The Male Gaze is a new series of releases from New Queer Visions that showcases short LGBTQ films from across the world. The first instalment, First Kiss, brings together five shorts that are based around men experiencing romantic and/or sexual interaction with other men for the first time. It takes in films from Sweden, Indonesia, USA, Australia and France giving a rounded look at how similar experiences are depicted across the world. The films are: Naked [Naken] (2013); Pria (2017); Walk With Me (2018), One Night Only (2018); Michel's Mouse [Tapette] (2016).
Maki, a creative executive with a deep-seated loathing for vegetables, meets Nagisa, a closeted gay vegetarian with amazing cooking skills and they end up as roommates. Being complete opposites, the two initially clash. But Maki falls for Nagisa and his food over time. As they begin accepting the other as they are, a unique relationship flourishes.
Fourteen years after the events of the first film, a series of encounters between people in Britain reminds us that in these different times Love, actually exists.
In the Fridge for Love
Blending fantasy and reality, this animated short is a bold inquiry into an as yet unresolved problem - the nature of human identity. When a scientist creates a machine that can make copies of physical objects, including humans, a number of ethical questions arise. Is the technique moral? What of its safety? A film by Oscar-winning filmmaker John Weldon (who also wrote the catchy banjo tune that punctuates the story's changing moods).
Simmons, best-known for her photographs of miniature rooms populated by dolls and of oversized objects—such as a house, birthday cake, and pistol—balanced on female legs, both human and fake, brings these characters to life in a three-act mini-musical. The film is inspired by three distinct periods of Simmons’s photographic work: vintage hand puppets, ventriloquist dummies and walking objects enact tales of ambition, disappointment, love, loss, and regret. Working with composer Michael Rohaytn ("Personal Velocity") and cameraman Ed Lachman ("The Virgin Suicides" and "Far From Heaven"), Simmons’s puppets come to life in miniature domestic scenes that echo real life.
While a gay high school student babysits a sassy, precocious kid from a broken home, he learns that the teen wrestler he pines for has died in a car accident and his lesbian friend is to blame. Now, the trio must dispose of the body.
Ben is an art college student in London, whose imagination runs wild as he works the late-night shift at the local supermarket. What do he and his colleagues do to pass the long, endless hours of the night?
On Motunui, Maui tries to catch a fish with his magical fishhook, only to be comically foiled by the ocean.
Meeper and the ChubbChubbs go to the North Pole; when Santa Claus is injured and can't deliver his presents, he is replaced by Meeper.
More interested in romance than sex, "Formula 17" swoons with youthful innocence. Naive country-boy Tien-Tsai travels to Taipei, where his quest to lose his virginity is impeded by his insistence on finding true love first. The film's Chinese title translates as "17-Year-Old's World" which accurately describes its niche.
Spain, 1953. Pedro Zaragoza, mayor of the city of Benidorm, in the province of Alicante, by the Mediterranean Sea, visits the Palacio del Pardo, General Franco's residence in Madrid, to ask him for help, in the hope of solving a very delicate problem.
Yaji and Kita are two men who live in Edo. They are deeply in love. Yaji is married to a woman, while Kita is an actor addicted to various drugs.
Fallen Art presents the story of General A, a self-proclaimed artist. His art, however, consists of a deranged method of stop motion photography, where the individual frames of the movie are created by photographs made by Dr. Johann Friedrich, depicting the bodies of dead soldiers, pushed down by Sergeant Al from a giant springboard onto a slab of concrete.
Marc and Emma move into a new house but have no idea that their basement was a gay nightclub. To make matters worse, the club was destroyed by fire, and now the house is haunted by the ghosts of five gay clubbers.
From Richard Gale, mad maker of CRITICIZED, comes a film that will never have you looking at cutlery the same way again. Set-up as an epic-length trailer for an upcoming release, HORRIBLY SLOW... depicts a man's endless pursuit by what has got to be one of the most determined and patient murderers the screen has ever seen.
Stacey is an executive in a cosmetic and fashion company. Expecting a big promotion and crushed when her roommate, Lisa gets it instead, Stacey plans her revenge. Unknown to her boss and her fellow co-worker, Robin, Stacey has developed a shrinking ray with the help of Dr. Baines. She confronts Lisa first, shrinks her down to bite size and devours her. To eliminating any witnesses, Stacey eats Dr. Baines and then turns her attention to Robin and her boss, Trish. Each of them is reduced in size and then EATEN ALIVE!
Blind man and apple pie connoisseur Walter Cookeventures to his neighborhood corner store to buy milk and apples. When mafia thugs try to shake down the storeowner, Walter shows them what a blind martial artist is capable of!
Charley, a cyborg vampire who does the Vatican's dirty work, is the thrall of the local vampire playboy Johnny Rayflo. As the two fight crime—and each other—hilarity, violence and sacrilege ensue! But can Charley resist his own desperate cravings for blood? Find out as the devilish duo go up aginst a childlike vampire princess, a mysterious branch of the Unitarian Church...and one another.
A coming-of-age comedy about a 14-year-old boy whose best friend tries to 'cure' him of being gay.