Ibon Olaskoaga

Documentaries Coordinador

Documenting reality?

If we understand the meaning of Documentary Cinema as "the audiovisual expression of an author in documenting reality", we could state that the reality of the GLBT community is mainly formed by conflicts such as family rejection, confrontations with religious doctrine, persecution and exile to places of greater tolerance, the breaking of social conventions, the political fight for legal equality, the processes of adjustment of sexual identity, AIDS, etc. Clearly it is an exaggeration to state that there is only one body of gay documentary film making focusing solely on these conflicts, but also it is true that the volume of documentaries in the last few years reflecting directly on these issues is very wide, and confirms that many authors who document gay matters do so from the point of view of the genre only as a tool for combat and social criticism.

In the documentary section we wish to momentarily distance ourselves from these recurring themes, and since in this edition of FIRE!! we are specifically recognising creators, we shall focus on this occasion on biographical documentaries with a common denominator: the passion for artistic creation. Some of the biographies belong to persons of known popularity, others are less known to the general public but all of them are the honest reflections of individuals who have wanted to express their fundamental concerns and the heartbeat of their environment through artistic creation. All the documentaries are on first showing in Barcelona, they have a dozen of the most important prizes of the documentaries genre, and behind each one there is a point of view and the refined work of a film-maker, in the difficult task of transmitting the life and work of other authors.

To end we would like to make an observation: whilst the intention of the programmers in this edition of FIRE!! was to move away from these recurring themes to which we make reference, in the biographies of this year we also find conflicts of identity, social and family rejection, inequality of rights, AIDS, activism ... This is probably a confirmation that the reality of the GLBT community is heavily scarred by these conflicts. But perhaps also we can understand it as a demonstration of the fact that the conflicts in our real lives can be documented not only for the purely informative point of view of the combative reportage-documentary, but also from creative liberty and the multiple narrative possibilities which Documentary Cinema offers.

"With Gilbert + George"

Director: Julian Cole
Producer: Julian Cole
Documental, U.K. 2007
104 min

Premiere in Barcelona

Synopsis:

"With Gilbert + George" intimate and emotional portrait that show us for the first time how Gilbert Proesch and George Passmore, two of the most provocative and irreverent artists of the contemporary art world, really are.

Julian Cole, the director, met Gilbert & George in 1986, while working as a model for one of their artworks. He has been able to include some unprecedented images filmed throughout more than 18 years in London, Moscow, New York, and Beijing in his film, in order to make this film about the life and work of these artists from their humble beginnings until the present. Four decades are portrait with images and the voices of the couple as narrators.

Loved and hated, Gilbert & George have achieved the worldwide status of artistic leaders, and this film confirms the myth showing the individuality of two people who form a single artist, a living sculpture, a life transformed in its own artwork. "With Gilbert + George" gives us an unusual glimpse of the process of creating and thinking of this extraordinary couple. They are nonconformists, radicals, and this film helps us to understand their unique visual language, their art, and what they really think it should be the authentic legacy of art.

"Books of James"

Director: Ho Tam
Producer: Ho Tam
Documentary, Canada/U.S.A., 2006
74 min

Premiere in Spain

Synopsis:

Inspired in a collection of personal diaries, "Books of James" is an experimental documentary about Art, AIDS and Activism. Based on the notes, drawings, video recordings and personal revelations of James Wentzy, a New York artist and activist, this film show from a very personal point of view the social change in the U.S. from the late 70’s until the present time.

The story narrated in first person by James himself starts in home state of South Dakota and then moves to Now York, the city of his dreams and hopes, portraying his fight to survive as an artist in the Big Apple. One day, James Wentzy’s life radically changes when he becomes a video-activist in the fight against AIDS. "Books of James" is an intimate portrait of the unknown hero, a common man who revives past troubled and almost forgotten times, in addition of being a moving document of the fight to survive.

"Chris & Don, a love story"

Director: Guido Santi & Tina Mascara
Producer: Julia Scout, Tina Mascara, Guido Santi, James White
Special Appearances: Christopher Isherwood, Don Bachardy, Liza Minelli, Leslie Caron, Jack Larson, Gloria Stuart, John Boorman
Documentary, U.S.A. 2008
90 Min

Premiere in Spain

Synopsis:

"Chris & Don, a love story" is a tender and sweet portrait of the love story between the artist Don Bachardy and world famous novelist, Christopher Isherwood. It was a scandalous relationship in its time but it lasted until the death of the novelist. A life surrounded by controversy from the beginning, when Don Bachardy moved in with Isherwood after meeting him in a Californian beach. The painter was 18 and the novelist 50 years old.

Using photos, home made films, drawings and paintings, Guido Santi and Tina Mascara create a touching portrait of this long relationship that is focused no much in the work of both artists, but in their relationship. This includes parts of their diaries, letters, and novels from Ihserwood, narrated by the actor Michael York. It also includes interviews with Liza Minelli, Leslie Caron, Jack Larson, Gloria Stuart or John Boorman, as well as images of their closest friends such as Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, David Hockney, and Marilyn Monroe.

"Chris & Don, una historia de amor" is a revealing and touching documentary about this extraordinary couple that will give you a new point of view about love, age difference and lasting relationships.

"Annemarie Schwarzenbach: Une Suisse rebelle"

Director: Carole Bonstein
Producer: Nasser Bakhti
Documentary, Switzerland, 2000
58 min

Unpublished texts from Annemarie Schwarzenbach 1939

Director: Carole Bonstein
8min

Premiere in Spain

Synopsis:

Based in unseen archive materials, the first and only documentary about Annemarie Schwarzenbach is the portrait of a woman who belongs to a family of Nazi sympathizers and one of the largest fortunes of Zurich. Writer, journalist, and photographer, Ms. Schwarzenbach traveled around the world exposing from the European fascism to the exploitation of the American working class in the 30’s. She was a complex woman that pursued throughout her life the search of her own identity and fought drug addiction during her bohemian life in the Berlin of the 20’s and 30’s.

Carole Bonstein, the director, show us a fascinating story of a politically radical and romantic lesbian, who rejected the social role that her background had for her. Was she a hero? A woman without roots?... who Anne Marie Schwarzenbach really was?. "A Swiss Revel" digs in her life and work and leaves us with a sense of admiration and sorrow for the beauty of the character and the frustration of her life.

"Black, White + Gray. A Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe"

Director: James Crump
Producer: James Crump
With the testimonies of : Sam Wagstaff, Robert Mapplethorpe, Patti Smith, Henry Geldzahler, Truman Capote, Andy Warhol, Dominick Dunne, Agnes Martin
Documentary, United States, 2007
76 min

Premiere in Spain

Synopsis:

Black, white + gray could easily have been called "the prince and the punk", in clear reference to the life of Sam Wagstaff, an elegant and aristocratic photograph collector and commissioner of the arts, and of his lover Robert Mapplethorpe, a young working class man from the suburbs of Queens, interested not only in the artistic life of New York but also in its murky depths; under the tutelage of Sam, Mapplethorpe ends up becoming one of the most scandalous and infamous photographers of the 20th century.

The documentary shows us the evolution of the life and the relationship of the two artists in the context of the years of New York's debauchery, the 70's and 80's after Wagstaff takes Robert Mapplethorpe out of his suburban life, offers him a camera and introduces him into the art, creating without intending to the man whose images would provoke not only admiration but also the greatest repulsion. In exchange, Mapplethorpe takes the refined Wagstaff close to the dark world of drugs and sadomasochistic sex, as is well reflected in his first photographs.