The image is a colour still from the short film Dungareess. It shows the torso of a pale-skinned person waist length brown hair, wearing a blue T-shirt and green trousers patterned with white ferns. Someone unseen is sitting behind this person, and stretching their right arm through beneath the visible person's right armpit and resting their hand on a blue foam block. The visible person is painting the other person's nails hot pink.

Lesbian Camp: Just Livin’: Yes It’s F**cking Political shorts programme

Selina Robertson Writing

By Cathy Brennan

Just Livin’: Yes It’s F**cking Political shorts programme screened at Rio Cinema as part of Club des Femmes’ Lesbian Camp: Yes It’s F**cking Political weekender, 5-6 June 2021 + on the Rio Player from after the screening until 12 June 11.59 pm.

Over on our Vimeo (all close captioned) you can catch up with:

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Marginalised by capitalist heteropatriarchy, LGBT people are more acutely aware of communal boundaries, the behaviours which implicitly open one up to rejection and harassment from a so-called loving society, even as progress is made. In a series of short films screening at the Rio Cinema, filmmakers probe the relationship between LGBT individuals and their place within larger communities.

Dungarees, directed by Abel Rubenstein, is both the briefest and simplest of the shorts on offer. It’s a glimpse into the life of a young trans man, his relationship with his boyfriend and their housemate. Tensions between the couple simmer after a game of FIFA, yet are ultimately navigated in an understated portrayal of the unspoken gendered pressures placed on trans men.

The image is the poster for the short film Dungarees. In the centre of the top two-thirds of the poster is a photograph of two young men, one with darker skin and one with lighter skin: they are both shirtless and in their underwear. Both are holding video game controllers and looking intently at a screen. The background of the poster is candy pink, with sketches of dungarees, nail varnish, cigarettes and kisses scattered around the central image, along with the performers names Ludovic Jean-Francois and Pete MacHale. Beneath the photograph there are three blue wreaths indicating the film was screened at the Iris Prize, Edinburgh International Film Festival and BFI London Film Festival. Beneath them the film's director and title are stated in hot pink capitals reading A FILM BY ABEL RUBENSTEIN, DUNGAREES.

Some of the most vital LGBT films of recent years have been coming out of Brazil, and Bonde [The Gang], directed by Asaph Luccas, is no different. Chronicling three friends’ night out in São Paulo, Bonde portrays the ways in which anti-Black racism, fatphobia, and queerphobia are all continuously launched against the three heroines. Through the narrative of a girls’ night out, these societal horrors don’t overwhelm the film as the focus remains on the electric rapport between the main characters. Their love for one another is palpable throughout and it culminates in a final scene that is staggeringly beautiful in its intimacy. The contrast between sobering accounts of discrimination and the vibrant personalities of those it targets is most keenly felt in an instance of police harassment toward the end of the film. The tension of this moment is undercut by brash social media videos in which the characters give advice on what to do if the police stop you. Such smart creative flourishes give Bonde an undeniable spark.

The image is a colour still from the short film Bonde. It shows three dark-skinned women dancing on a rooftop with a hazy city skyline stretching behind them. The woman on the left has a shaven head, and is wearing a blue T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and red and white shorts. She is leaning over with her hands on her knees and her butt raised, and pressed against the belly and crotch of the woman behind her, who has waist-length braids that hang over her friend's back. The second woman is wearing a matching navy bandanna and face mask, and a bright yellow crop top and orange short shorts. She is leaning over with her knees slightly bent and her hands turned out. The third woman is leaning in with her hands on her knees. She has close-cropped, neon-pink hair and she is wearing mirror shades, a pink vest and white shorts.

Writer-director Amrou Al-Kadhi’s personal fascination with marine biology informs Anemone, in which the young Anemio struggles to articulate their gender while facing pressure to conform to the feminine ideal their mother expects, and by extension their local church. It is only through a part-time job at a pet fish shop that Anemio finds the inspiration.

Even though notions of trans and non-binary identities are becoming more well-known, one of the earliest difficulties for trans children is simply having the means to express themselves. Anemone finds great beauty in the uniquely personal means by which they may find those expressions. In a TED talk, Al-Kadhi described their view of queerness through marine biology as “a kind of collection of interchanging formless bodies” and this is reflected in the swimming pool scenes of Anemone. There is a serene grace when Anemio is underwater, making it clear that it is in the blue that they are most in tune with who they are.

The image is a colour still from the short film Anemone. It is a crane shot above a swimming pool with clear turquoise water. There is a red lane rope barrier that snakes across the surface of the water curving around a figure in the middle of the image. The figure is Anemio, and they are brown-skinned with long dark hair that is intermingled with a collar of red, orange and gold ribbons and feathers.

For progressive young people in the UK, there is a painful gulf between political potential and the social reality of the last ten years. One of the results of this is a marked interest in Brutalist architecture, in which utopian ideals of community were raised in concrete and let down by subsequent neglect. With Laindon, Maz Murray takes one such Brutalist project, the Laindon Shopping Centre in Basildon, for inspiration. It is a work about the legacy of the new towns movement and what could have been.

A young journalist enters a portal in the soon-to-be demolished shopping centre and finds an alternative reality in which a queer communist Essex defeated Thatcherism. Murray’s use of special effects is an aesthetic delight as patterns and animations look like they were MS Painted on to live-action footage, communicating a vibrant DIY spirit at the film’s heart. Murray grounds this hopeful fantasy with a connection to the local community, ending the film with a performance from the Basildon Gospel Choir.

The image is a colour still from the short film Laindon. It shows a group of people running past large concrete columns covered with colourful graffiti: one column has a shape like a peacock feather, the column behind has a purple skyscape. The group of people are in the middle distance, and they are wearing colourful, summery clothing.

Driving back from a bout of dumpster-diving, Kat and Willow pick up a hitchhiking robot that’s part of a social experiment. The quirky premise of Trashy Booty, directed by Iris Devins, is underscored by a serious point about the precarity that many trans women like Kat and Willow face. Dumpster-diving is a practice driven by poverty and it is inferred that the threat of homelessness is a near-constant in Kat’s life. The robot’s repetitious phrase “This is an experiment in human kindness” is a reminder that human kindness is all too rare and must be forged through our connections with others. It gives emotional weight to Kat’s struggle and Willow’s affirmation of support. 

The image is a colour still from the short film Trashy Booty. It shows two women and one robot sitting on the front of a car outside a house. The house is yellow with a white door, and the front yard is full of large trees in leaf. The car is dark blue. One woman is pale-skinned, wearing a brown T-shirt and striped high-waisted short. She is holding her cell phone up above head-height to take a selfie showing her squeezing chilli sauce onto the vinyl plate on top of the robot's head. The other woman is hugging the robot with her right arm, and holding a cardboard sign that says Philly Eats with her right. She is darker-skinned with long dark wavy hair, and she is sticking her tongue out and crossing her eyes for the camera. She wears a yellow sundress and carries a leather satchel. The robot has a glass domed head, a white cylindrical body, and bright blue foam arms and legs. Its hands are yellow rubber gloves.
What connects these shorts is a preoccupation with the relationship between LGBT individuals and the concept of community. No one can really live without the support of others. Dungarees, Bonde, and Trashy Booty all highlight the ways in which friendship and love are necessary to withstand the injustices of an oftentimes cruel society. Meanwhile, Anemone’s portrayal of family and church shows how these institutions can fall short of their promises of community, and Laindon dreams of what a better society could have looked like – perhaps even an idea of what still could be.

With support of the BFI, awarding funds from The National Lottery