22nd connecticut gay and lesbian film festival

Sex Positive

Daryl Wein, 2008, USA, 75 min

Maybe it took somebody with no investment in the sexual-culture wars of the 1980s, like 24-year-old filmmaker Daryl Wein, to rediscover a lightning-rod figure like safe-sex pioneer Richard Berkowitz and present him without prejudice. A one-time S/M hustler, Berkowitz and his friend Michael Callen, supported by controversial AIDS researcher Joseph Sonnabend, began urging gay men to avoid unprotected sex as early as 1982 -- and were treated as pariahs by the mainstream gay community. Berkowitz is a fascinating, prickly, decidedly unsaintly character, and Wein's film provides a fascinating and crucial slice of traumatic sexual history that's all but invisible to younger generations.

GRAND JURY PRIZE WINNER – L.A. Outfest

Richard Berkowitz will be present at the screening for an open discussion after the film.

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PROGRAM

Just a Kiss

Michael Wilde, 2008, USA, 3 min

Why gay men like gay porn: for the kissing scenes. An homage to kissing in queer films.

PRECEDED BY:

Shorts Program: Dangerous Love

The Casuarina Cove (Tanjong Rhu)

Boo Junfeng, 2009, Singapore, 19 min

(In English & Mandarin with English subtitles)

Tanjong Rhu is a secluded beach on the east coast of Singapore, and a popular cruising ground for gay men. In an entrapment exercise in 1993, twelve men were arrested there and sentenced to imprisonment and caning. In this fictionalized account of what has happened since then, a former military officer seeks closure by making a documentary film about a man with whom he had furtively encountered in Tanjong Rhu many years ago.

The Young And Evil

Julian Breece, 2008, USA, 15 min

A highly intelligent, but troubled, gay black teenager sets out to seduce an HIV-positive prevention advocate into giving him the virus.

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Kaveri, A Mate

Teemu Nikki, 2007, Finland, 7 min

Pera wants to try something kinky. When he asks his band mate for some help, he's quite willing to do so. However, Pera's wife comes home a bit too soon in this humorous and quirky film. In Finnish with English subtitles.

Sweat

John Lochland, 2008, United Kingdom, 15 min

Simon spends an afternoon in a gay sauna to find out if he's as hung up about sex as he thinks he is. He leaves after finding out a lot more about the world of casual sex and discovers he's much more open minded than he ever thought.

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