amateur lepidopterist (Knudsen) and her newly hired housekeeper (D'Anna) -- who essentially becomes her sex slave.
  
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'''PT''': These organisations have a right to hold their own meetings in their own premises or to hire a hotel but they certainly should not be given publicly funded premises like Universities.
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==Guidance==
  
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Those who host meetings and insist women are segregated from men, extremist preachers who advocate killing gay people should not be allowed to speak. The Federation for Student Islamic Societies is not doing enough to block those speakers and not practice gender segregation.
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'''Who made it?''' Toronto filmmaker Pat Mills, making his feature film debut after a series of incredibly charming shorts (see "Pat's First Kiss" and "5 Dysfunctional People in a Car"!).
  
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Universities are supposed to be places of enlightenment and equality. It clearly sends the wrong signal – making LGBT people feel under threat in some universities.  Some of these extreme groups advocate punishment for women who have sex out of marriage who are not veiled, also preach that Muslims who turn away from their faith should be killed.  These kinds of reactionary views need to be challenged and blocked from taking place on campus.
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'''Who's in it?''' Mills himself plays the lead, with the supporting cast including Alex Ozerov ("Blackbird") and Zahra Bentham ("Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang).
  
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Hate preachers should not be given any platform, no place at a university. Organisations like the BNP, Nick Griffin, given his past record, even if he was going to talk about his love of flower arranging.
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'''Why are we excited?''' The dark comedy tells the story of David Gold (Mills), a closeted former child actor who, now in his mid-30s, is struggling to get work and has just been diagnosed with skin cancer. Desperate times call for desperate measures, so David forges his resume and gets a job as a high school guidance counsellor. Except it turns out he’s not such a good fit for the job, handing out bad advice and alcohol to teenagers as he continues his own private downward spiral. Early word is that it's quite the breakout for Mills.
  
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Fascism has no place in a University. Free speech does not include inciting hatred and violence to other human beings.
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==The Humbling==
  
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'''Who made it?''' Barry Levinson, of "Rain Man," "Bugsy," "Wag The Dog," etc, etc, fame.
  
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The lecture looked at the significant legal LGBT changes in the last decade. Celebrating victories that have been won only by a collective effort and illustrating the work that still needs to be done.
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'''Who's in it?''' Al Pacino, Greta Gerwig, Dianne Wiest, Charles Grodin and Kyra Sedgwick.
  
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It is assumed that the United Kingdom has always been at the forefront of positive change; however, it was alarming to note that most aspects of gay life remained criminal until recent years. Tatchell highlighted how in 1999 the UK had the most anti-gay laws in the world. The Draconian law that imprisoned Oscar Wilde in 1895 for gross indecency was only repealed in 2003. A law against buggery that was drawn up in 1533 was only repealed eleven years ago, under the term ‘unnatural offences’. Even the very language of the law was bigoted.
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'''Why are we excited?''' Word out of Venice was decent for just one part of Al Pacino's aggressive attempt at a 2014 renaissance ("Manglehorn" is also playing at the festival). Based on the Philip Roth novel, Pacino plays an aging actor whose life is dramatically altered when he begins an affair with an alleged lesbian named Pegeen (Gerwig). So I guess think "Chasing Pegeen," and though that makes it "LGBT content" questionable, the pedigree of the cast and filmmaker are too much not to keep us curious.
  
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Surprisingly, the 1949 Marriage Act was the UK’s main marriage law. It does not stipulate that marriage partners have to be male and female.  In the early 1970s, there was no ban on same-sex marriage: it was de facto legal. The prohibition was introduced in response to the emergence of the gay liberation movement and the fear that a lack of legal impediment would allow transgender and same-sex couples to marry. Marriage between two people of the same gender was outlawed under the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973.
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==The Imitation Game==
  
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Realistically it would have made perfect sense for the government to just revert the seventies law, instead of creating a new one. So-called ‘Gay Marriage laws’ still have discriminative elements attached. With regards to pension schemes, the bill does not grant LGBT married couples the same entitlements as married heterosexuals. It allows companies to limit surviving same-sex spouses’ pension payouts to post-2005 accrual only, even if the deceased partner had been paying into their pension since 1970. This perpetuates pension inequalities enshrined in civil partnership law.
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'''Who made it?''' Norway's Morten Tyldum, probably know best for for 2011's "Headhunters" (which also screened at TIFF).
  
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The talk underlined campaigning that still needs to be undertaken.
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'''Who's in it?''' Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley and Matthew Goode -- quite the trio.
  
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Schools should be a safe environment. All forms of prejudice need to be challenged. Bullying in schools needs to be tackled, specifically addressing LGBT. Children are not born bigoted, they become bigoted and this should be challenged. Lessons in equality and diversity should be required by law in primary schools onwards. Tatchell proposed that equality and diversity need to be exam subjects and put into school reports, as important as core subjects. Sex and relationship education should be a mandatory requirement.
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'''Why are we excited?''' In the tradition of the big gay biopic with obvious dreams of Oscar nominations,  "The Imitation Game" tells the story of closeted mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing, who played a key role in cracking Nazi Germany’s Enigma code, which in turn helped the Allies win World War II. What did they do to thank him in return? Just a few years after the war ended, Turing was prosecuted for homosexuality and subjected to chemical castration. It wasn’t until last year that the Queen of England granted Turing a posthumous pardon. Hopefully "The Imitation Game" works as an appropriate tribute to Turing (and word out of Telluride suggests it does), though it certainly bodes well that the film’s cast includes who it does.
  
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The speaker also highlighted the mistreatment of LGBT refugees in asylum detention centres, with just 14 days to fast track their asylum case. A process which ignores the time it takes to collate evidence. The aim seems to be to fail as many refugees as possible to appease The Daily Mail. It is a sad indictment of our society and values that questions are proposed to asylum seekers like ‘do you read GT magazine?’ or ‘Do you go to Heaven nightclub?’ Stereotypes being crassly applied.
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==Love in the Time of Civil War==
  
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The assumption that you can tell a person’s sexuality on the grounds of how somebody looks is ridiculous. Comments like, ‘she doesn’t look like a lesbian!’ or ‘We don’t believe you are gay’. It is a horrifying factor that people are photographing and or filming themselves having sex to prove that they are of a certain sexual orientation. Some of the cultures are very private and nudity is inappropriate.
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'''Who made it?''' Acclaim Quebec director Rodrigue Jean, who won best Canadian feature at TIFF in 2008 with "Lost Song."
  
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The coalition government promised it would end some of the injustices but have only conducted some home office training on equality. This needs to change.
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'''Who's in it?''' Alexandre Landry, who is a "2014 TIFF Rising Star" (a distinction focusing on new Canadian talent).
  
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Then there is the work to be done with football. The Football Association is not using its power and wealth in an exemplary way. Positive ways forward could include putting adverts with anti-homophobic slogans in programmes. A video needs to be made with famous footballers talking about homophobia.
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'''Why are we excited?''' This docudrama takes us deep into the bleak world of Montreal hustlers and junkies -- a narrative take on what director Jean explored in 2008 documentary "Men For Sale." It focuses on Alex (Landry), a drug addict and hustler who is drifting into oblivion. Given Jean's previous work, we fully expect a fearlessness to "Love in the Time of Civil War" that we too often don't get from depictions of male prostitution.  
  
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Homophobic hate crimes still exist 1 in 3 people have been subjected to insults, abuse or threats. In London in the last year there were over 100 homophobic attacks and that’s just the ones that were actually reported. So it is still a major problem. All hate crime should be unacceptable in a democratic civilised society.
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==Pasolini==
  
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To help combat these battles, he urges people to vote for LGBT friendly candidates to wipe out the vicious behaviour of the likes of UKIP and the BNP.
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'''Who made it?''' Abel Ferrara, the bold mind behind "Bad Lieutenant," "The Funeral," "Dangerous Game," "Go Go Tales" and "4:44 Last Day on Earth"
  
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The young LGBT are growing up in a Britain worlds apart from the one of the past. A world where there was hardly any LGBT visibility and no out public gay figures. So essentially we have moved mountains but there are still a few hills. Tatchell encourages solidarity and community activism as the way forward:
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'''Who's in it?''' Mr. Willem Dafoe.
  
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The Peter Tatchell Foundation (PTF) seeks to promote and protect the human rights of individuals, communities and nations, in the UK and internationally, in accordance with established national and international human rights law.
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'''Why are we excited?''' One of the greatest queer directors of all-time gets the biopic treatment (sort of) from the always controversial Ferrara. Pier Paolo Pasolini -- who was also a poet, novelist, agitator, journalist,  playwright, actor, painter, philosopher and communist, among other things -- is played by Willem Dafoe in the film, who looks at the last day of Passolini's life as he struggles with censors as he tries to finish his last film, "Salo, or the 120 Days of Justice." We have a feeling if there's anyone Passolini would want taking on his story, it's these two.
  
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Peter Tatchell is a pioneer and a distinctive voice in British politics. His portfolio of campaigning includes opposing Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988,the controversial addition of Section 2A to the Local Government Act 1986 (affecting England, Wales and Scotland and Northern Ireland), enacted on 24 May 1988.
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==Pride==
  
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The amendment stated that a local authority ‘shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality’ or ‘promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship’. It was repealed on 21 June 2000 in Scotland as one of the first pieces of legislation enacted by the new Scottish Parliament, and on 18 November 2003 in the rest of Great Britain by section 122 of the Local Government Act 2003.
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'''Who made it?''' Matthew Warchus, largely known for his work directing award-winning theater ("The God of Carnage," "Boeing Boeing," "Matilda The Musical").
  
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Tatchell has boosted tolerance and understanding, a human rights approach to personal but political beliefs.
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'''Who's in it?''' Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton, Dominic West, Andrew Scott, Paddy Considine, George MacKay and Ben Schnetzer
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* In 2009, he co-proposed a UN Global Human Rights Index, to measure and rank the human rights record of every country – with the aim of creating a human rights league table to highlight the best and worst countries and thereby incentivise governments to clean up their record and improve their human rights ranking.
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* He coordinated the Equal Love campaign from 2010, in a bid to challenge the UK’s twin legal bans on same-sex civil marriages and opposite-sex civil partnerships. The following year, he organised four gay couples and four heterosexual couples to file a case in the European Court of Human Rights, arguing that sexual orientation discrimination in civil marriage and civil partnership law is unlawful under Articles 8, 12 and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
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'''Why are we excited?''' "Pride" appears to be the gay answer to a long line of conventional but charming British dramas where folks find a way to come together to get ‘er done. The film—which won the Queer Palm for best LGBT film at Cannes—is set in the summer of 1984. Margaret Thatcher is in power and the National Union of Mineworkers is on strike, leading a London-based group of gay and lesbian activists to raise money to support the strikers’ families. Initially rebuffed by the Union, the group identifies a tiny mining village in Wales and sets off to make their donation in person. As the strike drags on, the two groups, of course, discover that “standing together makes for the strongest union of all.” Get ready to have your heart warmed, whether you like it or not.
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* He has proposed an internationally binding UN Human Rights Convention enforceable through both national courts and the International Criminal Court; a permanent rapid-reaction UN peace-keeping force with the authority to intervene to stop genocide and war crimes; and a global agreement to cut military spending by 10 percent to fund the eradication of hunger, disease, illiteracy, unemployment and homelessness in the developing world.
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==Stories of Our Lives==
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'''Who made it?''' The members of a Nairobi, Kenya-based arts collective -- who requested to have their names removed from the film "for fear of reprisal."
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'''Who's in it?''' Kenyans who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and intersex.  
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'''Why are we excited?''' "Stories Of Our Lives" mixes 5 short films -- "Duet," "Run," "Ask Me Nicely (Itisha Poa)," "Each Night I Dream," and "Stop Running Away" -- to create what looks to be a pioneering anthology about the lives of LGBT people in a part of the world we too often ignore. "Beyond the pervasive social and cultural conservatism of Kenyan society, the country's laws stigmatize and criminalize non-heterosexual identities, which has naturally resulted in the near-total absence of questions of sexual identity from Kenyan cinema," TIFF said. "'Stories of Our Lives' is both a labour of love and a bold act of militancy, defying the enforced silence of intolerance with tales rooted in the soil of lived experience."
  
  

Revision as of 15:48, 7 September 2014

PLEASE NOTE: Past Guest Commentary/Opinion articles can be viewed here.

10 LGBT Films We're Excited To See at the 2014 Toronto Film Festival

Contributor: Peter Knegt/Bent - a queer blog, Indiewire

The Toronto International Film Festival kicks off tonight in Canada's biggest city, and while we've already offered this list of potential fun nights out, we thought we should probably get to the films too. Because there's quite a few of considerable LGBT interest, most of them having their world premieres. Here, in alphabetical order, are 10 in particular we are excited for.

Cut Snake

Who made it? Chinese-born Australian gay director Tony Ayres, probably best known for 2002 drama "Walking on Water."

Who's in it? A bunch of very attractive actors we hadn't really heard of -- Alex Russell, Sullivan Stapleton, Jessica DeGuow -- but are looking forward to remembering from hereon in.

Why are we excited? There's been lots of strong buzz for this noir drama about an ex-con (Russell) whose seemingly happy wife with his wife (DeGuow) is interrupted by a mysterious man from his past (Stapleton). Noted as an "inspired variation on 'A History of Violence," it sounds like it also might have a bit of a "Brokeback Mountain" twist…

Do I Sound Gay?

Who made it? Brooklyn-based journalist David Thorpe, impressively making his feature film debut with a TIFF world premiere.

Who's in it? Um… like all our favorite people: Dan Savage, David Sedaris, George Takei, Margaret Cho and Tim Gunn.

Why are we excited? Thorpe uses the documentary to take a journey of discovery to confront his anxiety about "sounding gay," bringing along those noted famous names for perspective. It sounds both a hilarious and thought-provoking take on a much more complex issue than we might think.

The Duke of Burgundy

Who made it? British indie filmmaker Peter Strickland, known best for his acclaimed 2012 film "Berberian Sound Studio."

Who's in it? Sidse Babett Knudsen (who you might recognize from Danish TV drama "Borgen") and Chiara D'Anna (who was in "Berberian").

Why are we excited? As one might expect from Strickland, this looks like quite something. TIFF compared it to Luis Buñuel's "Belle de Jour" and Joseph Losey's "The Servant" and called it "by turns kinky, dryly comic and compelling surreal." So what it's about? An intense, sadomasochistic relationship between a wealthy amateur lepidopterist (Knudsen) and her newly hired housekeeper (D'Anna) -- who essentially becomes her sex slave.

Guidance

Who made it? Toronto filmmaker Pat Mills, making his feature film debut after a series of incredibly charming shorts (see "Pat's First Kiss" and "5 Dysfunctional People in a Car"!).

Who's in it? Mills himself plays the lead, with the supporting cast including Alex Ozerov ("Blackbird") and Zahra Bentham ("Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang).

Why are we excited? The dark comedy tells the story of David Gold (Mills), a closeted former child actor who, now in his mid-30s, is struggling to get work and has just been diagnosed with skin cancer. Desperate times call for desperate measures, so David forges his resume and gets a job as a high school guidance counsellor. Except it turns out he’s not such a good fit for the job, handing out bad advice and alcohol to teenagers as he continues his own private downward spiral. Early word is that it's quite the breakout for Mills.

The Humbling

Who made it? Barry Levinson, of "Rain Man," "Bugsy," "Wag The Dog," etc, etc, fame.

Who's in it? Al Pacino, Greta Gerwig, Dianne Wiest, Charles Grodin and Kyra Sedgwick.

Why are we excited? Word out of Venice was decent for just one part of Al Pacino's aggressive attempt at a 2014 renaissance ("Manglehorn" is also playing at the festival). Based on the Philip Roth novel, Pacino plays an aging actor whose life is dramatically altered when he begins an affair with an alleged lesbian named Pegeen (Gerwig). So I guess think "Chasing Pegeen," and though that makes it "LGBT content" questionable, the pedigree of the cast and filmmaker are too much not to keep us curious.

The Imitation Game

Who made it? Norway's Morten Tyldum, probably know best for for 2011's "Headhunters" (which also screened at TIFF).

Who's in it? Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley and Matthew Goode -- quite the trio.

Why are we excited? In the tradition of the big gay biopic with obvious dreams of Oscar nominations, "The Imitation Game" tells the story of closeted mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing, who played a key role in cracking Nazi Germany’s Enigma code, which in turn helped the Allies win World War II. What did they do to thank him in return? Just a few years after the war ended, Turing was prosecuted for homosexuality and subjected to chemical castration. It wasn’t until last year that the Queen of England granted Turing a posthumous pardon. Hopefully "The Imitation Game" works as an appropriate tribute to Turing (and word out of Telluride suggests it does), though it certainly bodes well that the film’s cast includes who it does.

Love in the Time of Civil War

Who made it? Acclaim Quebec director Rodrigue Jean, who won best Canadian feature at TIFF in 2008 with "Lost Song."

Who's in it? Alexandre Landry, who is a "2014 TIFF Rising Star" (a distinction focusing on new Canadian talent).

Why are we excited? This docudrama takes us deep into the bleak world of Montreal hustlers and junkies -- a narrative take on what director Jean explored in 2008 documentary "Men For Sale." It focuses on Alex (Landry), a drug addict and hustler who is drifting into oblivion. Given Jean's previous work, we fully expect a fearlessness to "Love in the Time of Civil War" that we too often don't get from depictions of male prostitution.

Pasolini

Who made it? Abel Ferrara, the bold mind behind "Bad Lieutenant," "The Funeral," "Dangerous Game," "Go Go Tales" and "4:44 Last Day on Earth"

Who's in it? Mr. Willem Dafoe.

Why are we excited? One of the greatest queer directors of all-time gets the biopic treatment (sort of) from the always controversial Ferrara. Pier Paolo Pasolini -- who was also a poet, novelist, agitator, journalist, playwright, actor, painter, philosopher and communist, among other things -- is played by Willem Dafoe in the film, who looks at the last day of Passolini's life as he struggles with censors as he tries to finish his last film, "Salo, or the 120 Days of Justice." We have a feeling if there's anyone Passolini would want taking on his story, it's these two.

Pride

Who made it? Matthew Warchus, largely known for his work directing award-winning theater ("The God of Carnage," "Boeing Boeing," "Matilda The Musical").

Who's in it? Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton, Dominic West, Andrew Scott, Paddy Considine, George MacKay and Ben Schnetzer

Why are we excited? "Pride" appears to be the gay answer to a long line of conventional but charming British dramas where folks find a way to come together to get ‘er done. The film—which won the Queer Palm for best LGBT film at Cannes—is set in the summer of 1984. Margaret Thatcher is in power and the National Union of Mineworkers is on strike, leading a London-based group of gay and lesbian activists to raise money to support the strikers’ families. Initially rebuffed by the Union, the group identifies a tiny mining village in Wales and sets off to make their donation in person. As the strike drags on, the two groups, of course, discover that “standing together makes for the strongest union of all.” Get ready to have your heart warmed, whether you like it or not.

Stories of Our Lives

Who made it? The members of a Nairobi, Kenya-based arts collective -- who requested to have their names removed from the film "for fear of reprisal."

Who's in it? Kenyans who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and intersex.

Why are we excited? "Stories Of Our Lives" mixes 5 short films -- "Duet," "Run," "Ask Me Nicely (Itisha Poa)," "Each Night I Dream," and "Stop Running Away" -- to create what looks to be a pioneering anthology about the lives of LGBT people in a part of the world we too often ignore. "Beyond the pervasive social and cultural conservatism of Kenyan society, the country's laws stigmatize and criminalize non-heterosexual identities, which has naturally resulted in the near-total absence of questions of sexual identity from Kenyan cinema," TIFF said. "'Stories of Our Lives' is both a labour of love and a bold act of militancy, defying the enforced silence of intolerance with tales rooted in the soil of lived experience."


Past Guest Commentary/Opinion articles can be viewed here.
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