Editor

Here’s the broadcast schedule and summaries of the entries in this year’s Sproquets.
The films will be broadcast In Auckland and Wellington Triangle Television at 9pm Sundays and nationally on Stratos at 8.30pm on Sundays.


SPROQUETS 2007

MEN ON HEAT (Essan Laurent, Australia, 22 mins): A comedy with 17 different nationalities. From Sydney, it’s sexy and extremely funny, Essan says "This program has been written specifically for women and for the first time men have been treated as an object where all the other programs in the market women are the object".
EN EL FUEGO (Dante Alencastre, Peru, 2007, 35 mins, in Spanish with English subtitles): In contemporary Lima, Peru, the LBGT community is besieged by homophobia due to church dogma and the lack of laws protecting them. The transgender community, in all its own diversity is particularly vulnerable but they are rising to meet their everyday challenges
SECURITY CAMERA (Christopher Heller, Germany, 2007, 50 secs): “Don’t look away. Looking away, the act, is really quite common in anti-gay violence. People look away instead of getting help. I want to make the audience think about how they would behave in this situation. To tell from this viewpoint of a security camera, enforces the message even further, because the security camera usually stands for security itself.” Director’s notes. (Special Mention, Teddy Awards, Berlin 2007)
SIPIS (AF.3.14’s) (Alberto Negredo, Catalonia, 2005, 3 mins): An absorbing close up sequence.
THE LAST VISIT (Bee Sack, Canada, 2007, 5 mins): “A short film about introducing my lover to my grandma, a story about looking for a sense of home, of belonging in a world that I feel increasingly disconnected from. I am exploring what it means to be a queer Jew in the diaspora, with such a legacy of death and exile.” Director’s notes.
FREAK OF NATURE (Don Bapst, USA, 2007, 4 mins): Original music video (music: Rick Anton) features some scenes of Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo & Conservatory, as well as the colourful crowd of Market Days, one of the nation’s largest GLBT festivals.
APOSTLES OF CIVILIZED VICE (Zackie Achmat, South Africa 1999, 52 mins each episode): Queer history?! The histories of lesbian and gay people in South Africa have been confined to an "invisible archive". Apostles of Civilised Vice is a history of same-sex desire which investigates lesbian and gay experience and personalities from colonial times to the present. Between 1910 and 1933 thousands of men were convicted of sodomy and “unnatural offences”. The majority of those tried, convicted and imprisoned were black. For over two centuries of South African history, lesbian and gay stories have been silenced, depriving contemporary queer life of a history. Apostles of Civilised Vice gives voice to gays and lesbians silenced by colonial rule and apartheid laws that criminalised and marginalised same sex desire.
SANDO TO SAMANTHA, aka THE ART OF DIKVEL (Jack Lewis and Thulanie Phungula, South Africa, 1998, 48 mins): "Sando to Samantha: aka the art of dikvel" is the true story of Sando Willemse, aka Samantha Fox, a drag queen from Bonteheuwel in Cape Town, turned soldier in the SADF in 1991. Sando perfected the art of dikvel -- a real thick-skinned queen who never let life's challenges get the better of him. Having survived, thrived and found a place in the army, Sando was tested for HIV without his permission. His HIV+ status was disclosed to his entire squad by the army command and he was summarily discharged. He turned to the road to survive, finding a new home and support from other drag queens working Cape Town's streets. He died of HIV related causes in 1996 aged 22. This docu-drama is narrated by Sando and blends interview material (shot three weeks before his death) and drama to provide testimony to his courage and daring.
GAY LIFE IS BEST (Zackie Achmat, South Africa, 1992, 26 mins): A documentary on the Johannesburg Pride March in 1992. Director Zackie Achmat was featured as one of 35 "Heroes 2003" around the world in Time Magazine's European edition.
A NORMAL DAUGHTER (Midi Achmat, South Africa, 58 mins): Meet Kewpie, a drag queen from Cape Town, South Africa's District Six, a legendary enclave of gay life since the 1950s. Together with friends and family, Kewpie narrates the story of her life as part of a thriving homosexual world of drag shows, concerts, and clubs.
GONIWE’S CALLING (Jack Lewis, South Africa, 2004, 26 mins): Set in Cape Town’s Langa Township, the documentary looks at the life of a gay Xhosa sangoma who embraces the calling’s demands of isolation and respect with relief, reassured that “the ancestors do not discriminate in the same way that we mortals do.”

SPEECHLESS (Hugo Pauwels & Sabine Vanderlinden, Belgium, 2005, 19 mins): A Poetic and artistic tale about a young man, who, during his daily nautical training, is confronted with visions of his future adult life.
JAYWALKING (Kathy Huang & Leigh Iacobucci, USA, 2005, 9 mins): the film delves in to the intricacies of the drag king world. With the assistance of rising star Jay Walker and other veteran San Francisco performers, the video explores the comical and liberating aspects of women dressing up as men. It reveals not only the artistry of drag king performance but their revolutionary spirit.
CAPITULO PRIMEIRO / CHAPTER ONE (Roberto Maxwell, Brazil, 2005, 19 mins, Portuguese, subtitled in English): Going through her son’s drawer, an evangelic woman finds a love letter and discovers that he dates another boy.
YOU’RE A WINNER (Dougals Brook, Australia, 1998, 8 mins): What do you do when your impulses to gamble are as insatiable as your lust for the nurse at the STD clinic? An orgasmic exploration of unhinged perversion and desire.
OUT NOW (Sven J Matten, Germany, 2005, 20 mins, in German with English subtitles): A coming out story set in small town Bavaria involving the internet, schoolboy crushes and finding out unexpectedly.
UNITEC SHORT FILMS (50 mins):
FORWARD: Love is hard when no one answers their email.
WALK MY WAY: A mysterious stranger challenges an audience.
IN SEARCH OF: Looking for new love isn't easy, when old habits are hard to break.
PREACHER MAN: When a street preacher is finding relationships hard, he finds friendship in a most unexpected form.
THE BOXER: Life has its callings...some call louder than others.