Presentation

Santos Felix

President of Casal Lambda

I want to welcome you, as President of Casal Lambda, to the 15th edition of the Gay & Lesbian Mostra Internacional. This year, the main events will be held at the French Institute in Barcelona, an institution that has been a reference point in Barcelona’s cultural life. It’s a fortunate coincidence, that this year as we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Gay & Lesbian Liberation Movement in Catalonia and Spain, we also pay tribute to the French Movement, because they support was a key element in our success.

Forty years ago, activists such as Armand de Fluvià, who where working underground, stood up to Franco’s Regime by creating the “Movimiento Español de Liberación Homosexual MELH”, while in the Spanish Parliament a new law about “dangerous people to society and rehabilitation” was being discussed. André Baudry, a French activist and editor of the magazine Arcadie from 1954 until 1982, was a key element at designing the strategy that helped rewrote the law concerning homosexuals.

This collaboration marked the origin of our organization and France as a place where Human Rights were defended. Four decades have passed, Spain is now a democracy, and the dictatorship and its repression are long gone. Now, LGTB rights are recognized and protected by law, but there is a lot of work to be done to achieve the normalization of the homosexual community within the society. Movies contribute in a very special way to reach this goal: the chance to show everyone the reality of gays, lesbians, and transgender communities.

This is why I want you all to come and watch these feature films, documentaries and short films that the Mostra’s team has prepared for us. We will be able to appreciate the work of artists from around the world and especially from French filmmakers.

¡Please, enjoy the films!

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Pierre Raynaud

Director of the French Institute

As Director of a French Institute, which was a refuge for intellectuals and artists during the Franco dictatorship, it seemed obvious to me that within these walls we should host an artistic demonstration of the quality of the FIRE!! Mostra. It is a festival which attempts to break down barriers and rid us of the prejudices between the hetero and homosexual communities. In a Europe now well advanced in terms of homosexual marriage legislation, unfortunately we still see that the weight of moral issues makes difficult any attempts at 'normalisation' of such a numerous community, which wishes to fully accept its orientation and have access to a 'normality' of citizenship as regards paternity, professional life and democratic expression.

Therefore, the FIRE!! Mostra at the French Institute is like saying to the population of Barcelona, and among them the intellectual, artistic, political and economic elites, that the marginalisation of the homosexual community is now 'obsolete', and that homophobia, latent or otherwise, is an outmoded curse which should be seen to disappear. Barcelona, as a Mediterranean metropolis, and the French Institute will thus set an example of an open demonstration in a historically welcoming cultural institution, anchored in the Catalan landscape, setting an example of tolerance, sharing and modernity.

From this starting point, your presence during the FIRE!! Mostra with us, from 1st to 9th July, takes on its full significance; it is a question of activating a healthy and generous "curiosity", and a keenness to discover, to understand, and to accept. Because FIRE!! is an entirely artistic demonstration, and not just a demonstration of a closed and intolerant community that keeps to itself, and only wishes to appeal to itself. FIRE!! takes place to promote understanding, to make the world feel the difference which in no way confronts men and women, but rather makes them grow.

Welcome to Your Home.

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Joako Ezpeleta

Director of the FIRE!! Mostra

This 15th edition of the International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival (the 'Mostra') of Barcelona is also the third under the name FIRE!!, directed by a new team whose aim was to open up their proposal to the general public, in general to refresh its image, enhance its presence in the city, offer writer-directed films which independent and first showings, and also to widen the focus and vision of a reality such as human sexuality, which is continually changing, with constantly blurred limits, and which this year should be celebrated.

If we have always argued from here that the mental barriers should be broken down to move ahead, we should also aim for the same in relation to the physical body. As we shall see, by way of the films which have been selected, and the philosophy hiding behind them, sexuality and gender take on a new meaning which render the labels of man and woman, heterosexual and homosexual, bisexual or transsexual simplistic and reductionist. Thus, they show us that the future will be written without gender and without labels.

The body as a celebration of life, sexuality as fulfilment, the joy of being ... this is now our message after years of vindication and positioning, of action and speech; because we insist that any relationship between consciously consenting adults is welcome, without limits, without prejudices, without fear and any adaptation of the body to the reality of the mind is just and necessary. One of the reasons behind the homophobia which is most difficult to treat is that which derives from the hate of sex, fear of the body, rejection of sexuality itself, whether homosexual or heterosexual, which is generated not only by mental imbalances but also by many of the planet's religions. However, from the Mostra we always vindicate the right to live sexuality from many points of view, from self-discovery to simple enjoyment, from the love of experimentation from self-affirmation to liberation; sexuality as one of the fundamental parts of physical and spiritual balance.

Welcome to the FIRE!! Mostra, in which this year we want to celebrate the fact that, despite everything, we are alive.