The collaboration between “sixth generation” director Liu Bingjian and openly gay screenwriter Cui Zi’en has resulted in a picture of homosexuality rare for Chinese cinema in its sympathy and realism. A shy young man arrives in Beijing to work in a clothes shop owned by the repressed wife of a boorish man. Meanwhile, the flamboyant host (Cui Zi’en) of a lonely hearts talk show on a pirate radio station is asked out by the editor of a fanzine that publishes graffiti from public toilets. At first nothing happens–feelings are hidden under a cloak of normalcy. When passions finally erupt, they are violent, unexpected, liberating and subversive.

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Winner of the Prix de Jeunesse (Youth Award) at Cannes, this sensitive, seriocomic coming-of-age film explores the fragile emotions of adolescent sexual experimentation. Best friends Dani and Nico spend ten days together at a beach house on the coast of Spain while Dani’s parents vacation in Egypt. With extraordinary tact, the film observes the friends’ exploratory sexual fumblings in the bed they share during the visit. Tensions arise as their sexual identities begin to diverge – for Nico, the nightly sessions are mere convenience, while for Dani they are fraught with emotion and romantic hope. This unflinching, yet delicate take on the rides of adolescence affectionately transports us back to those awkward days of longing, curiosity, innocence and fear.

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John Cameron Mitchell, creator and star of the long running off-Broadway rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch, has adapted his stage hit for the screen. Winner of the Sundance 2001 Audience and Director awards and the 2001 Berlin Teddy Award, this film tells the story of a transsexual would-be rock star. East German teenage boy Hansel agrees to a sex change operation in order to marry an older American man, thus becoming Hedwig. Shortly after their arrival in Kansas, Hedwig’s husband abandons her and she falls in love with confused 17-year-old Tommy, who steals her songs to become a rock superstar. The former soulmates’ paths continue to intersect as the Glam Era-inspired Hedwig rocks her way through the tragic story of her life, singing her soul nightly to audiences at a local restaurant chain. Visual flash and a retro-kitsch sensibility create the campy, underground appeal.

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