Presentation

Santos Félix

President of the Casal Lambda

As President of the Casal Lambda, the organisers of the gay and lesbian film festival Fire!!, I would like to welcome you to the 2011 edition of the festival.
We start on a very significant date for the gay, lesbian and transsexual communities – 28th June - which is not only the day of the claim for rights, but also the day of visibility of the various ways of interpreting being gay, lesbian or transsexual.

As is the case every year, we have a theme running through the majority of the films and documentaries. This year, making the most of the opportunity that cinema allows us to make issues visible, we make reference to the world of women and the feminine. When we talk about homosexuality there is a tendency to concentrate on gay men, forgetting that lesbian women also exist with a real presence and with their own specific problems. The films and documentaries we shall show will allow us to reflect on and draw conclusions from the life experiences that are explained and reflected on the cinema screen, which is something we always look to achieve in the ‘Mostra’.

It should be remembered that the Mostra is open to everyone, and whoever wants to see good cinema has a magnificent opportunity to enjoy the works presented from various countries.

I would like to thank all those who have cooperated and others whose work makes the Mostra possible. The management team, the Casal Lambda volunteers and the sponsors. In particular thanks to the French Institute of Barcelona, Casa Asia and FNAC, the centres where the films and documentaries will be shown, and the support of the Department of Culture of the Catalan Government, the Barcelona City Council and the Regional Council (‘Diputació’) of Barcelona.

I hope you enjoy these days and nights of good cinema above all, and all the parallel activities which we have organised.

* * *

Pierre Reynaud

Director of the French Institute

Dear friends,

This “dear friends” should not be interpreted as giving supremacy to males, as “dear friends” is obviously directed not only to men but also to women.

As “Fire!!” dedicates its 2011 edition to the feminine in cinema, this is also and above all to break the clichés connected to the homosexual ‘fact’. It is with this ambition and this demand that the French Institute opens its doors to this 16th ‘Mostra’, the Gay and Lesbian Film Festival of Barcelona. It is with this requirement and generosity in our desire to explain, pacify and share that the French Institute of Barcelona has chosen to debate with the Fire!! team, not in relation to its editorial style or the programme, but rather in relation to the opening up of an entire cinematographic genre which for a long time has been reaffirmed in some countries, some of which are less advanced than Spain where laws in favour of homosexuals are concerned.

Therefore, the question should be: “What is the feminine in cinema?” I would not dare to describe such a profile in a definitive way, as the meaning of the feminine is a mystery which is difficult for me to analyse fully, despite a long and attentive observation. However, and as I love human beings, I would risk outlining some hypotheses of what the feminine essence in each of us is, beyond a person’s sex, social or ethnic origin of their sexual orientation.

If we are led to believe the masculine is ‘clarity’, the feminine would be ‘haziness’. If the masculine were ‘certainty’, the feminine would be ‘doubt’. If the masculine were ‘strength’, the feminine would be ‘sweetness’. If the masculine were ‘instinct’, the feminine would be ‘intuition’. If the masculine were ‘evident’, the feminine would be ‘ellipsis’.

But each one of us is the sum of complex and sometimes contradictory essences. It is this alchemy which makes us human: extracting from the feminine, as from virility, an important part of our foundation.

To me it seems particularly interesting to observe that for film-makers the role of the feminine is preponderant. How? I would classify this femininity in cinema as represented in an ‘unfocused’ way. In other words, in the same way that the frame, the light and the movement give rise to unconscious curiosity in the ‘voyeur’ to read what is not shown, the feminine would take refuge is a type of invisible alchemy which our feminine side would recognise and decode by empathy, without formulating it in a firm and definitive way. This vision would thus be ‘hazy’, ‘uncertain’, ‘sweet’, ‘intuitive’ or even ‘elliptical’. This is a personal and intimate point of view which I propose putting forward for debate between the 28th June and the 9th July.

We hope that soon, as the organising team says, that the Mostra FIRE!! disappears, to the benefit of the commercial circuits and the numerous Catalan and Spanish film-makers. Whilst we wait to wake up mentalities and end prejudices, I am very glad to be able to welcome you all, men and women, to the home of the French Institute.