From under the oppression

LGBT Festival started in St. Petersburg

In St. Petersburg, the sixth LGBT festival "BOC ON BOK" was opened. Until November 30, 32 paintings plan to show on four film sites

Frame from the movie "Matterhorn"

The Bok O Bok festival in St. Petersburg was established in 2008. His birth itself was accompanied by violent disputes and scandal: under one or another pretext (the most common - “non -compliance with fire safety rules”) The festival was left without a platform before the opening. Since then, practically no show has passed calmly.

Call about "mining"

This year, the opening of the film space, in which everyone has the opportunity to peacefully discuss issues of homosexuality, bisexuality and transgender (LGBT), was accompanied by another incident. At seven o’clock in the evening, half an hour before the opening, a call to “mining” received a call to the Warsaw Express cinema. The result is the evacuation of all the guests who have already come (as well as visitors to the entire Warsaw Express) and the transfer of the beginning of the festival for more than an hour.

“We are just a film festival, but it seems that organizing a show is to perform some kind of military operation,” said Gulya Sultanova, head of the film festival, at the opening. - To think over the fronts, think about support, think over the possible moves of opponents. But the fact that you did not leave, what you stayed means that what we do is necessary and important, and we will continue. ”

The Commissioner for Human Rights in St. Petersburg, Alexander Shilov (one of the ardent supporters of the festival), no one invited to the stage, but he decided that since he "here with everyone froze", he had the "right to say." And he said that holding such a festival is a vivid example of the fight against all the signs of xenophobia in the country. He also emphasized that the President of the Russian Federation against all xenophobia, against ...

In a city where the deputy Milonov shows a stormy anti -Giyan activity and where the first antigen law was born, this sounded almost like a spell.

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"We are just a film festival, but it seems that organizing a show is to perform some kind of military operation"

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The opening ceremony was canceled due to an hourly delay, but the Dutch film brought to the opening was shown in a complete timing. “Matterhorn” (the so -called mountain peak in the Pennin Alps, on the border of Switzerland and Italy, 4477 meters high) is a naive, kind, sad and true story told by director Dideric Ebbing. The story of loneliness, about religion, about the middle class, about the society of consumption, about Catholic morality and about God. About God as love, which sometimes breaks even behind the thick walls of all of the above. He breaks through in the image of a “wordless sheep”, which can only say “me”, “aha” and the crown - “amin”.

For “uninvited invasion”, love receives, of course, not gratitude, but the wall of the house with the inscription “Sodom and Gomorrah” ...

They promised to conduct ...

In total, this year, for nine days of the festival, 32 paintings are planned to be shown, among which three collections of “short meter” and ten full -length films. Among them are the “life of Adele” Abladetif Keshish (France), “Tom on the farm” of Xavier Dolan (Canada/France), “Do not turn off the light” of Aira Sax (USA). The program includes winners and participants of Sundancefilmfestival, Cannes, Berlin festivals. Many films in Russia will show for the first time. Sessions are scheduled for four city film sites. Closer to the closure, a special show of the famous film “Harvey Milk” and a meeting with director Gus Van Sent are planned.

Despite the numerous scandals, attention, support from Russian and foreign film and art press (almost a third of all invited guests of the festival preferred to communicate in his native German and English), as well as endless trials, the festival is fighting, and even in the city where the law “On banning propaganda of homosexuality and pedophilia among minors” acts, not Makes the impressions of the "oppressed". 400 thousand rubles for the fine, written to the director after the festival’s charge of performing the functions of the Foreign Agent, found in less than a month, the venues for the cinema location were provided by the notonals of the city’s cultural space. Even the police at the opening of the festival promised to hold transsexuals and their guests to the metro (what is there, even if the “president is against xenophobia”) ...

The problem, however, is not in the ostentatious guardianship of the state that provides pseudo-protection at 20 meters of asphalt, but in the fact that the child, only suspected of homosexuality, is not only in the city school from the persecution of classmates and grief pedagogues. But this will hardly be interested in the police, preoccupied with checking the next building for compliance with fire safety rules.