German film Romeos present attitudes which director Sabine Bernadi said she has encountered among straight audiences.

By Shuan Sim

On the screen of the Světozor cinema in Prague, the movie Romeos was screening. A man emerges completely naked from a car with tinted windows, lights a cigarette and talks to the lead character of the movie. Moments later, two more men emerge from the car, also in various stages of undress.

None of the audience stirred. After all, they were attending the 12^th Mezipatra Film Festival, which celebrates and screens movies that deal with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and queer (LGBTQ) issues. What’s more interesting, however, is that approximately half of the attendees were straight, not gay.

Aleš Rumpel, director of Mezipatra, said the festival is unique in that half of the attendees identify as heterosexuals, according to festival surveys. Queer film festivals tend to have a higher homosexual attendance rate. “Directors who attend Mezipatra are surprised and say ‘I’ve never seen so many straight couples at a queer film festival before,’” Rumpel said.

More than 8,000 people attended this year’s Mezipatra Film Festival in Prague, November 10-16, despite the dismal cold and smog. The festival also screened films in Brno, the Czech Republic’s second largest city. Including Brno’s attendance, the total figures add up to about 11,000 people.

This year’s edition screened 84 films from 10 different countries from North America, Europe and Asia at the Lucerna and Světozor cinemas. STUD Brno, a civic association of gays and lesbians, organised the event.

The name Mezipatra means “mezzanine” in the Czech language. The name is a metaphor for a middle meeting ground for people from all walks of life, regardless of sexuality. It started as Rainbow over Brno in 2000, with eight features and documentary films, three theatre performances and fine art exhibitions; 800 people attended. In 2003, it took on the name Mezipatra and expanded to Prague.

The festival is the work of grassroots groups and the enthusiasm of people who wanted to show queer films at a time when it was impossible to find any. Today, it also brings LGBTQ issues to the general public, straight or otherwise.

The generally under-discussed complexities the transgender community experiences are among some of the issues the festival regularly explores. In this year’s line-up was the German film Romeos: Lukas was born female but identifies as male, even though he (formerly she) is interested in men, and undergoes hormonal treatments to become a boy. The movie explores the emotional traumas of integrating into society and highlights breast-removal surgery. The British film Weekend, which won the festival audience award, portrays an intense weekend of sex and love between two men who met at a bar.

Some other films were particularly inscrutable. The Japanese film Kazoku Complete came with this  description: “Porn actor, Imaizumi Koichi, is directing and also starring as the constantly drowsy grandfather of a family that is hit by a virus compelling all of the family to rape grandpa. Warning: at your own risk only.”

Utopians is non-linear narrative about a yoga teacher, his daughter and her girlfriend, who yearns for a baby.

Rumpel said Mezipatra’s line-up of movies seeks to present adventurous programming and to mix alternative films with mainstream ones. He cited Utopians, an experimental film by theatre video artist Zbigniew Bzymek. Bzymek’s first feature-length film, Utopians is non-linear narrative about a yoga teacher, his masculine daughter who just returned from the military, and her schizophrenic girlfriend, who yearns for a baby.

Sara Harrington, 22, a senior at George Washington University, came to Prague specifically for Mezipatra with her classmates from her school’s Transnational Film and LGBTQ Cultures course. She didn’t like Utopians at all, calling it a “bunch of disjointed scenes that had no meaning at all.” Her teacher and many of her classmates shared her opinion, she said, adding that her favourite part of the movie was when it ended.

Such adventurous programming may have turned off people who attended in the past. Vladimír Černý, an NYU RA and Charles University student, used to purchase a multiple-day pass in past years. This year he did not attend Mezipatra. “Many of the movies might not even have a meaning or point to them at all,” he said.

Harrington’s teacher, Robert McRuer, said he feels that the festival did a better job of making sure the films have English subtitles this year. “The first year [I attended], there was a German film that we thought had English subtitles, but turned out only to be in Czech,” he said.

American directors Todd Haynes and Tom Kalin were among the invited guests at this year’s festival. The festival screened Kalin’s films Swoon and Savage Grace, both of which concern murder. “I’m here to put the ‘homo’ back in ‘homicide,’” Kalin said. In addition Kalin’s other films, Mezipatra also showed Hayne’s Far From Heaven, alongside more mainstream LGBTQ movies such as the Golden Globe Award winning The Kids Are All Right.

Sabine Bernardi, director of Romeos, which was the second-favourite in the audience contest, said LGBTQ films are underrepresented in the film industry. Festivals such as Mezipatra are important to her because they not only promote her work but also give her opportunity to interact with audiences. “It’s important for me to see the reactions of the audience in person,” she said, walking into a screening of Romeos that is filling up fast. “It’s exciting that there’s a crowd, but it’s always exciting at every film screening.”

Bernadi said she hopes her film not only conveyed the story of transgender people to those who’ve never heard of the issue. Bernadi uses the film to present questions and attitudes she has encountered among straight audiences about transgender people. For example, a lesbian character asks Lukas, the sex-changed female-to-male, “If you loved men, why could you not have stayed a woman?” The scene touches on important ideas that gender identity and sexual preferences can be combined in many ways.

It’s a complex issue – one that Mezipatra continues to explore.