Film Series: "East of eden" - Asian Film Festival Barcelona

Casa Asia collaborates one more year with the International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival of Barcelona Fire !! programming the East of Eden cycle with three titles of the current Asian film scene, which coincide in the need to publicize the problems of LGBT communities, which are sometimes hidden or deliberately ignored.

We will begin the journey of this collaboration in a country like Japan. Portraits of the Rainbow (2018), the first film, will reveal the story of Leslie Kee and her photographic project with the aim of portraying ten thousand LGBTQ people. We will travel to Vietnam with the beautiful Song Lang (2018), a love story built from the fatality that feeds on the narrative of the classic Vietnamese opera. Finally, we will also go to Australia to relive one of the key moments for the decriminalization of homosexuality in 1975, with the magnificent film Riot (2018).

PROGRAMMING

Thursday, May 30, 2019, 8 pm at Cinemes Girona

The famous photographer Leslie Kee is mostly known for his fashion photographs and portraits of celebrities such as Madonna. He works all over the world and has been living in Japan for 25 years, a country that knows a boom in the movement for LGBTQ rights, although there are many who must continue to keep his sexual orientation hidden there. Leslie himself, being gay, can not tell his family, who resides in Singapore. Even so, he embarks on an ambitious project to photograph ten thousand LGBTQ people, in order to make the exhibition Out in Japan. The first time, in the conservative Japanese city of Nara, there is little assistance, but Leslie continues to make portraits.

The filmmaker Ayumi Nakagawa followed this photographer for a year, while making the first thousand portraits. It focused on the lives of four people: a couple of women who were trying to be mothers, an advocate for people with HIV and a transgender man who was grieving after his partner’s suicide. Along the way, Leslie himself was transforming little by little too, thanks to this moving experience.

Friday, May 31, 2019, 20.00 at Cinemes Girona

Saigon, in the 1980s. Linh Phung is the star of an itinerant company of cai luong (traditional folk opera) and is heavily indebted to a lender called Dung, El Rayo. Despite apparently having nothing in common, the two engage in a game playing a video game and discover that they have similar minds and many points of connection. Linh Phung knows that a well-lived life is necessary for his art and Dung yearns for art to return to a life more worthy of being lived. History, rooted in fatalism and fatality, is inspired by the classical narrative structure of Vietnamese opera.

Born and raised in Saigon, Leon moved to the United States as a teenager and is a dancer, singer and actor. Song Lang, his first feature film, can be considered a very mature work, resulting from personal experience committed to his vocation, uniting his sensitivity as a photographer and actor.

Thursday, June 13, 2019, 22.0 0h in French Institute

Sunday, June 16, 2019, 8:00 pm at the French Institute

In 1978, when the urge to decriminalize homosexuality in Australia had stalled, a group of activists decided that they should make a last attempt to celebrate who they are. Led by a former union leader, Lance Gowland, they obtain a permit from the police and spread the word. On a cold winter night, they disguise themselves, shake hands and parade down Oxford Street. But, they completely ignore that the police, furious, are on the lookout, and the courage they find that night will finally mobilize the whole country.

Riot sheds a revealing light on the movement for gay and lesbian rights in Australia and makes us relive the enthusiasm of people who, despite their enormous daily difficulties, managed to celebrate diversity at a key moment in the history of the LGBTQ community .

Date

30 / 05/2019> 06/16/2019

Schedule

From May 30 to June 16, 2019.

Place

Girona Girona

c / Girona, 175

Barcelona

French Institute

Moià 8

Barcelona

Entrance

General entry: 6 euros | Price paid and partners of the Cinemes Girona: 5 euros | French Institute entrance: 5.36 euros

Organizer

Casa Asia | French Institute | Cinemes Girona | International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival of Barcelona Fire !!, with the collaboration of Cinhomo and Fundación Triangle Castilla y León