Author: Kalvin Hartwig

Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives (1992) screens on Dec. 7

On Dec. 7 Cinema Politica will be putting on their last screening of the Fall: Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives. The screening will be accompanied by a book launch with Queer Film Classics. This award-winning documentary, originally released by the National Film Board in 1992, follows the early life stories of several lesbian women. The film will be screened in the 2014 digitally remastered version.

Forbidden Love is largely a series of informative interviews with a handful of senior queer women who share details of their younger lives, mostly from the ‘40s through the ‘60s.  Some of the first interviews highlight how these women first realized their sexuality, which for some was through a genre of books known as “lesbian novels.” Lesbian novels were dramatic stories of two females who fell in love but—in reflection of the times—were usually punished for their behaviour, and the stories ended in tragedy.

This tendency for unhappy endings was challenged by Ann Bannon, who wrote a famous series of lesbian novels whose heroines could stay happy together. Bannon is one of the women interviewed in Forbidden Love.

Lesbian novels may have made an impression on the film’s writers-directors, Lynne Fernie and Aerlyn Weissman, because they open the documentary not with interviews but with the beginning of a fictional narrative presumably between two queer lovers separated by society. The interviews then start but are all throughout briefly interrupted by a continuation of the short story. The two aspects of the film go back and forth until the short story’s steamy ending, which is also the ending of the documentary itself. The ending is not as sexually explicit as Blue Is the Warmest Color, but may have been controversial back in 1992.

These women’s stories really lead the audience to understand the risks that were taken in a time when homosexuality was illegal. Their anecdotes range widely from accounts of abuse, to first experiences in a gay bar, to finding solace in community and are often funny and sometimes sad.

The film is also geographically diverse, as the guests come from across Canada, and racially diverse, with white, black or aboriginal women interviewed.

The lesbian-novel-inspired narrative is a fun framing to the film, but is a bit distracting from the deep interviews being offered. Fortunately, it does not take up much screen time—perhaps just over 11 minutes spaced throughout the film.

Though some of the outfits may be straight out of an episode of the Golden Girls (which may not really be a bad thing) and a bit of the music could be considered corny, this documentary is considered a classic for a reason. The interviews are excellent and the histories are invaluable.

Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives is screening is on Dec. 7 in room H-110 at 7 p.m. Co-directors Lynn Fernie and Aerlyn Weissman will be among several special guests in attendance.

The latest documentary presented by Cinema Politica shows a fight for independance

Perhaps you’ve looked at a map of Africa and wondered why Western Sahara looks so different from its surrounding countries, usually with its name italicized and separated from Morocco with a dashed border.

Or maybe you already know about Western Sahara and have a thirst to learn more, in which case you should watch Life is Waiting: Referendum and Resistance in Western Sahara for its depiction of the unique predicament of Western Sahara and its independence movement. Written and directed by Iara Lee, this one-hour documentary gives an introduction to the fight for self-determination by the Sahrawis of Western Sahara, which was once a colony of the Spanish empire, and is now a territory occupied by Morocco. Through music, art, film and other peaceful means, you can learn from the different struggles experienced over the years by young and old alike as Western Saharans face war and difficult life conditions.

The documentary starts off with a short but necessary history lesson. Seemingly successful in its fight for independence from Spain in 1975, Western Sahara soon found itself embroiled in a war with Morocco and Mauritania, and then just Morocco.

In 1991, peace was achieved between Western Sahara and Morocco with assistance from the United Nations. However, according to the film, the hoped-for referendum to finally achieve full independence was unsuccessful, and was not pushed for hard enough by the global community. Now with Morocco occupying most of the land and coastal sea and with very little attention from outsiders, the film focuses on those Sahrawi activists who are attempting to continue their struggle through creative means.

To some, Life is Waiting will remind them of 2007’s The Devil Came on Horseback for its review of the conflict in Darfur and the struggle for media attention and global intervention. But unlike The Devil Came on Horseback, which follows one protagonist throughout the documentary, Life is Waiting highlights the many artists and other activists who are living in occupied Western Sahara, in Spain as exiles and in Algeria as refugees. This may be both the film’s strength and one of its flaws. On one hand, the viewer gets to learn from multiple activists who use many different methods, including rap and poetry, to reach a wider audience that may push governments to offer political assistance. On the other hand, the viewer may feel like hearing about a single activist more in depth.

One activist who stuck out, and may resonate with some of the more musically inclined audience members, was Mariem Hassan, a singer-activist for the movement.

“I was a young girl at that time [of the movement for independence from Spain]. Songs were used to motivate people to stand up against the Spanish occupation, demonstrating and singing patriotic songs. Youth back then were no different than youth today … Youth is behind all action. In that era, songs were our source of education and our weapon. People would come rushing to listen to the verses,” she said.

And indeed, there is a lot of beautiful music throughout the film. If not for the activism, then at least the music and arresting visuals of the Sahara landscape, this is a documentary worth watching.

Cinema Politica is hosting the Canadian premiere on Monday, Nov. 2 from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. at Concordia’s Alumni Auditorium, H-110. There will be a Skype question-and-answer session with the film’s co-producer and activist Salah Abdelahe. To learn more about this documentary and others being shown by Cinema Politica in the coming months, look them up on Facebook at Cinema Politica Concordia.

Ugandan-set The Boda Boda Thieves follows a boy who gets in with the wrong crowd

Directors Donald Mugisha and James Tayler bring you a taste of the challenges of living in Uganda with their film The Boda Boda Thieves. Follow Abel, a 15-year-old boy who isn’t known to work hard but attempts to prove himself and break into adulthood when a crisis hits his family.

There are two things one should know going into the film: one, a small motorcycle used as a taxi is called a “boda boda” in Uganda, and two, for much of the population, every day is a real struggle to make ends meet.

At the beginning of the film, we see that instead of searching for work that would help his struggling family get by, Abel enjoys hanging out with friends and gambling with his mother’s money—money meant to cover his transportation costs. Abel’s family is far from rich. His father is a boda boda driver, and his mother works at the quarry breaking small rocks with a hammer. Abel’s father is given one last chance by a wealthy lender to pay back a loan for his boda boda, or else he will risk getting arrested or losing it. So when the father is injured in an accident and can no longer earn money from driving, the family faces a real crisis. Abel offers to be a driver to finally prove himself.

After facing a day of tough challenges, Abel decides to take a shortcut from hard work and teams up with a thief who promises easy money and fun times in exchange for Abel being his driver. This is one of a series of mistakes made by Abel, and he ends up losing the boda boda. The film then exits a linear approach and we must wait to learn how Abel lost his motorcycle in the first place.

The film is entertaining and also introduces the audience to the challenges of living in urban Uganda. The non-linear approach to the storyline provides some extra tension, but the acting isn’t very strong across the board, and leaves the viewer wanting more. Some shots use the shaky camera technique but it isn’t done to a head-spinning degree. There are several artsy camera angle shots of the protagonist, but it was somewhat disappointing not to see beautiful images of the landscape near the capital city of Kampala, which really can be breathtaking. It was also disappointing not to see more of the strong anti-thievery culture that I witnessed while visiting that country last year. For example, if one was to yell “thief!” while chasing someone through the streets, that person being chased would likely get stopped by passers-by. Perhaps the directors felt these things would distract from the darker mood of the film.

The film is only 85 minutes long, so despite the not exceptionally strong acting from some of the cast and the occasional minor error in the English subtitles, you might want to watch it—if not for sheer Oscar-winning entertainment, at least for a perspective of life as an individual who is trying to get by in urban Uganda, one we don’t hear about much in Canada.

The Boda Boda Thieves is being shown as part of the Montreal International Black Film Festival. You can catch it on Oct. 4 at Cinéplex Quartier Latin at 3 p.m.