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ΟΙ ΟΜΟΦΥΛΟΦΙΛΟΙ ΣΤΗ ΣΕΝΕΓΑΛΗ

Hidden Homosexuality in Senegal Presents Challenge to HIV Prevention
Phuong Tran, VOA - 15 Feb 07

Across Africa, HIV infection is significantly higher in some groups. In Senegal, homosexual men are 10 times more likely to be HIV positive than the rest of the population. Phuong Tran reports from Dakar on the challenges of preventing HIV in a mostly hidden community.
Senegalese gay anti-AIDS activist Serigne, 27, is pictured concealing his identity on a street in Dakar (File)
In Senegal, homosexuality is considered a moral crime punishable by up to five years in prison and a $3,000 fine.
Abdou Houdia Diop - a doctor at a sexually-transmitted disease clinic run by the Senegalese Ministry of Health - says societal, religious and legal disapproval of homosexuality drives many underground.
"Since homosexuals are a hidden group, it is difficult to treat them, and it makes it difficult to manage their treatment because they may not want to get tested or to come for their test results," he said.
Serif is a 28-year-old homosexual man who works with health officials to get the word out about prevention services to other homosexual men, also known in the health field as MSM, or men having sex with men.
"The life of a homosexual man in Senegal is difficult because he is always forced to hide his identity, his needs. He lives in perpetual fear, in hiding from his family, his colleagues, even health centers," said Serif. "If I were to make known that I am homosexual, I risk being physically attacked. It has already happened."
Dr. Diop recognizes the fear these men have when coming to his center, but says they should not be afraid.
"Some men come in with anal problems, but they do not want to be open because they fear that a doctor will make the correlation between their condition and their sexual practice," he said. "But health professionals are here to treat them for whatever sexually transmitted diseases they may have, and their partners, to prevent a chain of infection."
Diop says there is a high risk the virus can jump from homosexuals to the general population because almost all his patients are bisexual, often because of pressure to appear heterosexual.
"No one knows who is an MSM [men having sex with men]. Sometimes, people will be living with MSM's without knowing their status," he said. "There are MSMs who are married, who have girlfriends and their partners will not know that they are MSM. If an MSM is sick, he can transfer it to his partner."
The director of Senegal's Sexually-Transmitted Infection Division in the Ministry of Health, Abdoulaye Sidibe Wade, estimates his division treats about 2,000 male homosexuals, nationwide.
Wade says this is only a small fraction of the actual homosexual population, because most do not seek HIV services.

Η ΠΑΡΑΝΟΪΚΗ ΟΜΟΦΥΛΟΦΟΒΙΑ ΤΟΥ ΔΗΜΑΡΧΟΥ ΜΟΣΧΑΣ

Ομοφυλόφιλους «σώζει» ο Πούτιν από τον Λουζκόφ
Του Αχιλλεα Πατσουκα (Καθημερινή 3-2-2007)
Μπορεί μια πορεία ομοφυλοφίλων εν έτει 2007 να είναι σατανιστική; Για τον οποιοδήποτε σύγχρονο άνθρωπο όχι, για τον κυβερνήτη όμως της Μόσχας, Γιούρι Λουζκόφ και γνωστό για τις εθνικιστικές του εξάρσεις, φαίνεται πως αυτές οι δύο έννοιες είναι αλληλένδετες. Την περασμένη Τρίτη λοιπόν το πρωί, όταν ο κυβερνήτης της Μόσχας πληροφορήθηκε ότι οι ομοφυλοφιλικές οργανώσεις της Ρωσίας προσέφυγαν στο Ευρωπαϊκό Δικαστήριο Ανθρωπίνων Δικαιωμάτων στο Στρασβούργο, ζητώντας 20.000 ευρώ αποζημίωση για την περσινή του απόφαση να απαγορεύσει την τέλεση παρέλασης στο κέντρο της Μόσχας, ξέσπασε αποκαλώντας την σατανιστική και δηλώνοντας πως δεν θα επιτρέψει να γίνει η «Gay Pride 2007» που είναι προγραμματισμένη για τις 27 Μαΐου. Στο άκουσμα αυτής της είδησης, οι ιστοσελίδες των ομοφυλοφίλων στη Ρωσία πήραν φωτιά, ενώ δεκάδες ήταν και τα μηνύματα συμπαράστασης απ’ όλα τα μέρη του κόσμου. Τον σάλο κατάφερε να κατευνάσει ο Ρώσος πρόεδρος Πούτιν, ο οποίος έγινε και ο πρώτος πρόεδρος στην ιστορία της χώρας που μίλησε ανοικτά για το θέμα. Στην προχθεσινή ετήσια συνέντευξη Τύπου κατέστησε σαφές πως σέβεται την ελευθερία των ανθρώπων σε όλες τους τις εκδηλώσεις, συμπληρώνοντας πως η στάση του απέναντι στις σεξουαλικές μειονότητες είναι απλή και συνδέεται με την εκπλήρωση των επίσημων υποχρεώσεών τους. Λίγα λεπτά μετά, στην επίσημη ρωσική ιστοσελίδα των ομοφυλοφίλων, η φράση του Ρώσου προέδρου μαζί με τη φωτογραφία του φιγουράριζαν ψηλά ψηλά, μαζί με τις ευχαριστίες των ομοφυλοφίλων. Το ερώτημα όμως είναι πώς ο κυβερνήτης μιας ευρωπαϊκής πόλης 15 εκατομμυρίων κατοίκων κάνει τόσο σκληρή δήλωση. Η απάντηση είναι πως μόνο αφελής δεν είναι ο Λουζκόφ, που γνωρίζει ότι η ρωσική κοινωνία ακόμα παραμένει συντηρητική. Για παράδειγμα, λίγος είναι ο κόσμος που γνωρίζει ότι η ομοφυλοφιλία αποποινικοποιήθηκε το 1993 επί Γέλτσιν, ενώ μόλις το 1999 έπαψε να θεωρείται πνευματική ασθένεια από τους Ρώσους ψυχιάτρους. Επί τσάρου, δε, τότε που ουσιαστικά η χώρα κυβερνιόταν από την Εκκλησία, ο σεξισμός κυριαρχούσε, ενώ οι ομοφυλόφιλοι χωρίς δόντι στο παλάτι και την εκκλησία στέλνονταν για 3 χρόνια στη Σιβηρία. Μοναδικό φωτεινό διάλειμμα υπήρξε η περίοδος των Μπολσεβίκων, όταν την επομένη της επανάστασης του 1917 αποποινικοποιήθηκε η σχέση των ανδρών, επετράπη στις γυναίκες να κάνουν έκτρωση, ενώ για την έκδοση διαζυγίου αρκούσε η αίτηση του ενός εκ των δύο συντρόφων. Μάλιστα, τρία χρόνια μετά, το 1920, παραχωρήθηκε στους ομοφυλόφιλους άντρες το δικαίωμα να παντρεύονται. Λίγο μετά τον θάνατο του Λένιν και την άνοδο του Στάλιν, όμως, το 1933, τέθηκε εκ νέου ως ελάχιστη ποινή φυλάκισης για τους ομοφυλόφιλους τα 3 χρόνια, ενώ άγνωστος παραμένει ο αριθμός εκτελέσεων καθώς τα αρχεία της KGB παραμένουν στο σκοτάδι. Μόνον οι λεσβίες ουδέποτε είχαν πρόβλημα καθώς οι σχέσεις των γυναικών τόσο ιατρικά όσο και ιστορικά δεν θεωρείτο ομοφυλοφιλία! Επομένως ο δήμαρχος της Μόσχας, με τη στήριξη της ρωσικής Εκκλησίας ξέρει γιατί λέει όσα λέει. Αυτό που δεν μας λέει είναι για το ιστορικό κέντρο της Μόσχας που καταστρέφεται αρχιτεκτονικά με την κατεδάφιση ιστορικών κτιρίων και την ανέγερση θεόρατων κιτσάτων εμπορικών κέντρων πολλά εκ των οποίων χτίζει η εταιρεία της δισεκατομμυριούχου συζύγου του. Αποκορύφωμα η πρόσφατη ιδέα του να τοποθετήσει στο ιστορικότερο σημείο της πόλης, την Κόκκινη Πλατεία, παγοδρόμιο!

ΤΟ ΚΙΝΗΜΑ ΤΩΝ "ΠΡΩΗΝ ΓΚΕΪ" ΣΤΙΣ ΗΠΑ

Η αντίφαση μεταξύ θρησκείας και ομοφυλοφιλίας
The New York Times (Καθημερινή 13-2-2007)
Ο Κόρεϊ Λάρσεν έκρυβε για πολλά χρόνια την έλξη που ένιωθε για τους άλλους άνδρες, αρνούμενος αρχικά να την αναγνωρίσει και στη συνέχεια προσευχόμενος καθημερινά να του αφαιρεθεί. Ως έφηβος στο Κλίαρφιλντ της Γιούτα προσπάθησε να εξαφανίσει αυτές τις σκέψεις. Μεγαλώνοντας, δυνάμωνε κι η έλξη που ένιωθε για τους άνδρες, όπως και οι θρησκευτικές του πεποιθήσεις ως μορμόνου.
Η αντίφαση αυτή τον τυραννούσε. Αφού μετακόμισε στο Μανχάταν πριν από μερικά χρόνια, παρέμεινε ένα αξιοσέβαστο μέλος της ενορίας του. Στη μοναξιά όμως του σπιτιού του περιέπιπτε σε απελπισία. «Επρεπε είτε να μείνω στην εκκλησία, σε αυτό που πιστεύω και αγαπώ, είτε να διαλέξω τη διαφορετική οδό, που ένιωθα να μου χτυπά την πόρτα», τόνισε ο Λάρσεν. Τον περασμένο Μάιο, ο 28χρονος πλέον κ. Λάρσεν άρχισε να επισκέπτεται έναν ψυχοθεραπευτή στο Τζέρσι, ακολουθώντας το παράδειγμα πολλών άλλων σε ολόκληρη τη χώρα, οι οποίοι κατέβαλαν αντίστοιχες προσπάθειες να αποβάλουν τις ομοφυλοφιλικές επιθυμίες τους μέσω ψυχοθεραπείας ή μέσω θρησκευτικών ομάδων αφοσιωμένων σε αυτό τον σκοπό.
Παρότι η επιστημονική κοινότητα δεν μπορεί να προσδιορίσει οριστικά τι καθορίζει τον σεξουαλικό προσανατολισμό (αν οφείλεται στη φύση ή στην ανατροφή), οι πιο φημισμένοι επαγγελματίες ψυχικής υγιεινής χαρακτηρίζουν τις απόπειρες εξαφάνισης της ομοφυλοφιλικής επιθυμίας ή της αλλαγής του σεξουαλικού προσανατολισμού, τσαρλατανισμό, ο οποίος είναι δυνητικά επικίνδυνος. Οι υπερασπιστές των δικαιωμάτων των ομοφυλοφίλων υποστηρίζουν ότι οι προσπάθειες αυτές υποδαυλίζουν την ομοφυλοφοβία. Οι επαγγελματίες της ψυχικής υγιεινής υποστηρίζουν ότι η αποτελεσματικότητα της θεραπείας σεξουαλικού επαναπροσανατολισμού δεν μπορεί να αποδειχθεί. Ενώ τονίζουν ότι υπάρχουν αποδείξεις πως η βλάβη που μπορεί να επιφέρει στην αυτοεκτίμηση ενδέχεται να οδηγήσει στην κατάθλιψη ή ακόμα και στην αυτοκτονία.
«Δεν τίθεται καν ζήτημα προς συζήτηση για την επαγγελματική κοινότητα. Είναι σαν τη Θεωρία Δημιουργίας. Η κοινή γνώμη θεωρεί ότι το ζήτημα αυτό απασχολεί τους επιστήμονες του κλάδου, ενώ στην ουσία δεν τίθεται καν ως ζήτημα», τόνισε ψυχίατρος από τη Νέα Υόρκη και πρώην επικεφαλής της ειδικής επιτροπής για θέματα ομοφυλοφίλων και ετεροφυλοφίλων της Αμερικανικής Ψυχιατρικής Ενωσης.
Παρ’ όλα αυτά, αυτές οι προσπάθειες, οι οποίες αποκαλούνται κοινώς κίνημα «πρώην γκέι», είναι εμφανείς σε ολόκληρη τη χώρα, όπου η διαμάχη για σεξουαλικά σκάνδαλα και τον γάμο των ομοφυλοφίλων εντός της Ρωμαιοκαθολικής Εκκλησίας έφεραν τα τελευταία χρόνια στο προσκήνιο το διχαστικό ζήτημα της ομοφυλοφιλίας.
Οι προσπάθειες για τον έλεγχο της ομοφυλοφιλικής επιθυμίας καλύπτει όλο το φάσμα από εκείνους που υιοθετούν μιαν εντελώς κοσμική συμβουλευτική προσέγγιση, έως εκείνους που υιοθετούν μιαν απολύτως θρησκευτική. Ορισμένοι ισχυρίζονται ότι είναι δυνατόν να συντελεστεί ριζική αλλαγή, ενώ άλλοι εστιάζουν απλώς στην προσπάθεια προσφοράς βοήθειας προκειμένου να μη συνάπτουν ομοφυλοφιλικές σχέσεις.
Παρά τον σκεπτικισμό που επικρατεί σχετικά με την αποτελεσματικότητα των «πρώην γκέι» προγραμμάτων, κανείς δεν αρνείται τον αγώνα και την επίπονη προσπάθεια των εμπλεκομένων. Οι οποίοι είναι Ευαγγελιστές, ορθόδοξοι Εβραίοι, Μορμόνοι, Ρωμαιοκαθολικοί και άλλοι, οι οποίοι συχνά εφορμούνται από τις βαθιές θρησκευτικές τους πεποιθήσεις, οι οποίες έρχονται σε ρήξη με την κοινωνική τάση της πλειοψηφίας, η οποία ενθαρρύνει την αποδοχή της ομοφυλοφιλίας. Ο αριθμός των ανθρώπων που συμμετέχουν σε αυτά τα προγράμματα δεν είναι γνωστός, όμως σύμφωνα με μια από τις μεγαλύτερες χριστιανικές οργανώσεις του κινήματος, την Exodus International, το 2003 ο αριθμός των ατόμων που συμμετείχαν στα προγράμματά της άγγιξε τις 11.000.
Στις αρχές της περσινής χρονιάς, ο κ. Λάρσεν πληροφορήθηκε την ύπαρξη ενός ειδικού προγράμματος του Σαββατοκύριακου στην Πενσιλβάνια, το οποίο οργάνωνε η κοσμική οργάνωση «Οι Ανθρωποι Αλλάζουν». Και γράφτηκε αμέσως σε αυτό. Το ειδικό πρόγραμμα εστιαζόταν στην έκφραση του ελλείμματος ανδρισμού των συμμετεχόντων, το οποίο ο κ. Λάρσεν σήμερα πιστεύει ότι αποτελεί τη ρίζα της έλξης του προς τους άλλους άνδρες. Ωστόσο, συναντώντας άλλους ομοιοπαθείς νιώθει ότι γιατρεύεται.
Για τους Εβραίους υπάρχει η οργάνωση JONAH, «Εβραίοι που προσφέρουν νέες εναλλακτικές στην ομοφυλοφιλία», με έδρα το Τζέρσι. Λειτουργεί στο Διαδίκτυο και σε ομάδες υποστήριξης των «αγωνιζόμενων», ενώ οργανώνει ειδικά Σαββατοκύριακα μύησης τα οποία εστιάζουν στη δυναμική της οικογένειας και στη συναισθηματική θεραπεία για τους ανθρώπους που παλεύουν με την «έλξη προς το ίδιο φύλο». Εχουν επίσης θεσπίσει μια ομάδα υποστήριξης για τους γονείς των ομοφυλόφιλων παιδιών.
Ο ψυχολόγος κ. Μάθερσον, μαθητής του προέδρου μιας από τις μεγαλύτερες κοσμικές οργανώσεις, του Εθνικού Συλλόγου Ερευνας και Θεραπείας της Ομοφυλοφιλίας, Τζόζεφ Νικολόζι, άρχισε να συμβουλεύει ομοφυλόφιλους το 2004 και διαθέτει σήμερα 50 πελάτες. Χρεώνει 240 δολάρια τη συνεδρία των 90 λεπτών.
Ο κ. Μάθερσον, του οποίου οι πελάτες είναι όλοι άνδρες, προσφέρει συμβουλές για την αναπλήρωση του ελλείμματος ανδρισμού των πασχόντων, μέσω της έκφρασης συναισθηματικών ζητημάτων και της σύναψης «υγιεινών» σχέσεων με άλλους άνδρες. Θεωρεί ότι με αυτό τον τρόπο βοηθάει στη μείωση της ομοφυλοφιλικής επιθυμίας.
Οδυνηρές εμπειρίες
Οι συζητήσεις με πολλούς συμμετέχοντες σε αντίστοιχα προγράμματα στην ευρύτερη περιοχή της Νέας Υόρκης αποκάλυψαν ένα μεγάλο φάσμα οδυνηρών εμπειριών και αποτελεσμάτων. Ορισμένοι, μετά από προσπάθεια χρόνων, δρέπουν ελάχιστα θετικά αποτελέσματα. Αλλοι αναφέρουν σαφή μείωση των ομοφυλοφιλικών τους αισθημάτων. Πολλοί υποστηρίζουν ότι πραγματοποίησαν απόλυτη στροφή προς την ετεροφυλοφιλία. Ωστόσο, κάθε φαινομενική επιτυχία αντισταθμίζεται από δεκάδες ιστορίες ανθρώπων οι οποίοι συμπέραναν πως παραπλανούν τον εαυτό τους, συμπεριλαμβανομένων και ορισμένων από τους πρωτεργάτες του κινήματος «πρώην γκέι».
0 41χρονος Πίτερσον Τοσκάνο συμμετείχε για έξι χρόνια σε προγράμματα «πρώην γκέι» τι δεκαετίες του ’80 και του ’90 και τελικά παντρεύτηκε, για να δει τον γάμο του να διαλύεται, καθώς δεν κατάφερε να εξαλείψει τα ομοφυλοφιλικά του αισθήματα. Τελικά το πήρε απόφαση: «Εάν συνεχίσεις σε αυτό τον δρόμο δεν πρόκειται να ξεγελάσεις κανένα· ούτε τον εαυτό σου». Σήμερα ο κ. Τοσκάνο δηλώνει ομοφυλόφιλος και συμμετέχει σε συναντήσεις προοδευτικών προτεσταντών, ενώ παρουσιάζει κωμικά σκετς σε ολόκληρη τη χώρα, όπου μεταξύ άλλων σατιρίζει τις εμπειρίες του στο κίνημα των «πρώην γκέι».
Οσο για τον κ. Λάρσεν, έχει αρχίσει να δρέπει τους καρπούς της προόδου που έχει επιτελέσει. Ισχυρίζεται ότι η έλξη που ένιωθε για τους άνδρες έχει μεταστραφεί σε απλό «ενδιαφέρον», το οποίο δεν έχει καμία σχέση με την προηγούμενη «αδήριτη ανάγκη». Ωστόσο, είναι ενδεικτικό ότι πλέον δεν ισχυρίζεται ότι ο τελικός του στόχος είναι η εξάλειψη της έλξης που νιώθει για τους άνδρες. Αντιλαμβάνεται τους πειρασμούς του ως πρόκληση και ευκαιρία για πνευματική ωρίμανση. Ανέφερε και ένα χωρίο από το Κατά Ματθαίον Ευαγγέλιο, το οποίο παροτρύνει τους ακολούθους του Χριστού να μεταφέρουν τον σταυρό τους στην πορεία τους προς το φως. Ο κ. Λάρσεν ισχυρίζεται ότι ο σταυρός του έχει γίνει πιο ελαφρύς.

GAY ΜΑΓΕΙΡΙΚΗ 5. ΜΑΓΕΙΡΕΥΟΝΤΑΣ ΜΑΖΙ

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Ένα βράδυ, καθώς στεκόταν μπροστά στην ηλεκτρική κουζίνα και τσιγάριζε κρεμμύδια κι άλλα λαχανικά για μια σάλτσα, τον πλησίασα από πίσω, χούφτωσα τα κωλομέρια του και χάιδεψα τις κοντές, άγριες τρίχες που τα κάλυπταν. Γονάτισα πίσω του κι έχωσα το κεφάλι μου στη σχισμή, εισπνέοντας το ελαφρύ άρωμα του ιδρώτα που του προκαλούσε η ζέστη της κουζίνας. Τα χέρια μου άνοιξαν τα κωλομέρια του κι η γλώσσα μου όρμησε ανάμεσά τους. (…)
Αφού έπαιξα για λίγο μαζί του, σηκώθηκα κι έκανα να πιάσω το λαδερό. Έριξα λίγο πάνω στον πούτσο μου, που ήταν ήδη σε κατάσταση ετοιμότητας από τη στιγμή που είχα δει τα γυμνά του κωλομέρια να με προσκαλούν καθώς μαγείρευε. (…)
Ένα λεπτό αργότερα ο Κέβιν είχε αρπάξει την άκρη της ηλεκτρικής κουζίνας και με τα δυο χέρια για να κρατήσει ισορροπία. (…)
Σηκώθηκα στις μύτες των ποδιών μου, αλλάζοντας τη θέση της ψωλής μου μέσα του, σαν να προσπαθούσα να το σηκώσω στον αέρα μ’ αυτήν. Αυτό το τελευταίο τον έκανε να ξεπεράσει το όριό του κι άρχισε να χύνει. Η πρώτη ριπή έπεσε πάνω στην κουζίνα και τσιγαρίστηκε πάνω στο μάτι. Τράβηξα την ψωλή του, σημαδεύοντας την πόρτα του φούρνου και το πάτωμα, μακριά από τις επικίνδυνες φλόγες. Εκείνος, όμως, ο ήχος του τσιγαρίσματος από το σπέρμα του, η μυρωδιά του ανακατεμένη με τις ευωδιές του φαγητού ή ίσως οι παλμοί του που έφθαναν πάνω μου καθώς έχυνε έβγαλαν κι εμένα εκτός ορίων. (…)
«Τι καύλα ήταν αυτή!» είπε ο Κέβιν, γυρνώντας το κεφάλι του για να με φιλήσει. Τραβήχτηκε από πάνω μου, γύρισε κανονικά και με ξαναφίλησε. Μου ζήτησε να παραγγείλω κάτι να φάμε – το φαγητό μας είχε καεί ενώ ερωτοτροπούσαμε.

Lawrence Schimel: Σε χρόνο αόριστο (Πολύχρωμος Πλανήτης, 2006)

GAY ΜΑΓΕΙΡΙΚΗ 4. ΣΤΗΝ ΚΟΥΖΙΝΑ

ΣΑΝ ΣΗΜΕΡΑ : Γ.Χ. ΩΝΤΕΝ

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W. H. Auden(1907-1973)
by Claude J. Summers
Described by Edward Mendelson as "the most inclusive poet of the twentieth century, its most technically skilled, and its most truthful," Auden is the first major poet to incorporate modern psychological insights and paradigms as a natural element of his work and thought. The foremost religious poet of his age, the most variously learned, and the one most preoccupied with existentialism, Auden is also an important love poet.
Although particularly concerned with the relationship of Eros and Agape and characteristically practicing a "poetry of reticence," Auden celebrates erotic love as a significant element in his geography of the heart.
Born into an upper middle-class professional family in York in 1907 and educated at Christ Church College, Oxford, from which he received his B.A. in 1928, Wystan Hugh Auden was the third son of a physician and a nurse, from whom he imbibed scientific, religious, and musical interests and a love of the Norse sagas. Following his graduation, he spent a year in Berlin, where he enjoyed the city's homosexual demimonde and absorbed German culture. He returned to teach in public schools in Scotland and England from 1930 to 1935.
In 1938, he married Erika Mann, daughter of the German novelist Thomas Mann, in order to enable her to obtain a British visa and escape Nazi Germany; the marriage was not consummated. In January 1939, disillusioned with the left-wing politics they had embraced, Auden and his friend and frequent collaborator, Christopher Isherwood, emigrated to the United States.
Settling in New York City, Auden soon fell in love with a precocious eighteen-year-old from Brooklyn, Chester Kallman, with whom he maintained a relationship for the rest of his life, sharing apartments in
New York and, later, summer residences in first Ischia and then Austria. Auden died in Vienna on September 29, 1973.
Auden dominated the British literary scene of the 1930s, quickly emerging as the leading voice of his generation. With the publication of The Orators (1932) and the enlarged edition of Poems (1933), Auden became, by his mid-twenties, firmly established as an important literary presence, the leader of the "Auden Gang" that included Isherwood, Stephen Spender, C. Day Lewis, and Louis MacNeice.
Auden's early poetry breathed an air of revolutionary freshness. In language at once exotic and earthy, alternately banal and elegant, colloquial yet faintly archaic, Auden's verse diagnosed psychic disturbances with an extraordinary resonance. Although most of his early poems have their origins in his personal anxieties, especially those related to his homosexuality and his search for psychic healing, they seemed to voice the fears and uncertainties of his entire generation.
Auden may have initially regarded his gayness as a psychic wound, but he came to see it as a liberating force. In the prose poem "Letter to a Wound" (1932), he writes,
Thanks to you, I have come to see a profound significance in relations I never dreamt of considering before, an old lady's affection for a small dog, the Waterhouses and their retriever, the curious bond between Offal and Snig, the partners in the hardware shop on the front. Even the close-ups in the films no longer disgust nor amuse me. On the contrary, they sometimes make me cry; knowing you has made me understand.
Auden's acceptance of his gayness thus leads him to new insight into the universal impulse to love and enlarges his understanding of all kinds of relationships. At the same time, however, Auden is acutely aware of the limitations of eroticism.
His earliest love poems complain of his lack of sexual success, but his poems from the later 1930s such as "May with its light behaving" lament an emotional isolation that accompanies physical intimacy. In the poem beginning "Easily, my dear, you move," erotic love and feverish political activity are both depicted as expressions of vanity and the desire for power. Auden finally reaches the conclusion that Eros and Agape are interdependent.
Auden's recognition of the interdependence of Eros and Agape is at the heart of perhaps the greatest love poem of the century, the grave and tender "Lullaby" (["Lay your sleeping head"] 1937), which moves so nimbly and with such grace among abstractions evoked so subtly that it may well be regarded as the premiere example of the poet's intellectual lyricism. The luminous moment of fulfillment that the poem celebrates is placed in a context of mutability and decay that poignantly underlines the fragility of a love endangered from within by guilt, promiscuity, and betrayal, and from without by the "pedantic boring cry" of homophobic "fashionable madmen."
Auden's marriage to Kallman was not to prove entirely happy (primarily due to Kallman's promiscuity), but it provided the poet with loving companionship and helped seal the permanence of his self-exile. Auden's first flush of passion for Kallman immediately inspired several poems of fulfilled erotic love, including "The Prophets," "Like a Vocation," "The Riddle," "Law Like Love," and "Heavy Date," in which he tells his lover, "I have / Found myself in you."
Kallman introduced Auden to opera, an interest that would shape the curve of his career. The partners collaborated on several original libretti, including one for Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress (1951), and on translating others.
Auden movingly celebrates his relationship with Kallman in "The Common Life" (1965), which tellingly declares that "every home should be a fortress." Also among Auden's late poems is "Glad," a light but deeply felt account of his relationship with a male hustler, "for a decade now / My bed-visitor, / An unexpected blessing / In a lucky life."
In "Since," a poem probably inspired by his relationship with Kallman, Auden suddenly remembers an August noon thirty years ago and "You as then you were." He juxtaposes the memory of his youthful love-making with an account of the failures of Eros and Agape in the world since then and finds sustenance in the memory: "round your image / there is no fog, and the Earth / can still astonish."
In a remarkable conclusion that bravely faces the issue of aging with unsentimental wit, he concludes, "I at least can learn / to live with obesity / and a little fame." A stunning achievement, "Since" validates the vision of Eros as a life-sustaining experience that can compensate at least in part even for the inevitable failures of Agape.
Auden's homosexuality is also expressed throughout his canon in the camp wit that discerns defensive fun in serious fear, as in the limerick "The Aesthetic Point of View" (1960). Moreover, the humorous self-revelations of the "Shorts" (1960), the "Marginalia" (1969), or "Profile" (1969), as well as the bawdy verse--such as "A Day for a Lay"--circulated among friends, helped establish for Auden a persona that has been particularly influential on younger gay poets, such as James Merrill, Richard Howard, and Howard Moss. In Merrill's series of adventures with the Ouija board, for example, Auden is a ghostly presence, the embodiment of a homosexual artistic sensibility.

Ο ΑΛΕΞΗΣ ΑΡΒΑΝΙΤΑΚΗΣ ΣΤΙΣ ΛΟΓΟΤΕΧΝΙΚΕΣ ΒΡΑΔΙΕΣ ΤΟΥ ΠΟΛΥΧΡΩΜΟΥ ΠΛΑΝΗΤΗ

Παρουσίαση του συγγραφέα Αλέξη Αρβανιτάκη την Τετάρτη 21 Φεβρουαρίου, στις 20:30, στο βιβλιοπωλείο ΠΟΛΥΧΡΩΜΟΣ ΠΛΑΝΗΤΗΣ (Αντωνιάδου 6, τηλ. 210.8826600)
Ο Αλέξης Αρβανιτάκης είναι συγγραφέας των βιβλίων "Γράμματα στον Μάριο" (1982), "Μονα Λίζα" (1985), "Σχέσεις Θανάτου" (1987) και "Απογευματινό φως" (1998).
Τον Αλέξη Αρβανιτάκη θα παρούσιάσει ο συγγραφέας Αντώνιος Ρουσοχατζάκης, ενώ στην εκδήλωση θα είναι παρών ο συγγραφέας και θα απαντήσει σε ερωτήσεις του κοινού.

WILHEM VON GLOEDEN 1

Wilhem von Gloeden: Αυτοπροσωπογραφίες

Η ΓΚΕΪ ΔΙΑΦΗΜΙΣΗ ΤΟΥ ΙΚΕΑ

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IKEA's gay family ad upsets conservatives
Tony Grew (Pink News, 9th February 2007)
A TV advert that shows two gay men and their daughter relaxing on a sofa has annoyed an American conservative group.
The American Family Association (AFA) has accused the Swedish furniture retailer of trying to force a liberal, "homosexuality-affirming" world view on US consumers, reports OneNewsNow.com
The association, who claim to promote "traditional family values," say IKEA routinely promote gay lifestyles.
The ad shows a gay male couple playing on the floor with their young daughter. As they lean back against their IKEA sofa, a voiceover says: "Why shouldn't sofas come in flavours, like families?"
AFA spokesman Randy Sharp is outraged at internationally successful furniture chain:
"IKEA produces dozens of pro-homosexual ads that they air on Swedish TV. If they're going to run ads in this country, at least make those ads reflect the values of our society," Sharp told OneNewsNow.com.
"And that is that two men and a child do not make a family."
The AFA think that IKEA is attempting to force Swedish values on America.
The furniture company has 250 stores in 34 countries. They opened their first store in the US in 1985, and now have 29.
"Sweden is one of the most liberal countries when it comes to sexuality, especially when it deals with children," said Sharp.
"So, they're wanting to bring their influence into the United States of America."
The AFA is also mounting a campaign against all-American corporation Ford over an ad for the car manufacturer that shows two men engaged in oral sex.
"Ford has made it extremely clear that they have no intentions of ending their support of homosexuality," says a statement on the AFA website.
"Among other things, the company reneged on their agreement to remain neutral in the culture wars, increased their support of homosexual publications, sponsored TV programmes pushing homosexuality and required employees to attend "diversity" training promoting homosexuality."
The AFA recommend that people who object to Ford’s commitment to equality should sign up to a boycott, and claim over half a million Americans have done so already.
Ford, who own Jaguar, Land Rover and Aston Martin, have suffered a downturn in sales, though it is unclear whether that is in any way connected with the AFA boycott.

Tony Grew (Pink News, 9th February 2007)
A TV advert that shows two gay men and their daughter relaxing on a sofa has annoyed an American conservative group.
The American Family Association (AFA) has accused the Swedish furniture retailer of trying to force a liberal, "homosexuality-affirming" world view on US consumers, reports OneNewsNow.com
The association, who claim to promote "traditional family values," say IKEA routinely promote gay lifestyles.
The ad shows a gay male couple playing on the floor with their young daughter. As they lean back against their IKEA sofa, a voiceover says: "Why shouldn't sofas come in flavours, like families?"
AFA spokesman Randy Sharp is outraged at internationally successful furniture chain:
"IKEA produces dozens of pro-homosexual ads that they air on Swedish TV. If they're going to run ads in this country, at least make those ads reflect the values of our society," Sharp told OneNewsNow.com.
"And that is that two men and a child do not make a family."
The AFA think that IKEA is attempting to force Swedish values on America.
The furniture company has 250 stores in 34 countries. They opened their first store in the US in 1985, and now have 29.
"Sweden is one of the most liberal countries when it comes to sexuality, especially when it deals with children," said Sharp.
"So, they're wanting to bring their influence into the United States of America."
The AFA is also mounting a campaign against all-American corporation Ford over an ad for the car manufacturer that shows two men engaged in oral sex.
"Ford has made it extremely clear that they have no intentions of ending their support of homosexuality," says a statement on the AFA website.
"Among other things, the company reneged on their agreement to remain neutral in the culture wars, increased their support of homosexual publications, sponsored TV programmes pushing homosexuality and required employees to attend "diversity" training promoting homosexuality."
The AFA recommend that people who object to Ford’s commitment to equality should sign up to a boycott, and claim over half a million Americans have done so already.
Ford, who own Jaguar, Land Rover and Aston Martin, have suffered a downturn in sales, though it is unclear whether that is in any way connected with the AFA boycott.

FREEHELD

Βραβείο κριτικής επιτροπής

στο Sundance Film Festival 2007

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Cynthia Wade: Freeheld

(Sundance Feature, January 16, 2007)
You're a festival veteran, but as far as I know you haven't taken a film to Sundance before, right?
Right. This is my first director's experience at Sundance.
How are you feeling about it?
There's an incredible air of excitement and energy here in the office, and it sort of feels like we're pulling all-nighter after all-nighter, but for this amazing opportunity. And it's actually been great because I think the film is sharper and better than had we not gotten in -- it gave us this really hard deadline that made the film better.
For the record, you should probably tell me what Freeheld is about.
The movie is about this desperate race against time; Lt. Laurel Hester of New Jersey wanted to leave her hard-earned pension that she'd earned in 25 years as a veteran police officer to her domestic partner Stacie Andre so that Stacy could afford their house when Laurel died. Stacie is an auto mechanic. (The Freeholders) said "No," because they're not husband and wife. That set off an enormous battle in New Jersey; her elected official said: "No, you're not officially husband and wife. If you were married to a man, sure -- you could pass it to your husband. But in this case, no." It's sort of like the movie Philadelphia with Tom Hanks, but in this case it's two women in New Jersey.
I lived with Laurel with the last 10 weeks of her life on and off, through this bitter fight that became not only nationally watched but internationally watched as Laurel waged sort of the last pursuit for justice in her life against her elected officials, the Freeholders.
How did you discover the story and then acquire the access you needed to take it on?
I read about it and decided to go town for a Freeholder meeting with my camera and a couple of assistants and some release forms. I didn't even know if I'd be allowed to film, but I stumbled into what is now the opening scene of my film; it was this unbelievably intense community meeting where people were screaming and pleading with the Freeholders. There were these giant red signs and there was Laurel Hester, dying of lung cancer sitting in the front row next to Stacie Andre, the love of her life. I didn't know them, but I just started shooting, and nobody told me to turn off the camera. There were other cameras there, too --news and still photographers. I couldn't believe what was unfolding in front of my eyes just an hour outside of New York city in December of 2005. It was just over a year ago.
After the meeting I went up to her and said, "I'm a documentary filmmaker, I'd really like to follow your story." There was something, I think, in the chemistry between myself and Laurel where she trusted me and invited me into her home in really intimate moments, and I very quickly fell into their lives and ended up spending a lot of nights in her guest room and going to the hospital with them and being there at 3 in the morning when she was very ill. It was one of those things where I recognized instantly I had to make this film, and I just started making it.
It's a pretty extraordinary challenge to take this kind of story on on the fly. How did you know you'd be able to commit to it at that moment?
What's interesting is that logistically, in terms of my life, I shouldn't have taken it on. At that point, I had just given birth to my second child. She was 4 months old, and I have an older child. And I was teaching and finishing other films, and sort of logistically -- or logically -- it didn't make sense. Emotionally, it was absolutely the right thing to do.
A few months earlier, actually -- the summer before -- I was sitting on my stoop in Brooklyn and I was saying to my husband: "I'm really ready to make my next film. I don't know what it's going to be; I just feel like I'm itching now to do something that's mine." He's sort of a soothsayer, and he said to me, "It's gonna hit. It's going to happen and happen soon, and you job is to be ready." And I was sort of fretting: "I'll never be able to make another film again; I just had this second baby, I'm not going to be able to do it." But he said that and I said, "OK, all right, I'll be ready, I'll be ready." And sure enough, on Dec. 7, 2005, I think part of it was that I was just ready. I had my equipment, I had my two assistants with me, I had my release forms; we were ready to jump on it when I realized it. If I had been an hour late, I would have missed the story. It was such a rapidly closing window; if I hadn't have shown up at that moment at that Freeholder meeting, then we wouldn't have had a film.
Freeheld is about 40 minutes long, right? Is it a long short or a short feature?
You have the term "novella," and I think we need the term "featurette" or something; a short film that has a feature film experience. It's so dramatic and it's so packed, and you watch this woman wage this war and die -- the experience is much greater than seeing your average short. I wish there was a new term for that.
Last year I talked to Carter Smith, whose short film Bugcrush was over 30 minutes and shared the Shorts Jury Prize. He was telling me the film is just as long as it is. That's the story. Did you try to determine whether you could pare Freeheld down or perhaps make it longer, at least for distribution's sake?
I think he's right; the film needs to be the length that it is. My window with Laurel, though... I mean, things were incredibly dramatic and intense, but it was so short. The main drama was basically 10 weeks. We went back and did interviews and pick-ups and fill-ins after she passed away, but with that length of time, it's like you're going to get what you're going to get. I also felt like, quite frankly, I would compete better in a short category, because it's not like I went to Tibet and spent seven years of my life. Some documentaries take a really long time to make, and I've taken a long time to make documentaries. But from start to finish, this one has only been a year, which is extraordinarily short for a documentary, and I just felt like I would compete better in a shorts category. One of the reasons it is in Sundance is because it is a short.
What are you anticipating or expecting from the festival and its audience?
For me, this is the beginning of a very long commitment to really getting Laurel's story out there and also really beginning to build a very comprehensive outreach plan. Another reason I made it a short film is that as an education and advocacy tool -- a tool to actually affect potential change, where you see how same-sex couples are being discriminated against in this country. I think this length works in terms of education, outreach and advocacy. And this is the beginning of what I hope is going to be a very healthy and aggressive outreach plan so that we really can get her story out there, work with groups and grassroots organizations and begin to have people really absorb the story as they're thinking abut policy. And as we start the countdown toward election 2008, where issues about domestic partnership rights and same-sex marriage are really going to be on the ballot, to me, this is an amazing experience and a kick-off for what I hope that will be. Yeah, it's a short, but as I said, the experience is greater, and I think it really resonates. I'm hopeful people will come and see it. It's quite a story.

ΓΚΕΪ ΔΙΑΦΗΜΙΣΗ ΣΤΟ ΜΕΤΡΟ ΤΗΣ ΝΕΑΣ ΥΟΡΚΗΣ

Διαφημιστική καμπάνια τηλεοπτικού καναλιού γκέι θεματικής

στους σταθμούς του μετρό στη Νέα Υόρκη.

ΔΗΜΟΣΚΟΠΗΣΗ ΓΙΑ ΤΗΝ ΑΠΟΔΟΧΗ ΤΗΣ ΟΜΟΦΥΛΟΦΙΛΙΑΣ ΣΤΙΣ ΗΠΑ

ΔΙΚΑΙΩΜΑΤΑ ΓΙΑ ΤΑ ΟΜΟΦΥΛΑ ΖΕΥΓΑΡΙΑ ΣΤΗΝ ΚΟΛΟΜΒΙΑ

Rights for Colombia gay couples
BBC - 9 Feb 07
Homosexual couples in Colombia should have the same property rights as their heterosexual counterparts, the nation's Constitutional Court has ruled.
The decision applies to those who have been living together for two years.
A gay rights group, which had sought the clarification from the court, said at least 100,000 couples would benefit.
A court source said it did not mean same-sex civil unions - which are part of a bill currently being debated in Congress - had been approved.
'Great step'
The court said the expression "men and women" used in a 1990 law which gives property rights to de-facto couples was unconstitutional.
The head of gay rights group Colombia Diversa, Marcela Sanchez, described the ruling as "a great step".
Until now, same-sex couples who wanted to share their property had had to create commercial partnerships to guarantee that in the case of death of one of the partners the shared possessions would go to the surviving one, she said.
"Laws are not enough, an important cultural shift is needed... for discrimination to end," Ms Sanchez added.
Wednesday's ruling was condemned by some lay Catholic groups, which described it as "going against the family and matrimony".

ΤΟΥ ΑΓΙΟΥ ΒΑΛΕΝΤΙΝΟΥ

VICTORIA CHERNOVA

ΕΚΕΙΝΕΣ 2

.....Gertrud Stein......Monique Wittig......Susan Sontag......

...Audre Lorde..........J. Winterson.....Cristina Peri Rossi

ΒΙΤΑ ΚΑΙ ΒΙΡΤΖΙΝΙΑ

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Virginia and Vita: Explorations of their relationship viewed through the novel of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando
Guinevere Shaw
It has been said the novel Orlando is the longest love-letter ever written; a celebration of the bond between women. The relationship between Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West is well documented and known to have been intimate. That Virginia was passionate and giddy about her relationship with Vita is also known and displayed in Orlando. But Orlando also offers a rare intimate glimpse into the mind of Virginia Woolf. An unselfconscious work, it reveals her mind, talent at play. Orlando offers rich insights into her mind while keeping the rich prose that embodies her other great works. The novel demonstrates several of Virginia’s obsessions, the focus here on gender and sexuality. While presumptuous to assume an author’s life directly through her work, Virginia herself writes about this inevitable link in Orlando: “In short, every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works, yet we require critics to explain the one and biographers to expound the other” (Orlando 209). A good author usually writes what she knows; considering the background of this novel, the reader may draw parallels between Virginia’s life, her relationship with Vita and the writing of Orlando.
Who is Orlando? The common interpretation is Orlando is Vita. The book is dedicated to her and pictures of Vita are interspersed throughout the book. Vita herself was said to tell Virginia that she fell in love with herself after reading the novel. Vita’s mother was more acetic: “You have written some beautiful phrases in Orlando but probably you do not realise how cruel you have been. And the person who inspired the book has been crueler still” (Lee 548). The book was taken in Virginia’s time to be a snoopy insight of Vita and the Bloomsbury group’s lifestyles. Vita’s mother surely took exception to her daughter’s life being so openly flaunted. Though she herself was not a role-model of marital fidelity. In fact, for Vita’s parent’s extra-marital affairs was the norm. From this influence, Vita based her actions; a reason that caused Virginia much pain later in their relationship.
Virginia became fascinated with Vita’s family history. Vita’s family could be traced back to William the Conqueror. Vita’s ancestry and her own life-style differed greatly from Virginia’s. Vita was dramatic, exciting and thrilling; Virginia, mousy, quiet, intellectual. This difference between their personalities and family history captivated Virginia. “Part of the attraction was the story Vita had to tell. Virginia fell on it, dramatised and exaggerated it, long before she wrote Orlando” (Lee 481). The family house, central in Orlando, was Vita’s great love. Because she was a woman, she was prevented from inheriting the house. Virginia “always associated Vita with her house and ancestry; it was as much the inspiration for Orlando as Vita herself” (Lee 481). Therefore Orlando returns to England a woman and discovers a lawsuit against her. “The chief charges against her were (1) that she was dead, and therefore could not hold any property whatsoever; (2) that she was a woman, which amounts to much the same thing...” (Orlando 168). In Orlando, Virginia gives Vita (as Orlando) the power of her ancestors (by having her a collective immortal of them) and over injustice--Orlando eventually does win the legal right to keep her house. “Whereupon she appended her own signature...and from that moment into the undisturbed possession of the titles, her house and her estate...” (Orlando 255). This one plot line demonstrates several aspects on the melding between fact and fiction; and Vita and Virginia’s relationship. It reflects Virginia’s feminist beliefs that women are entitled to hold property. It demonstrates the semi-biography aspect of the novel; the influence of Vita’s life on Virginia in writing Orlando. It also shows the affection Virginia had for Vita. Vita was justly devastated about the lose of her house. What Virginia could not do for Vita in real life, she did for her in her fiction.
Vita’s ancestry was not solely what held attraction for Virginia. Virginia was interested in Vita’s life-style. Openly gay as one could be at the time, Vita demonstrated character strength for Virginia. Vita was free with her sexuality; free of gender-role constraints. “From the early 1920’s she was well known in her circles as a lesbian...She crossed-dressed...and she had a reputation for passionate and predatory affairs...” (Lee 483). Vita was also a writer and at that time more popular than Virginia. Her writings were often about young boys involved with very feminine women who’s affairs were doomed because of infidelity. “Mostly, though, like many other queer writers of the time, she kept her explicit lesbian writing in the closet, and in her published work encoded her desires as myth or romance...” (Lee 483). This sexual expression must have been attractive but scary to Virginia. She had a knowledge that she was sexually attracted to women and shared these feelings with her sister. Often, as with anything that makes someone uncomfortable, she joked about it.
Virginia reveals her attraction to Vita is part of the differences between them: “her being in short (what I have never been) a real woman” (Lee 484). And of course to Virginia, part of the definition of being a “real woman” was the ability to love freely other women. Virginia always felt strongly about the bonds between women; the friendships and level of emotional intimacy that can be attained only with women. She writes about the male misconception of women’s relationships in Orlando: “that women are incapable of any feeling of affection for their own sex and hold each other in the greatest aversion. What can we suppose that women do when they seek out each other’s society” (Orlando 220)? Beyond the sarcasm Virginia is so expert at lies a double entendre: women seek out from other women satisfaction that they cannot get from men; not only emotionally but physically as well. Virginia in a letter to a female friend expounds on this idea: “If one could be friendly with women, what a pleasure--the relationship so secret and private compared with relationships with men. Why not write about it? Truthfully?” (Lee 485).
Therefore Virginia’s relationship with Vita empowered her to shake off gender restrictions more freely than she had previously done. While Vita veiled her lesbianism in her writing, Virginia exposed it in Orlando. “And as all Orlando’s loves had been women, now...though she herself was a woman, it was still a woman she loved; and if the consciousness of being the same sex had any effect at all, it was to quicken and deepen those feelings which she had had as a man” (Orlando 161). Yet Virginia must not have been entirely comfortable with lesbianism. She cannot commit to one way or the other--leading into having the character Orlando live as two sexes. “If Virginia Woolf was lesbian and Vita Sackville-West confirmed that identity, she accepted it only evasively and ambivalently” (Lee 487). The writings available about their relationship usually are irritatingly coy. Yet there are references that address this ambivalence Virginia held about the relationship. “‘What is the effect of all this on me?’ she asked herself after her first night alone with Vita...” (Lee 487). Her reply was that she was “very mixed”. She was attracted to Vita physically also, admiring her “full breastedness” and “voluptuousness”. Change is a scary thing as also exploring yourself and trying to discover who you are. It seems that Virginia responded to lesbianism in this way. On one hand, the relationship with Vita was a liberation, the other, something to be feared as it brought out truths in herself she needed to confront. She discusses her “secret” to a friend: “My aristocrat...is violently Sapphic, and contracted such a passion for a woman cousin, that they fled to Tyrol...together...To tell you a secret, I want to incite my lady to elope with me next” (Lee 486). This demonstrates several conflicts Virginia was having; she at once disapproves of Vita’s behavior, chastising her behavior, while in the next sentence revealing that she too wants to be that way. It is also interesting to note the possessiveness of her wording with “My aristocrat”; this playful name suggests that Virginia felt close and comfortable with Vita. As Hermione Lee points out, this ambivalence leaves the modern researcher unsteady: “She experiments with possibilities and adventures in the writing, but stops teasingly on the edge of confirming her own sexual identity” (Lee 485).
While Virginia may have been struggling with her sexual identity she was more comfortable blasting restrictive gender boundaries. She utilizes Orlando to discuss the what she believes are the restrictions society had set against women. The change Orlando undergoes from man to woman seems to happen easily: “He stretched himself. He rose. He stood upright in complete nakedness before us, and while the trumpets pealed Truth! Truth! Truth! we have no choice left but to confess---he was a woman” (Orlando 137). How easily Orlando transforms himself; it is as if Virginia is saying -- there is not so much difference between the sexes that cannot be easily overcome. At first there is no difference: “Orlando had become a woman--there is no denying it. But in every other respect Orlando remained precisely as he had been. The change of sex...did nothing to alter their identity...” (Orlando 138). But that does not change the feminist viewpoint; Orlando started out a man, then became a woman, and then began to improve. Orlando learns the disadvantages of being a woman, foremost the absence of a legal identity. And then she learns the advantages: “To fall from a mast-head...because you see a woman’s ankles...to deny a woman teaching lest she may laugh at you; to be the slave of the frailest chit in petticoats, and yet you go about as if you were Lords of creation...” (Orlando 158). Clearly it is better to be the noble woman rather than the oppressive beast. Women are more intelligent, practical, never would a woman risk death for a man’s ankle. Therefore, in Virginia’s eyes, Orlando is better, less foolish, than she was as a man. While dealing with the problems of having been a man, and having the nature of man cause Orlando some psychological distress; it is finally settled when she realizes she is more woman than man, and this outcome is beneficial: “Praise God that I’m a woman” (Orlando 160)! Interestingly, these views were disagreeable to Vita. She felt uncomfortable with Virginia continuously spouting her feminist views--one insight into the idea that Orlando was not solely Vita’s characterization.
Given that Virginia and Vita are both women, therefore more enlightened beings, what does Orlando tell us about their relationship? When Orlando meets Sasha, all other commitments are forgotten--he was engaged to be married. Sasha attracts him so completely and magically that he has no other choice but to be with her. Of course, both Virginia and Vita were married; and their affair as forbidden as Orlando’s is with a “foreigner”. Sasha is foreign as a nationality, Vita foreign as a woman. “Indeed as the days passed, Orlando took less and less care to hide his feelings. Making some excuse or other, he would leave the company...Next moment it would be seen that the Muscovite was missing too” (Orlando 43). Therefore Orlando and Sasha are established as parallels to Vita and Virginia’s relationship. Orlando’s first love was an intense love and he planned on eloping. Then he was cheated, first by seeing Sasha embrace with another man; then by her leaving him. “It was useless for the rational part of him to reason; she might be late;...she might be prevented;...The passionate and feeling heart of Orlando knew the truth...The whole world seemed to ring with the news of her deceit and his derision” (Orlando 61). The truth also was Vita had a reputation for infidelity: “Vita, who grew up in an environment of infidelity, continued to hold many extra-marital affairs, with men and women” (Bond 167). Vita was certainly not the most stable person Virginia could have got involved with.
The pain that Virginia must have felt at Vita’s inevitable betrayal is also displayed in Orlando. “Huge noises as of tearing and rending of oak trees could be heard. There were also wild cries and terrible inhuman groanings” (Orlando 61). As the great frost began when Orlando and Sasha’s relationship started, the great frost was over, ice breaking up at the moment of Orlando’s betrayal. The cries and groanings are not only of the people drowning but of Orlando (or anybody with a broken heart) himself. Orlando was so affected by Sasha that at another time love arrived, Orlando fled the country. “Love...has two faces; one white, the other black; two bodies; one smooth, the other hairy. It has two hands, two feet, two tails, two, indeed, of every member and each the exact opposite of the other. Yet so strictly are they joined together that you cannot separate them” (Orlando 117). The deception comes from Sasha, who represents Vita to Virginia. Virginia is at this point in the book, Orlando.
As stated previously, Orlando was supposed to be a satire of Vita. But in the genius hands of Virginia it went further. “The truth is I expect I began it as a joke and went on with it seriously” (Diary 128). This quotation, in Virginia’s words, can be applied further than the book, it may be she started her relationship with Vita with no intentions of getting involved with her -- but that is not what it became. Orlando begins to write: “dipping his pen in ink, saw the mocking face of the lost princess...All of which so drove their venom into him that, as if to vent his agony somewhere, he plunged his quill so deep into the inkhorn” (Orlando 79) and wrote a pretentious biography satirizing a cheating lover? It is not that unreasonable to conclude that Virginia’s jealousy and anger about Vita’s carefree liaisons should show in her writing. Orlando finally comes to a conclusion: “I am growing up...I am losing my illusion, perhaps to acquire new ones...Then...it was the effect of Sasha and her disillusionment perhaps...I will write...what I enjoy writing...” (Orlando 175). I like to believe that Virginia came to the same conclusion as Orlando: “I am a woman...a real woman, at last” (Orlando 253).
In conclusion, Orlando the novel is many things; it is a biography of Vita and Virginia’s relationship, a biography of Vita and an autobiography of Virginia. Mixing history, truths, reality and fantasy. Vita was the extrovert in the relationship. Demonstrating her homosexuality with abandon, carefree of the knowledge of it to the circle she ran in. Virginia was the opposite, quiet, the “mouse” of the relationship. Orlando was in a way her liberation. Carefully veiled through the pretense of a biography (and Orlando as Vita not Virginia) Virginia is able to expound on her emotions and liberty. She can be as carefree as Vita, yet remain true to herself. Yes, the novel is a satire but a satire of what? Primarily the reader is left to believe a satire of this part of her life; her relationship with Vita. Issues and concerns of women, her sexuality are apparent in her other books, yet they are glorified in Orlando. That she had delight is known, she practically beamed about the romp she was having in her diary. “Abandoned myself to the pure delight of this farce” (Diary 117). For once she could be liberated about her sexuality while still concealing her self. The energy of her relationship with Vita is apparent in the novel. She was to wrestle her demons in other books (To the Lighthouse as an example) in Orlando she celebrated. But in Virginia’s hands, even satire has its serious moments. “I am writing Orlando half in mock style very clear and plain, so that people will understand every word. But the balance between truth and fantasy must be careful” (Dairy 117). And now years later, critics are still trying to view in-between the truth and fiction and the enigma of Virginia Woolf.
Works Cited
Bond, Alma Halbert, Phd. Who Killed Virginia Woolf - a Psychobiography. Human Sciences Press, Inc.:New York, NY 1989.
Lee, Hermione. Virginia Woolf. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.:New York, NY 1996.
Woolf, Virginia. A Writer’s Diary. The Hogarth Press:London 1953
Woolf, Virginia. Orlando. Harcourt Brace & Company:New York 1956.

ΕΙΧΑΝ ΤΗΝ ΙΔΙΑ ΕΡΩΜΕΝΗ

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MERCEDES DE ACOSTA

Δυο «ιερά τέρατα» του παγκόσμιου κινηματογράφου, η Γκρέτα Γκάρμπο και η Μάρλεν Ντίτριχ – αλλά και η Ισιδώρα Ντάνκαν και η αδελφή του Φρεντ Αστέρ – υπήρξαν ερωτευμένες με την ίδια γυναίκα με τη Μερσέντες ντε Ακόστα. Στις αρχές του 2000, η δημοσιοποίηση των επιστολών που αντάλλαξε η τελευταία με τη Σουηδέζα ηθοποιό προκάλεσε θύελλα συζητήσεων και επανέφερε στο προσκήνιο τη θυελλώδη ζωή της.
Η Μερσέντες ντα Ακόστα γεννήθηκε στη Νέα Υόρκη το 1893. Ήταν η όγδοη και τελευταία κόρη μιας ευκατάστατης ισπανικής καταγωγής οικογένειας, εγκατεστημένης στην Κούβα. Η μητέρα της, που περίμενε τον πολυπόθητο γιο, ξεπέρασε την απογοήτευσή της φωνάζοντας τη μικρή Ραφαέλ και ανατρέφοντάς την σαν αγόρι, με τη συμμετοχή ολόκληρης της οικογένειας σ’ αυτό το παιχνίδι.
Ωστόσο, επτά χρόνια αργότερα, συνέβη η τραγωδία. Σ’ έναν παιδικό τσακωμό, ένα αγοράκι της φώναξε κατάμουτρα: «Αν είσαι αγόρι και δεν έχεις "αυτό", είσαι παραμορφωμένο!» Την ίδια στιγμή ο παιδικός της κόσμος κατέρρευσε! Η οικογένεια όμως τη λάτρευε κι έτσι το περιστατικό «καταχωνιάστηκε» στο ασυνείδητο του μικρού κοριτσιού.
Η μεγαλύτερη αδελφή της, η Ρίτα, παντρεμένη με τον Φίλιπ Λίντινγκ, εραστή της Μάτα Χάρι, της γνώρισε τον Ροντέν, τον Μπεργκσόν, τον Ντ’ Ανούντσιο, την Έντιθ Γουόρτον, τη Σάρα Μπερνάρ, τον Χαλίλ Γκιμπράν, μεταξύ πολλών άλλων διάσημων που σύχναζαν στο αξιοζήλευτο σαλόνι της. Κι ήταν ο Χαλίλ Γκιμπράν που θα την οδηγήσει να αμφισβητήσει, στην εφηβεία της, τον καθολικισμό της! Η γνωριμία τους θ’ αποτελέσει μια πνευματική περιπέτεια που χρόνια αργότερα θα τη φέρει στην Ινδία, όπου θα γνωρίσει τον γκουρού Ραμάνα Μαρχάσι. Στην αυτοβιογραφία της θα περιγράψει τις τρεις σημαντικότερες ημέρες της ζωής της κοντά του : «Πρέπει ν’ ακολουθείς το "εγώ" σου. Δεν υπάρχει τίποτε και κανείς άλλος ν’ ακολουθήσεις» της είπε και βάζοντας το δεξί του χέρι στην καρδιά της, συνέχισε: «Εδώ βρίσκεται η καρδιά, η πνευματική καρδιά! Βρες το "εγώ" σου στην πραγματική καρδιά!» Και η Μερσέντες θα ξεκινήσει την αναζήτηση, ερωτευόμενη το 1917 τη δεκαεξάχρονη τότε Ισιδώρα Ντάνκαν.
Ένας έρωτας που συνεχίστηκε σαν προστασία και οικονομική βοήθεια μέχρι τον τραγικό θάνατο της Ισιδώρας από την πιασμένη στη ρόδα μιας Μπουγκάτι εσάρπα της. Από την εποχή αυτή διασώζεται ένα ποίημα της θεϊκής χορεύτριας για τη Μερσέντες: «Κορμί λεπτό, χέρια απαλά και άσπρα / στην υπηρεσία της ηδονής μου / δυο λουλουδιασμένα στήθη / στρογγυλά και γλυκά / προσκαλούν το πεινασμένο μου στόμα να φάει / απ’ όπου δυο ρόδινες στητές ρώγες / ζητούν από τη διψασμένη μου ψυχή να πιει / κι ακόμα πιο κάτω ένας μυστικός τόπος / όπου θα ‘θελα να κρύψω το πρόσωπό μου / τα φιλιά μου σαν ένα σμήνος από μέλισσες / θα ανοίξουν δρόμο / ανάμεσα στους μηρούς σου / και θα ρουφήξουν μέλι από τα χείλη σου / ενώ εγώ θα αγκαλιάζω τους λεπτούς γοφούς σου».
Τι ήταν αυτό που διέθετε η Μερσέντες και προκάλεσε τόσα πάθη; Το ύψος της ήταν μόλις 1,57. Αδύνατη, με μεγάλα εντυπωσιακά μαύρα μάτια και εξέχοντα ζυγωματικά, με μαύρα μαλλιά γυαλισμένα με μπριγιαντίνη, σχεδόν πάντα ντυμένη στα μαύρα, φορώντας καπέλο και μ9α μακριά κάπα από την οποία μόλις φαίνονταν οι αγκράφες των παπουτσιών της, η Μερσέντες τραβούσε την προσοχή σε κάθε εμφάνισή της. Κάποιος σήμερα, κοιτάζοντας τις φωτογραφίες της, ίσως να μην καταλάβει τι ήταν αυτό το τόσος ιδιαίτερο που είχε! Όμως, απ’ ό,τι λέγεται, ήταν αρκετό να την ακούσει κάποιος να δηλώνει «μπορώ να αρπάξω τη γυναίκα οποιουδήποτε άνδρα», για να συνειδητοποιήσει την ισχυρή προσωπικότητά της. Την ίδια εποχή θα ξεκινήσει τη σχέση της με τη Ναζίμοβα, διάσημη Ρωσίδα ηθοποιό που μόλις είχε φθέσει στην Αμερική με σκοπό να κατακτήσει το Μπρόντγουεϊ. Κοντά της θα βυθιστεί στη ρωσική κουλτούρα, θα μυηθεί στον κόσμο του Ντοστογιέφσκι, του Τολστόι, του Γκόγκολ και του Πούσκιν.
Όμως, η πίεση της μητέρας της θα την αναγκάσει το 1920 να παντρευτεί συμβατικά τον Αμπραάμ Πουλ, γόνο πλούσιας οικογένειας του Σιγκάγου. Σε αντίθεση με την ισχύουσα αμερικανική παράδοση, τα 15 χρόνια που κράτησε αυτός ο γάμος, η Μερσέντες θ’ αρνηθεί να αποκαλείται κυρία Πουλ. Μάλιστα, αμέσως μετά την τελετή, φεύγει για ένα μακρύ ταξίδι στην Ευρώπη με την έξαλλη από ζήλια ερωμένη της ηθοποιό Έβα Λεγκαλιέν.
Είναι σ’ αυτό το ταξίδι, στη ρεσεψιόν του περίφημου ξενοδοχείου Pera Palace, που θα ανταλλάξει την πρώτη φευγαλέα ματιά με την πιο εντυπωσιακή γυναίκα που έχουν δει ποτέ τα μάτια της. Από τους αριστοκρατικούς της τρόπους φαντάζεται ότι είναι Ρωσίδα πριγκίπισσα, αλλά ο ρεσεψιονίστ το διαψεύδει. Δεν θυμάται το όνομα της, «αλλά σίγουρα πρόκειται για μια νεαρή Σουηδέζα ηθοποιό», της λέει.
Ναι, είναι η Γκρέτα Γκάρμπο! Θα χρειαστεί να περάσουν εννιά ολόκληρα χρόνια πριν της δοθεί η ευκαιρία να τη γνωρίσει από κοντά σ’ ένα πάρτι στη Σάντα Μόνικα, στο σπίτι της σεναριογράφου Σάλκα Βέρτελ. Η Μερσέντες είναι καλεσμένη ως σεναριογράφος του Χόλυγουντ. Είναι ένα πάρτι στους αντίποδες της τυπικής χολιγουντιανής ανοησίας και κακογουστιάς, που καθόλου δεν αντέχει. Όπως σημειώνει στην αυτοβιογραφία της «Εδώ βρίσκεται η καρδιά», όταν έδωσαν οι δυο τους τα χέρια και της χαμογέλασε, αισθάνθηκε ότι την ήξερε όλη της τη ζωή, σε πολλές προηγούμενες μετενσαρκώσεις της. Η εικοσιεξάχρονη τότε Γκάρμπο προσέχει ένα βραχιόλι που φοράει η Μερσέντες. «Το αγόρασα στο Βερολίνο για σένα» της απαντάει εκείνη, ενώ το βγάζει και της το χαρίζει.
Είμαστε στους πρώτους μήνες του 1931 και η Μερσέντες, 38 χρόνων, έμπειρη σε σαπφικούς έρωτες, απσίγνωστη στους ομοφυλοφιλικούς κύκλους της Νέας Υόρκης των τρελών χρόνων του Μεσοπολέμου, νιώθει ότι ερωτεύεται για πρώτη φορά έτσι ασυγκράτητα. Όταν η Γκάρμπο θα της προτείνει να περάσουν μαζί 6 εβδομάδες στο νησί της ασημένιας λίμνης στη Σιέρα Νεβάδα, θα είναι γι’ αυτήν η απόλυτη ευτυχία. Θα γράψει: «Πώς να περιγράψεις 6 μαγευτικές εβδομάδες… Έξι τέλειες εβομάδες μέσα σε μια ολόκληρη ζωή… κι όλο αυτό τον καιρό ούτε μια στιγμή δυσαρμονίας ανάμεσα στην Γκρέτα κι εμένα… 6 εβδομάδες που πέρασαν σαν 6 λεπτά». Ωστόσο, από αυτές τις διακοπές το μόνο που έχει μείνει για την …ιστορία και την περιέργεια μας είναι κάποιες γυμνόστηθες φωτογραφίες της Γκάρμπο και οι υπαινιγμοί της Μερσέντες για μια θυελλώδη ερωτική σχέση. Υπαινιγμοί που διέψευσε η Γκάρμπο και αμφισβήτησαν πολλοί κοινοί τους φίλοι. Παρ’ όλα αυτά, η Άλις Μπ. Τόκλας, ερωτική σύντροφος της Γερτρούδης Στάιν και μέντορας της «χαμένης γενιάς», έγραψε στην Ανίτα Λος: «Κάποια μέρα, κάποια μου είπε ότι δεν θα έπρεπε να παίρνουμε στα ελαφρά τη Μερσέντες. Στο τέλος-τέλος είχε στην αγκαλιά της τις δυο πιο σημαντικές γυναίκες της Αμερικής, την Γκρέτα Γκάρμπο και τη Μάρλεν Ντίτριχ!»
Γιατί είναι γεγονός που δεν χωράει την παραμικρή αμφιβολία! Όταν η Γκάρμπο το καλοκαίρι του 1932 φεύγει στη Σουηδία, αδιαφορώντας για το ότι αφήνει πίσω της μόνη κι απελπισμένη τη Μερσέντες, εκείνη θα βρει παρηγοριά στην αγκαλιά της Μάρλεν Ντίτριχ, με πρωτοβουλία μάλιστα της μοιραίας ηθοποιού. Η Μάρλεν Ντίτριχ, τρελά ερωτευμένη με τη Μερσέντες, γεμίζει το σπίτι της δεύτερης με λουλούδια και δηλώνει στα γράμματά της: «Τρελά και παθιασμένα ερωτευμένη μαζί σου». «Μη λες ποτέ "για πάντα", γιατί στον έρωτα είναι βλασφημία», της παραπονιέται σ’ ένα γράμμα της η Μερσέντες. Και πράγματι, 9 μήνες μετά, η Μάρλεν αναγκάζεται να φύγει στην Ευρώπη, μένοντας όμως για πάντα μια καλή και πιστή φίλη της ερωμένης της.
Ακριβώς ό,τι δεν υπήρξε η Γκάρμπο, η οποία διατήρησε για χρόνια με τη Μερσέντες μια φιλία, με τα πάνω και τα κάτω της, κρατώντας όμως τις αποστάσεις και καθορίζοντας αυτή τους κανόνες. Ψυχρή και υπεροπτική, μέχρις ότου διακόψει οριστικά το 1960, όταν δημοσιεύεται η αυτοβιογραφία της Μερσέντες. Λέγεται, μάλιστα, ότι όταν έπειτα από χρόνια η Μερσέντες τής έστειλε ένα χριστουγεννιάτικο καλάθι με ποτά, η Γκάρμπο κράτησε μόνο ένα μπουκάλι βότκα κι επέστρεψε τα υπόλοιπα χωρίς καν ένα ευχαριστήριο σημείωμα.
Φυσικά, στη ζωή της Μερσέντες υπήρξαν και πολλές άλλες ερωμένες, όπως η Αντέλ Αστέρ, αδελφή του Φρεντ, υπήρξαν φίλοι της σπουδαίες προσωπικότητες, όπως ο Πικάσο, ο Έλιοτ, ο Στραβίνσκι, ο Τοσκανίνι, ο Κοκτό, ο Χάξλεϊ, ο Πάουντ, ο Νιζίνσκι, ο Ντιαγκίλεφ, ο Ματίς. Όμως στη ζωή της υπήρξε και το συγγραφικό της έργο, τόσο περίεργα λυρικό και δραματικό χωρίς ίχνος μοντερνισμού, αλλά και τόσο γυναικείο, γεμάτο ευφυΐα και τόλμη.
Παρ’ όλα αυτά, ιδιαίτερα μετά το ’60, η ζωή της άρχισε να γλιστράει στην ανωνυμία, κάτι που η ίδια πάλεψε με νύχια και με δόντια για να το αποφύγει. Τελευταίος περιστασιακός φίλος της, ο Άντι Γουόρχολ. Πέθανε στη Νέα Υόρκη το 1968, μάλλον μόνη και μάλλον φτωχή.
Την αλληλογραφία της με την Γκάρμπο την κληροδότησε στο μουσείο Rosenbach της Φιλαδέλφειας, με τον όρο να ανοιχθεί 10 χρόνια μετά τον θάνατο της Γκάρμπο. Οι 55 επιστολές, οι 14 κάρτες και τα 10 τηλεγραφήματα δόθηκαν στη δημοσιότητα στις αρχές του 2000, χωρίς να καταφέρουν να ρίξουν το άπλετο φως που όλοι περίμεναν στην τόσο αμφιλεγόμενη σχέση τους και χωρίς να κατορθώσουν να λύσουν το αίνιγμα της σεξουαλικότητας της Γκάρμπο. Διότι η Γκάρμπο, μια γυναίκα που δεν ήθελε με τίποτε να μάθουν οι άλλοι την προσωπική της ζωή, δεν θα έγραφε ποτέ σε γράμματα σκέψεις και συναισθήματα που θα την… εξέθεταν με τη δημοσιοποίησή τους. Μένουν μόνο τα γράμματα της Μερσέντες που αντάλλαξε με τη Ντίτριχ – στα οποία η Μάρλεν την παρηγορούσε για το τέλος της σχέσης της με την Γκάρμπο – ως έμμεσες αναφορές για τη σχέση των δυο γυναικών.

Ωστόσο, γεννημένη στα τέλη του 19ου αιώνα η Μερσέντες ντε Ακόστα κατάφερε να σημαδέψει με τη ζωή και το όνομά της τον πρώτο χρόνο και του 21ου αιώνα

(Του erva_cidreira)

ΕΚΕΙΝΕΣ 1

.......Radclyffe Hall.........Renée Vivien....Vita Sackville-West

..Djurna Barnes.........Anais Nin........Natalie Barney

AUDREY KAWASAKI

THE JOURNEY

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The Journey

by Shauna Swarz

In the new film The Journey, director Ligy Pullappally presents a tale of two girls in rural India whose childhood friendship turns into adolescent love. Kiran (Suhasini V. Nair) agrees to help a neighbor boy woo Delilah (Shrruiti Menon) by writing love letters for him to present to her as his own. Through these letters Kiran comes to terms with and expresses her own love for Delilah, who eventually discovers who the letters’ real author is.
Delilah realizes she is in love as well, and the two young women enjoy a secret affair--until Delilah’s mother (Kpac Lalitha) susses out the nature of the girls’ relationship. While Delilah unhappily faces the prospect of a hastily arranged marriage, Kiran still more unhappily questions whether she even wants to live if she can’t have Delilah.
Before turning punitive, the girls’ families are seen to be a reliable source of protection and support. Delilah’s family dotes on her, the youngest of four children and the only daughter. Her mother treats her sternly but lovingly and her grandmother (Valsala Menon) showers her with love and unwavering support. But that nurturing environment changes in an instant after Kiran’s rival rats the girls out to Delilah’s mother, who beats her.
In the process she breaks the glass bangle--a family heirloom--that Kiran had given Delilah as a symbol of their love. Delilah’s mother punishes her and tries to sever the bond she shares with Kiran--violently, as the broken bracelet cuts the girl’s wrist. The once supportive family structure fails Delilah, punishing her for flouting compulsory heterosexuality.
Pullappally wanted her film to be a counterpoint to the popular sport of pathologizing homosexuality in Indian films like Girlfriend. Even more disturbing evidence can be found in real life. She says the situation is so severe in India that it is not unheard of for young women to end their own lives after being exposed as lesbians. “These stories are sometimes reported in newspapers,” she explains in a recent interview with her, “but most go unreported, as the surviving family members have an interest in keeping the shame and scandal fallout to a minimum.” She adds that such incidents are so frequent that there is even a watchdog organization in Kerala that keeps track.
These tragedies inspired Pullappally to offer a positive representation of queer identity through a popular medium that has the potential to reach a wide audience.
The Journey is the first film out of India to seriously address lesbian love since Fire in 1996. While Fire is ultimately affirming, Pullappally was intent on taking it one step further. She wanted to make a film where the women choose each other out of love, as opposed to something to fall back on after they become disillusioned with heterosexual relationships. She wanted to portray heterosexual relationships as expected and imposed by family, but ultimately not satisfying in that they lack the qualities of a lesbian relationship--as opposed to the other way around.
“My personal belief is that homosexuality has little to do with either the actions, or inactions of the opposite gender,” she told the Deccan Herald in a January interview.
It was also important to Pullappally that her film’s story take place in a rural setting. Whereas Fire features urban women who have available to them the resources that metropolitan life offers, she wanted to portray life outside the city and the isolation that often comes with is.
She acknowledges that there is an emerging queer community in Kerala but says that many young people have no access to that support particularly people who are neither male nor city-dwelling.
The Journey further distinguishes itself in its subtlety. It is a delicate depiction of a delicate subject, in part because Pullappally has always intended the film to be released in India. The sexual aspect of the girls’ relationship is hinted at but not explicitly portrayed. There’s a suggestion of impending sex as they gaze at each other in the pool, the water reflecting light across their faces, its lapping sounds serving as stark background music.
Little is said and the camera lingers, noticeably comfortable with the silence and stillness.
Much of the narrative is communicated visually rather than through dialogue, lending the film a mesmerizing lyricism as well as making the subtitles easier to keep up with. The film is in Malayalam (with the original title of Sancharam), which is the language of the South Indian state Kerala, where Pullapally was born.
She has lived most of her life in Chicago but returned to India in 2002 to make her film after winning a Sunshine Peace Award for exceptional service as an attorney advocating for women. Prior to filmmaking, she was a trial lawyer specializing in divorce, child support, and immigration cases and representing women who had been abused by their spouses. Before that she was a public interest attorney.
The Journey has won several awards, including the Chicago Award for best film. It has screened throughout the U.S. and in many parts of India and continues to tour the festival circuit. It was recently picked up for distribution by Wolfe, and hopefully will soon gain distribution within India as well.

FREMDE HAUT (UNVEILED)

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FREMDE HAUT (Unveiled)

The translator Fariba Tabrizi (29, played by Jasmin Tabatabai) is living under the threat of the death penalty in her own country Iran after being revealed, by the vice squad, to be homosexual. With some support from a relative, Fariba is able to flee from her home country to Germany. When she is in the refugee detention centre at Frankfurt Airport her application for asylum is turned down. She lives hour by hour with the thought in mind that she may be deported. Her desperate prospects are dramatically improved by the suicide of a fellow-inmate also from Iran she assumes his identity and, as Siamak Mustafai, and using his temporary permit of sojourn, is re-located to the provinces of Swabia.
Fariba knows Germany only from literature and from her work as a translator which leave her in no way prepared for the likes of Sielmingen. The contrast to a metropolis such as Teheran could scarcely be greater. At first glance her survival seems to be assured. However, in the refugee home she is obliged to uphold her male disguise in cramped quarters and she is not permitted to leave the Regional District of Esslingen. A single word wrong, any attempt at contact is allied for her with the danger of her cover being blown.
The only way to escape from this predicament is by means of forged documents. To do this she is in urgent need of money. With a little help from her roommate Gasmut she comes into contact with Lächle (30), the local godfather. He is instrumental in procuring an illegal, seasonal job for her in a sauerkraut processing factory right in the middle of a complex hick town coterie. Anne (26) is manoeuvred by her workmates into taking on a bet. She will get a bike for her son if she can manage to get a date with the refugee chap. Uwe (29) finds it totally out of order that Anne is so solicitous about Siamak's well-being. His worries are not entirely unfounded, since Anne derives some kind of pleasure from the strange foreigner.
Under any other circumstances Fariba would have been only too glad to respond to Anne's advances, however she is afraid on account of the whole business of the Siamak facade. With great stubbornness Anne drags Siamak along to the boozy leisure activities of her little hick town clique. In the process they become dangerously close and Anne begins to get wind of Fariba's true identity.
When Siamak's permit of sojourn runs out Fariba gets into arrears with the instalments for her documents. It becomes clear to her that she will never manage things on her own. She risks everything and takes Anne into her confidence. She wants at long last to be able to live as a woman again, to live out her profession, to enjoy big cities. To break away from the provinces would also be the fulfilment of a dream for Anne. She does not disappoint Fariba. Together they successfully go in for car theft. Fariba gets her new passport. The world is their oyster.
Just as Fariba is changing out of her Siamak disguise Uwe and the clique turn up in Anne's flat. Uwe demands an explanation. The row escalates. The noisy dispute leads to Fariba's downfall. During the routine check on account of disturbance of the falsified passport falls into the hands of the police. The system which she believed she had outwitted takes its relentless grip. Fariba knows: this is the end, her hopes are shattered. Anne has to watch on helplessly as Fariba is put under arrest.
The term "in orbit" is officially used by the UN to refer to asylum-seekers who find themselves orbiting around planet Earth because they can actually find legal domicile nowhere at all.

JOHN PATRICK DUGDALE

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John Patrick Dugdale

Narrative account of career
The birth of my interest in allegorical photographs began with my first camera, a gift from my mother in 1972. I created a tableau for my first picture: my sister stood under my grandmother’s grape arbor and acted like the Venus di Milo, which I’d seen on Bugs Bunny. My instinct at age 12 was to use the camera to make art rather than to record what was around me. The mystery of being able to recreate the world to suit my imagination and to express that vision through this small, mechanical devise was the deeply held secret of my childhood. It is a notion that persists throughout my life’s work.
As an undergraduate at the School of Visual Arts in NYC where I majored in art history and photography, I was asked to work on a book of flowers which I altered to resemble medieval illuminations. I had gone to school with every intention of being the next Alfred Stieglitz, but after the book was published I was surprised by a commercial career in photography that lasted a decade. I recommitted myself to fine art photography after my transformative experience of nearly total blindness due to HIV-related CMV retinitis.
My first instinct after my sight change was to share what I saw through my damaged eyes--spotted photographs and blurred figures--which was not satisfying for me
experienced a revelation when I realized that my actual, heartfelt sight was not damaged at all; my sight loss did not change my visual acuity. I was kept awake at night, thinking about the next photographs that would come from my mind and heart.
All of the images included in the portfolio I am submitting with this application were made since that time. During the last ten years, I’ve used my antique, large-format camera to create pictures using the 19th century processes of cyanotype, platinum and albumen. These photographs are directly related to the prose of the great American transcendentalists Emerson, Thoreau, Dickenson and Whitman who spoke to me by way of audiotape. Much of my work also reflects upon 19th century photographic tradition. Two of my heroes are William Henry Fox Talbot, the first photographer to walk the line between science and art, and Julia Margaret Cameron who created spirit-filled photographs of people in her innermost circle.
Shortly after the beginning of the loss of my sight, I discovered that one of the few times I could move beyond that loss is when I’m creating pictures. My visual impairment has helped me to focus on essentials. The content of my photographs includes family, friends, a few beloved objects, and self-portraits with allegorical references to illness and recovery.
I have been surprised, starting with the first of what would become almost 25 solo shows around the world, that viewers of my private feelings about my sight loss at age 33 cut across boundaries and spoke universally to the idea of transformation through loss.
I’ve had solo exhibitions in galleries across the United States, from Boston and New York, to Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Miami, Houston, Los Angeles, Seattle and Chicago. My work has been included in group-shows at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the Katonah Museum of Art in Katonah, NY, the Miami Art Museum, and the New Orleans Museum of Art.
My photographs are included in the permanent collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Birmingham Museum of Art in Birmingham, Alabana, the Miami Art Museum, and the Berkeley Art Museum at the University of California. Maurice Sendak has included my photographs in his private collection and, over a ten-year period, Sir Elton John has collected 199 of my prints.
Career highlights includes being inducted into the Royal Photographic Society in Bath, England, where my photographs are included in the public collection. Another was being allowed to take photographs on the William Henry Fox Talbot estate in Lacock, England, and having my photographs include in the collection of the museum there.
One decade and 78 shows later, I continue to be interested in delving into the miracle of light being fixed on paper sensitized with iron or silver salts. At a time when digital photography is taking over the medium, I want to continue to preserve the craftsman like aspect of photography, the hands-on artistry of exposing a piece of silver nitrate film to light traveling through a piece of ground glass, and making a contact print in the sun. I want to recapture the sensuality of experience in the origins of photography.
There is a silent quality to my photographs; the images exist as stilled time. The photograph itself becomes a sort of momento mori. I emphasize the sculptural, fragile quality of the photograph by creating box-like frames with hand-blown glass and 19th century wallpaper or hand-made, marbleized paper on the back.
The quietude that people respond to in my pictures is, in part, because of the way the pictures are made: no flash; no harsh electric light; not even the sound of the shutter—just a lens cap removed, and then gently replaced. This encounter provides, for me, a metaphor for looking. My visual impairment allows me to provide a meditation upon the experiences of vision: visual loss is, after all, a visual experience.
I find now that I love speaking about my experience and sharing it with the public. I spoke on the BBC and “Fresh Air with Terri Gross” on National Public Radio about what it is like to create photographs without having my full eyesight. I’ve lectured at the International Center of Photography in New York, and at the Berkeley Art Museum. This is what I want to share: I’ve realized that it is not through my eyes, but through my mind, that I see things. Looking involves sound, sight, touch, and memory. What does it mean to see? What is it like to look, or to be looked at? These are questions I will continue to explore in my photographs and in my life.
(Αναδημοσίευση από το site της Holden Luntz Gallery)