6/27/2007

July 12th discussion : Dangerous Living - Coming Out in the Developing World & Fire

Register for this discussion starting June 1st.

Pick up your copies of the DVDs starting June 7th.

Dangerous Living - Coming Out in the Developing World (2003)

Director: John Scagliotti

Narrator: Janeane Garofalo

Plot: A feature-length documentary that explores the immense changes that occurred for gays, lesbians and transgender people living in the Global South. In the last decade of the 20th Century, a new heightened visibility began spreading throughout the developing world and the battles between families, fundamentalist religions, and governments around sexual and gender identity had begun. But in the West, few people knew about this historic social upheaval, until 52 men on Cairo’s Queen Boat discothèque were arrested for crimes of debauchery. That explosive story focused attention to the lives and trials of gay people coming out in the developing world and the film chronicles those events.


Fire (1996)

Director: Deepa Mehta

Screenwriter: Deepa Mehta

Plot: This movie explores a love that develops between a woman and her sister in law, helped along by her new husband's neglect and infidelity, as well as her brother in law's religious preoccupation. In a society where this sort of love (read: lesbianism) is neither defined nor accepted, these women struggle to maintain their love in secret until finally, like the Goddess Sita, one must face the "trial by fire".