31.10.10

JAMES HUCTWITH 2

James Huctwith (Καναδάς)

ΤΟ ΧΑΜΕΝΟ ΑΡΙΣΤΟΥΡΓΗΜΑ ΤΟΥ ΓΙΑΝΝΗ ΔΑΛΙΑΝΙΔΗ

- Κάνατε μια τελείως γυμνή ταινία, το χαμένο σας «αριστούργημα» -κατά τον Κούνδουρο-, που ήταν και η τελευταία παραγωγή της Φίνος Φίλμ. Δυστυχώς, το νεγκατίφ εξαφανίστηκε, χωρίς τελικά να τη δούμε ποτέ.
Γιάννης Δαλιανίδης: Ναι, είναι το μεγάλο μου παράπονο. Εξαφανίστηκε, εξαερώθηκε, χάθηκε εντελώς αναίτια και αδικαιολόγητα. Σαν να μην είχε γυριστεί ποτέ. Τι έγινε, δεν το έμαθα ποτέ. Την τοποθετούσα σε μια απροσδιόριστη εποχή και οι άνθρωποι κυκλοφορούσαν γυμνοί. Ένα γυμνό που όσοι πρόλαβαν να το δουν το έβρισκαν αισθητικότατο. Όπως ο Κούνδουρος, που βρήκε την ταινία μια αναπάντεχη έκπληξη. Ήταν γυρισμένη σ' ένα νταμάρι. Ένα πάρα πολύ σκληρό περιβάλλον με φόντο πέτρα. Κι αυτό ακριβώς ήθελα να δείξω. Πόσο γυμνός και ευάλωτος είναι ο άνθρωπος μέσα στη φύση. (lifo, 20-10-2010)

Ο Γιάννης Δαλιανίδης έμεινε πάντα παιδί
Αγάπησε τη ζωή και τον κινηματογράφο με μια καριέρα που έφτασε τις 70 ταινίες και περισσότερες από δέκα τηλεοπτικές σειρές
Του Παναγιωτη Παναγοπουλου (Καθημεριή, 24/10/2010)
Οταν έλεγαν στον Γιάννη Δαλιανίδη να συναντηθεί με ανθρώπους του κινηματογράφου της γενιάς του, έλεγε: «Αφήστε με ήσυχο. Τι να πάω να κάνω με τους γέρους;». Κι ας ήταν και μικρότεροι σε ηλικία από εκείνον. Ο Δαλιανίδης, που άφησε την τελευταία του πνοή το περασμένο Σάββατο ενώ κοιμόταν, στα 87 του χρόνια, είχε μια ιδιαίτερη σχέση με τη νεότητα. Ηταν σαφώς μέχρι και την τελευταία στιγμή προοδευτικός, γνώριζε πάρα πολύ καλά τι συνέβαινε στις εξελίξεις της τέχνης και βρισκόταν κοντά στους νέους του κινηματογράφου, παρατηρώντας, ξεχωρίζοντάς τους και δίνοντάς τους συμβουλές.
Το 1966 είχε γράψει τους στίχους για το τραγούδι που ακουγόταν στο «Ραντεβού στον αέρα», το «Μένουμε πάντα παιδιά», ένα τραγούδι που τον ακολουθούσε σε όλη του τη ζωή. «Πάντα με τραγούδι η ζωή μας ξεκινά / Διώξε κάθε λύπη και το κέφι αρχινά / Οσο έχουμε τα νιάτα, νιάτα, νιάτα / Μ' ένα εύθυμο τραγούδι, μένουμε πάντα παιδιά». Τα νιάτα μπορεί να πέρασαν σε ό, τι αφορά την ηλικία, όμως ο Δαλιανίδης διατήρησε την παιδικότητα, τον ενθουσιασμό και την ενέργεια που είχε σε μια καριέρα που έφτασε τις σχεδόν 70 ταινίες και τις περισσότερες από δέκα τηλεοπτικές σειρές.
Κάθε Νοέμβριο, μέχρι και την τελευταία χρονιά, στο Φεστιβάλ Θεσσαλονίκης ήταν εκεί. Παρακολουθούσε ανελλιπώς όλες τις νέες ελληνικές ταινίες και είχε πάντα ένα εύστοχο σχόλιο να κάνει. Το ότι είχε γυρίσει την τελευταία του ταινία το 1987 (τα «Ισόβια») δεν τον είχε απομακρύνει στο ελάχιστο από τον κινηματογράφο και τους ανθρώπους του και οι νέοι άνθρωποι με ταλέντο πάντα τραβούσαν την προσοχή του. Στο τραπέζι, αργά μετά την τελευταία προβολή, θυμόταν με απόλυτη διαύγεια ιστορίες από τα γυρίσματα και όταν όλοι κατάκοποι ήθελαν να γυρίσουν στο ξενοδοχείο για να κοιμηθούν, εκείνος έλεγε «θα μείνω λίγο ακόμη για ένα ποτό. Δεν μπορώ να κάθομαι στο σπίτι».
Από το 1958, που έγραψε το πρώτο του σενάριο, το «Τρελοκόριτσο» και το 1959, που σκηνοθέτησε την πρώτη του ταινία, τη «Μουσίτσα», ο Γιάννης Δαλιανίδης δεν σταμάτησε ποτέ να ζει για τον κινηματογράφο και να δημιουργεί ταινίες κάθε είδους, από κωμωδίες μέχρι μιούζικαλ, δράματα και αστυνομικές περιπέτειες. Οι ταινίες του βρίσκονταν πάντα στις πρώτες θέσεις των εισπράξεων και μερικές απ' αυτές ήταν από τις ελάχιστες ελληνικές ταινίες εκείνης της περιόδου που ταξίδεψαν στο εξωτερικό και προβλήθηκαν με επιτυχία. Τα «Κορίτσια για φίλημα» έφτασαν στην Ισπανία ως «Muchachas carinosas», η «Στεφανία» προβλήθηκε στη Γαλλία ως «Stephania, fille perdue», ο «Εγωισμός» έφτασε στις πρώτες θέσεις του μεξικανικού box office ως «La Corrupcion» και «Οι θαλασσιές οι χάντρες» έκαναν διεθνή καριέρα ως «Les perles grecques».
O Γιάννης Δαλιανίδης μαζί με τον Φίνο ήταν οι άνθρωποι που καθόρισαν τη μορφή του ελληνικού εμπορικού κινηματογράφου και στήριξαν τη δημιουργία σταρ, όπως η Ρένα Βλαχοπούλου, η Ζωή Λάσκαρη, η Μάρθα Καραγιάννη, ο Κώστας Βουτσάς. Σήμερα πια και αφού έχουν περάσει δεκαετίες, ο Δαλιανίδης είναι απόλυτα δικαιωμένος, καθώς οι ταινίες του πέρασαν με απόλυτη επιτυχία τη δοκιμασία της αντοχής στον χρόνο. Ισως να μην ήταν ο καλύτερος σκηνοθέτης στην ιστορία του ελληνικού κινηματογράφου, όμως οι ταινίες του χαρακτηρίζονταν από την αγάπη του ίδιου για το σινεμά και την επιθυμία του να φτιάξει ταινίες που το κοινό θα θέλει να δει. «Εγώ είχα το κοινό με το μέρος μου», είχε πει μιλώντας στο βιβλίο του Ιάσονα Τριανταφυλλίδη «Στο τέλος μιλάει το πανί». «Αυτό δεν σημαίνει πως έκανα πάντα αριστουργήματα. Εκανα και ταινίες που σήμερα βλέπω πως έχουν προβλήματα. Ταινίες που τώρα θα γύριζα διαφορετικά. Πολλά, επίσης, σενάρια είχαν λάθη. Δούλεψα με όλη μου την ψυχή και ανάλογα με τα μέσα που μου δόθηκαν, ξόδεψα όλες μου τις δυνατότητες για να κάνω καλή δουλειά».
Και το έκανε με πάθος, όρεξη και πείσμα. Και πάλι μαζί με τον Φίνο, ήταν οι δύο άνθρωποι που οραματίστηκαν μια ελληνική κινηματογραφική παραγωγή που να θυμίζει το χολιγουντιανό σύστημα, όσο ήταν αυτό εφικτό με τα μέσα που υπήρχαν. Η συνεργασία τους, ωστόσο, δεν ήταν πάντα ανέφελη. Ισχυρογνώμονες και οι δύο, βρέθηκαν συχνά σε διαφωνία. «Το πρώτο διάστημα», είχε πει ο Δαλιανίδης στην ίδια συνέντευξη, «επέμενα στις απόψεις μου και θα έλεγε κανείς πως ήμουν πολύ βεντέτα. Εβλεπα τα πράγματα με ένα συγκεκριμένο τρόπο και ήθελα έτσι να γίνουν. Πίστευα ότι ο σκηνοθέτης πρέπει να έχει τον πρώτο και τον τελευταίο λόγο και να κυριαρχεί σε μια δουλειά. Εστω κι αν ήσουν στη Φίνος Φιλμ». Στα γυρίσματα του «Κατήφορου» υπήρχε μια τέτοια διαφωνία. «Είχα κάνει ένα υποκειμενικό πλάνο του μπουκαλιού που γύριζε. Δεν μπορώ να πω ότι επρόκειτο για κάτι καινούργιο ή επαναστατικό. Του Φίνου δεν του άρεσε αυτό το πλάνο. Μέσα στην αίθουσα είχε πει «αυτόν τον πονόματο δεν θα τον βάλουμε». Του απάντησα: «Κύριε Φίνο, θα το δείτε μονταρισμένο, θα δείτε το πλάνο στη θέση του και αν δεν είναι καλό, τότε θα το συζητήσουμε». Δεν χρειάστηκε να το συζητήσουμε».
Με τον ίδιο τρόπο, ο Δαλιανίδης κατάφερε να επιβάλει τη Ρένα Βλαχοπούλου, την οποία δεν ήθελε καθόλου ο Φίνος γιατί την θεωρούσε αντιεμπορική. Ομως, ο Δαλιανίδης την χρειαζόταν για τα μιούζικαλ, τις μουσικές κωμωδίες, όπως εκείνος προτιμούσε να τα χαρακτηρίζει και οι οποίες χαρακτήρισαν τη φιλμογραφία του. Για το «Μερικοί το προτιμούν κρύο», το πρώτο του μιούζικαλ, είχε πει: «Φοβόμουν τα μουσικά μέρη. Αυτός ο φόβος μού δημιουργήθηκε όταν παιζόταν το «Γουέστ Σάιντ Στόρι». Ηταν σπουδαίο έργο και το είχα δει 10 - 15 φορές. Είδα, λοιπόν, πως κάθε φορά που άρχιζε ένα τραγούδι, το κοινό έβγαινε και κάπνιζε. Είπα ας κάνω το πείραμά μου να δω πόσο περνάει, να δω πόσο μπορώ να συνδέσω τη μουσική με το θέαμα και την κωμωδία. Πάνω απ' όλα, δεν θέλησα να κάνω κωμωδία που θα ήταν έξω από τα ελληνικά πράγματα. Το θέμα μου ήταν τελείως ελληνικό. Κανένας δεν παντρεύεται αν δεν παντρευτεί προηγουμένως η μεγάλη αδελφή. Εκεί στήριξα τον μύθο. Και πέτυχε. Δεν ξέρω αν ήταν εύκολο. Για μένα ήταν μεθύσι. Τι θα πει εύκολο ή δύσκολο;».

ΜΑΡΑΘΩΝΙΟΣ ΔΡΟΜΟΣ - 2.500 ΧΡΟΝΙΑ ΑΠΟ ΤΗ ΜΑΧΗ ΤΟΥ ΜΑΡΑΘΩΝΑ

The Soldier of Marathon, Jean-Pierre Cortot
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Ο Μαραθώνιος Δρόμος είναι ένας αγώνας αντοχής με μια επίσημη απόσταση 42,195 χιλιομέτρων (26 μίλια 385 γιάρδες). Ο αγώνας ονομάζεται έτσι μετά την πορεία του Έλληνα στρατιώτη από τον Μαραθώνα στην Αθήνα μετά τη μάχη του Μαραθώνα (490 π.χ) ο οποίος έτρεξε για να μεταφέρει τα σημαντικά νέα στην Αθήνα.
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The soldier of Marathon, Luc-Olivier Merson, 1869
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Λέγεται ότι ο στρατιώτης έτρεξε πάνοπλος ολόκληρη την απόσταση χωρίς παύση και μπήκε στην Συνέλευση της Βουλής, όπου αναφώνησε "Νενικήκαμεν" (νικήσαμε) πριν καταρρεύσει και πεθάνει. Η ιστορία της πορείας από το Μαραθώνα στην Αθήνα εμφανίζεται αρχικά στον Πλούταρχο στη “στην Δόξα της Αθήνας” του 1ου αιώνα π.χ που αναφέρει την χαμένη εργασία του Ηρακλείδη Ποντικού. Αυτός δίνει το όνομα του δρομέα ως είτε Θέρσιπος ή Ευκλής. Ο Λουκιανός (2ος αιώνας πχ) επίσης δίνει την ιστορία αλλά ονομάζει το δρομέα Φειλιππίδη (όχι Φειδιππίδη). Η ιστορική ακρίβεια αυτού του άρθρου δεν είναι εξακριβωμένη. Ο Ηρόδοτος, η κύρια πηγή για τους ελληνο-περσικούς πολέμους, αναφέρει τον Φειδιππίδη ως τον αγγελιοφόρο που έτρεξε από την Αθήνα στη Σπάρτη ζητώντας βοήθεια, και έτρεξε έπειτα πίσω, μια απόσταση πάνω από 240 χιλιομέτρων. Σε μερικά χειρόγραφα το όνομα του δρομέα μεταξύ της Αθήνας και Σπάρτης δίνεται ως Φειλιππίδης. Ο Ηρόδοτος δεν κάνει καμία αναφορά για κανένα αγγελιοφόρο που στέλνεται από το Μαραθώνα στην Αθήνα. Αναφέρει ότι το κύριο μέρος του αθηναϊκού στρατού, που έχει αγωνίστηκε ήδη και κέρδισε την εξαντλητική μάχη, φοβάται μια ναυτική επιδρομή από τον Περσικό στόλο ενάντια σε μια ανυπεράσπιστη Αθήνα, και βάδισε γρήγορα πίσω από τη μάχη στην Αθήνα, φθάνοντας την ίδια μέρα.
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*****
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Ο Γάλλος Μισέλ Μπρεάλ, γνώστης και λάτρης της αρχαίας ελληνικής ιστορίας, πρότεινε στον Πιερ ντε Κουμπερτέν το 1894 να εντάξει, στους πρώτους σύγχρονους Oλυμπιακούς Aγώνες, το 1896, έναν αγώνα δρόμου από τον Μαραθώνα ώς την Αθήνα, προς τιμήν του πρώτου εκείνου ανώνυμου μαραθωνοδρόμου. Eτσι γεννήθηκε το αγώνισμα που συγκινεί εκατομμύρια ανθρώπους, χάρη, κυρίως, στον υπερβατικό χαρακτήρα του: ο δρομέας έρχεται αντιμέτωπος με τα όρια αντοχής του και καλείται να τα ξεπεράσει.
Ο Σπύρος Λούης υπήρξε ο πρώτος χρυσός μαραθωνοδρόμος στον κόσμο μετά τη νίκη του στους Ολυμπιακούς Αγώνες της Aθήνας το 1896.
Η απόσταση των 42,195 μέτρων καθορίστηκε αρχικά κατα τους Ολυμπιακούς αγώνες του Λονδίνου του 1908. Η απόσταση των 42 χιλιομέτρων είναι η απόσταση μεταξύ των ανακτόρων του Ουίνδσορ και του Ολυμπιακού σταδίου στο Shepherd’s Bush στα δυτικά του Λονδίνου. Η απόσταση καθορίστηκε στα 42 χιλιόμετρα και επίσης ένα γύρο του σταδίου το οποίο κατέληξε να είναι 42,195 μέτρα, παίρνοντας υπόψη και την καλύτερη θέση για την βασιλική οικογένεια.(el.wikipedia.org - kathimerini.gr)

Aθήνα, Παναθηναϊκό Στάδιο, Oλυμπιακοί Aγώνες 1896. «Oταν ήρθε η σειρά του
Σπύρου Λούη και ο αρειμάνιος νικητής του Mαραθωνίου δρόμου ανήλθε εις την
εξέδρα, όλον το Στάδιο συνεκλονίσθη. Mια κραυγή ατελεύτητος, μυριόστομος, μια
βοή ωσεί βροντή εξερράγη από παντός σημείου...». O Σπύρος Λούης, χρυσός
μαραθωνοδρόμος στην πρώτη διεξαγωγή του αγωνίσματος, παραλαμβάνει
τα βραβεία του ανεβασμένος στο βάθρο των νικητών (Aρχείο: «Mικρός Pωμηός»).

30.10.10

ΓΙΩΡΓΟΣ ΚΑΜΙΝΗΣ: Ο,ΤΙ ΚΑΝΕΙ ΚΑΝΕΙΣ ΟΤΑΝ ΚΛΕΙΝΕΙ ΤΗΝ ΠΟΡΤΑ ΤΟΥ ΣΠΙΤΙΟΥ ΤΟΥ ΕΙΝΑΙ ΔΙΚΗ ΤΟΥ ΥΠΟΘΕΣΗ

- Πολλά χρόνια τώρα διοργανώνεται στην Αθήνα Gay Ρarade. Κατά καιρούς, οι διοργανωτές του επεδίωξαν να τεθεί υπό την αιγίδα του δήµου, χωρίς να το πετύχουν. Αν εκλεγόσασταν, τι θα κάνατε;
Γιώργος Καμίνης: Προσωπικά, ως Συνήγορος του Πολίτη, από πρόπερσι είχα κυκλοφορήσει fliers στο Gay Ρarade, εναρµονιζόµενος φυσικά µε την οδηγία της Ευρωπαϊκής Ενωσης για την καταπολέµηση των διακρίσεων. Στην Ελλάδα, µε την οµοφυλοφιλία είµαστε πάρα πολύ καθυστερηµένοι. Υπάρχουν πολλές ελληνικές οικογένειες που κρύβουν έναν σκελετό στο ντουλάπι τους. Είναι πια καιρός να δούµε την οµοφυλοφιλία απροκατάληπτα, ως ερωτική προτίµηση. Ο,τι κάνει κανείς όταν κλείνει την πόρτα του σπιτιού του, εάν δεν παραβιάζει βεβαίως τον νόµο, είναι δική του υπόθεση. Ξεκάθαρα, λοιπόν. Αν εκλεγώ δήµαρχος, το Gay Ρarade θα το υποστηρίξω.
(Τα Νέα, 30/10/2010)


Φαντάζομαι ότι οι δηλώσεις Καμίνη, πρώην Συνήγορου του Πολίτη και νυν υποψήφιου Δημάρχου Αθηναίων, θα ενθουσίασαν ήδη όλους εκείνους τους μαχητικούς ακτιβιστές που πάντα πίστευαν ότι τα λοαδ δικαιώματα αρχίζουν και τελειώνουν στο Parade.
Οι υπόλοιποι ας αρκεστούμε στο να κλείνουμε καλά... τις πόρτες μας.

ΦΩΤΟΓΡΑΦΙΕΣ ΓΑΜΟΥ 1

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...επειδή αδυνατώ να φανταστώ ότι μπορεί να σκέφτεστε κάτι συνηθισμένο για την πιο ξεχωριστή μέρα της ζωής σας - κι ας αργεί στην Ελλάδα, όπως φαίνεται, ακόμη.

TANGO MEN

1974. Η ΝΕΑ ΠΟΡΤΟΓΑΛΙΑ. ΟΙ ΜΗΧΑΝΟΡΡΑΦΙΕΣ ΤΗΣ ΔΕΞΙΑΣ ΚΑΙ ΤΟ "ΚΙΝΗΜΑ ΟΜΟΦΥΛΟΦΙΛΩΝ ΕΠΑΝΑΣΤΑΤΙΚΗΣ ΔΡΑΣΕΩΣ"


Μακεδονία, 5/1974

29.10.10

ΜΕΞΙΚΟ 1810 - 2010. ΑΜΠΡΑΑΜ ΑΝΧΕΛ

Abraham Ángel Card Valdés (March 7, 1905 – October 27, 1924) was a Mexican artist known under his first name Abraham Ángel because his Scottish father forbade him to use the surname after he left the family when Abraham Ángel was a child.
After the father left the family the mother went with their children to Puebla where Abraham Ángel spent his childhood before he went with his brother to Mexico City when he was at the age of 11. In Mexico City he visited the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes (also known as Academia de San Carlos), met Manuel Rodríguez Lozano in 1921, with whom he had an intensive affair, and gave lessons in drawing based on the methods of Adolfo Best Maugard.
Abraham Ángel painted portraits, village scenes and landscapes. He used unnaturalistic colours and his paintings were of a naïve style. He died due to an overdose of morphine, after he suffered from depression.
(en.wikipedia.org)

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Abraham Angel, son of a Mexican mother and a father of Scottish ancestry, and the youngest of five brothers, had left home at age 17, evidently to escape the control of his mother and oldest brother.
He would study art his way. His most influential teacher, not coincidentally, was Manuel Rodriguez Lozano, one of Mexico’s finest artists. In addition to painting Angel’s portrait, Rodriguez Lozano had been his friend, his promoter, and his boyfriend. The maestro’s emerging homosexuality doubtless disturbed his wife, and the couple divorced.
Abraham Angel and his teacher spent July and August of 1923 together in Cuernavaca, and, as the paintings at the Museum of Modern Art illustrate, this was a period of profound growth and productivity for Angel. Diego Rivera, one of history’s most distinguished painters, praised the young man in a contemporary magazine article. According to another web article, in 1924 Angel traveled around Argentina with Rodriguez Lozano and painter Julio Castellanos, exhibiting work to delighted audiences.
Then the road ends. In October 1924, at age 19, Abraham Angel either committed suicide or died of a cocaine overdose and was buried in a tomb that no longer exists.
(mexidata.info)

LESBIAN PULP FICTION 1

Lesbian pulp fiction refers to any mid-20th century pulp novel with overtly lesbian themes and content. Lesbian pulp fiction was published in the 1950s and 60s by many of the same publishing houses that other subgenres of pulp fiction including Westerns, Romances, and Detective Fiction. Because very little other literature was available for and about lesbians at this time, quite often these books were the only reference people (lesbian and otherwise) had for modeling what lesbians were. Stephanie Foote, from the University of Illinois commented on the importance of lesbian pulp novels to the lesbian identity prior to feminism: "Pulps have been understood as signs of a secret history of readers, and they have been valued because they have been read. The more they are read, the more they are valued, and the more they are read, the closer the relationship between the very act of circulation and reading and the construction of a lesbian community becomes...Characters use the reading of novels as a way to understand that they are not alone."
Writer Donna Allegra explained why she purchased them in saying, "No matter how embarrassed and ashamed I felt when I went to the cash register to buy these books, it was absolutely necessary for me to have them. I needed them the way I needed food and shelter for survival."
Pulp fiction novels got their name from the cheap wood pulp paper they were printed on (note: the pulp fiction novels of the 1950s and 60s evolved out of the pulp magazines of earlier decades). These books were sold at drugstores, magazine stands, bus terminals and other places where one might look to purchase cheap, consumable entertainment. The books were small enough to fit in a purse or back pocket and cheap enough to throw away when the reader was through with it.
(en.wikipedia.org)





COCK

Η Ιωάννα Παππά, ο Μάκης Παπαδηµητρίου, ο Δηµήτρης Μοθωναίος κι ο Γιώργος Κοτανίδης πρωταγωνιστούν στο έργο του Μάικ Μπάρτλετ «Cock» που θα σκηνοθετήσει η Κατερίνα Ευαγγελάτου σε µετάφρασή της στο θέατρο "Θησείον".
Πρόκειται για μια σάτιρα ηθών του 30χρονου Μπάρτλετ – το νεαρό σκέλος ενός ανδρικού οµοφυλόφιλου ζευγαριού ερωτεύεται µια κοπέλα – που έκανε πρεµιέρα µόλις τον περασµένο Νοέµβριο στο «Ρόαγιαλ Κορτ» του Λονδίνου.

When John takes a break from his boyfriend, he accidentally meets the girl of his dreams.
Filled with guilt and indecision, he decides there is only one way to straighten this out…


Εφημ. ΕΛΕΥΘΕΡΙΑ, 9/1959

1974. 2.500.000 ΟΜΟΦΥΛΟΦΙΛΟΙ ΔΡΑΣΤΗΡΙΟΠΟΙΟΥΝΤΑΙ ΕΙΣ ΓΑΛΛΙΑΝ ΕΝ ΟΨΕΙ ΕΚΛΟΓΩΝ


Μακεδονία, 4/1974

28.10.10

ΜΕΞΙΚΟ 1810 - 2010. ΟΗΜ

OHM is a bi-monthly Mexican high-profile gay magazine, founded and based in Mexico City. The magazine covers topics for the Mexican gay contemporary citizen. OHM is known for being a breakthrough all over Mexico and it focuses mainly on fashion, current issues, design, news, rights and travel.
OHM is available nationwide and can sometimes be found in Librería Berkana in Madrid, Spain. In Mexico it is sold in the main magazine selling points, and supports itself primarily through advertising. The current editor is Alejandro Reyes Esparza.
OHM was founded by Alejandro Reyes Esparza and José Antonio Aguilar Contreras, and it was launched with its rare "zero issue" at a party at Living Club on February 2007. Today the magazine has over 50,000 readers in Mexico.
The magazine's content has grown up much in the last two years. It started presenting several gay pop culture issues and it has evolved presenting more serious issues.
The magazine includes sections such as Travel, Design, Fashion, Current Issues, Entertainment, Interviews, Lesbian Section, Reports, Health & Beauty, etc.
OHM has been praised for presenting public figures in its covers. So far Miguel Bosé, Belinda, Luis Roberto Guzmán (El Pantera), Christian Chávez, Gael García Bernal , Ari Borovoy, Gloria Trevi, Fey and Yuri have been on cover with exclusive interviews.
(en. wikipedia.org)

GAY PULP FICTION 3

Some of the titles issued by these presses in the late 1960s blurred the lines between literary gay fiction and pornography. While all of them include more explicit sexual content than literary novels or mainstream, non-sexual paperback fiction (Westerns, romances, etc.) of the time, some aspired to higher literary merit and include attempts at more careful characterizations, settings, and plots. Susan Stryker cites in this category Chris Davidson and Richard Amory, who both wrote for Greenleaf Classics. Davidson put gay porn twists on familiar genres: A Different Drum features sex between Yankee and Confederate soldiers in the American Civil War, Go Down, Aaron has a Jew subjected to sex sadism in the Third Reich, and Caves of Iron is about prison sex. Richard Amory, meanwhile, in the Song of the Loon has a Last of the Mohicans-type story, but with the lone frontiersman and the Indians having sex. Gay historian John Howard has identified Carl Corley as a similar writer of pulp pornography that was "more sober, more earnest," and that was usually set in Corley's native American South. Victor J. Banis wrote a gay detective series, The Man From C.A.M.P., whose novels features Jackie Holmes as a gay international superspy. This series turns the popular, conventional spy-genre novel on its head. (en.wikipedia.org)


ΠΑΘΟΣ ΓΥΝΑΙΚΩΝ

.
Another Way (Hungarian: Egymásra nézve), is a 1982 Hungarian film directed by Károly Makk about an affair between two women. It is based on a semi-autobiographical novella Another Love (Torvenyen belul) by Erzsébet Galgóczi (1930-89), who co-wrote the screenplay with Makk. It won the Best Actress award at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival for Jadwiga Jankowska-Cieślak and was nominated for the Palme d'Or.

At Christmas 1958 in Hungary, the body of Éva Szalánczky, an apparent murder victim, is recovered from a forest. In hospital, Livia Horváth, bandaged around her neck is recuperating, and is told that she will be unable to live her life as before; the reason is not made explicit.
The lesbian Éva, already known to the authorities for her private life, begins a new job as a journalist at The Truth, a weekly periodical, and meets the married Livia when the two women share an office. The attraction is immediate, but Livia is initially resistant. Late at night, while kissing in darkness on a park bench, the women are discovered by a policeman, who warns Livia that her husband and employer will be informed if she is found in the same uncompromising position again. Éva is arrested, but soon released.
At a collective farm, Éva finds the authorities have blocked an attempt at a more democratic way of organising their cooperative venture. Her understanding editor, a supporter of the short-lived government of the recently executed Imre Nagy, refuses to publish the article, and she resigns before she is sacked. Éva and Livia have a brief affair. The previously mild Dönci Horváth, an army officer, shoots his wife while she in the bath after her confession of love for Éva. Livia survives and her husband is imprisoned for the offence. At the hospital, Livia rejects Éva, who then journeys to the countryside. At night, Éva is challenged to stop walking by border guards, but is shot dead when she fails to do.
(en.wikipedia.org)
.

ΟΛΑ ΓΙΑ ΤΗΝ ΕΛΛΑΔΑ

Γιάννης Τσαρούχης

27.10.10

ΜΕΞΙΚΟ 1810 - 2010. ΧΟΥΑΝ ΣΟΡΙΑΝΟ


Juan Soriano (b. August 8, 1920 as Juan Francisco Rodríguez Montoya d. February 10, 2006) was a Mexican painter and sculptor.
Soriano, son of Rafael Rodríguez Soriano and Amalia Montoya Navarro, was born in Guadalajara and displayed his first painting at age 14. He moved to Mexico City in 1935, where after a difficult start he was accepted into the local art scene.
He became a member of the Mexican School cultural movement also featuring Frida Kahlo and poet Octavio Paz. He also joined the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios.
Soriano experimented with abstract work as well as portraits and self portraits. He also became a sculptor in terracotta, ceramics and later bronze.
In 1957, he was awarded the José Clemente Orozco prize by the government of Jalisco. In 1985, Bellas Artes staged an exhibition in honor of his fifty years in the art world. In 1987, he was awarded the National Art Prize by the Mexican government. The Spanish Government awarded Soriano its Valazquez Plastic Arts Prize.
La Paloma (The dove) in MonterreyDuring his career, his works featured in 130 exhibitions held in Mexico, the US, China, France and Poland. Soriano has works on display in public places in Mexico such as a large dove outside the Museum of Contemporary Art in Monterrey.
He died in February 2006 in Mexico City. He was 85 years old.


"Quienes nos atacan están locos. Además, si se investigara la vida de quienes nos critican resultaría que todos han tenido aventuras gay. Hombres y mujeres, porque no es posible no tenerlas en una vida"
"Tú no puedes renunciar a tu persona, a tu cuerpo, a tus sentimientos. Yo nunca me he arrepentido de haberme acostado con la gente que me he acostado, me arrepiento de la que no he podido"
Juan Soriano

GAY PULP FICTION 2


Gay pulps are part of the expansion of cheap paperback books that began in the 1930s and "reached its full force in the early 1950s." Mainstream publishers packaged the cheap paperbacks to be sold in train and bus stations, dimestores, drugstores, grocery stores, and newsstands, to reach the market that had bought pulp magazines in the first half of the twentieth century. Designed to catch the eye, the paperback books featured vivid cover art and often dealt with taboo subjects: prostitution, rape, interracial romances, lesbianism, and male homosexuality. Michael Bronski has noted that lesbian pulp fiction were far more numerous and popular than those that dealt with male homosexuality; he attributes this difference to the fact that while both lesbian and heterosexual women read the lesbian pulps, a major part of the market for these novels was heterosexual men. According to Bronski, "The trajectory of the gay male pulps is very different. There was no burgeoning market for gay male novels in the 1950s because they apparently had little crossover appeal for a substantial heterosexual readership."
Still, some gay pulps were published by mainstream publishers throughout the 1950s and early 1960s. These were often reprints of literary novels that involved references to homosexuality, such as Charles Jackson's 1946 novel, The Fall of Valor, and Gore Vidal's 1948 novel, The City and the Pillar, which first appeared in paperback in 1950. Likewise, Blair Niles' 1931 novel Strange Brother appeared in paperback in 1952.
The first paperback original to deal with homosexuality was 1952's Men into Beasts, a nonfiction work by George Viereck. Viereck, a poet, was sent to prison during World War II for his work as a paid propaganda agent of Nazi Germany. Men into Beasts is a general memoir of the indignities and brutalities of life in prison, but a significant part of it deals with situational homosexuality and male rape in prison. The cover of the book features a discreetly-posed nude man, on his knees in a prison cell, being beaten by two prison guards. The text on the back of the book blames prison riots on "homosexual slavery--inmates being forced to practice abnormal acts with sex deviates who roamed the prisons at will."
Beginning around 1964, the more than a decade of challenges to U.S. censorship laws applied to literary novels such as Lady Chatterley's Lover, Portnoy's Complaint, and Naked Lunch had redefined legal standards for obscenity. Susan Stryker cites Tom Norman's bibliography of American gay erotic paperbacks to note that thirty gay paperback books were published in 1965, and that over a hundred were in 1966. Many of these publishers had their roots in publishing beefcake, or "male physique" magazines in the 1950s, precursors to explicit gay pornographic magazines.
Most of the new gay paperbacks were explicitly pornographic, writing designed to provoke sexual responses, rather than literary writing, and they came from small, gay presses, such as the Guild Press, Greenleaf Classics, and the Publisher's Export Company, rather than from mainstream national publishers. For example, Greenleaf (under editor Earl Kemp) published a series of erotic spy parodies called The Man from C.A.M.P., written by Victor J. Banis. Banis says once Kemp and Greenleaf proved how much of a market there was for this type of fiction, other publishers soon joined in.
Among "the more provocative titles and noms de plume" published in this decade include: Summer in Sodom, by Edwin Fey; Gay Whore, by Jack Love; Hollywood Homo, by Michael Starr; The Short Happy Sex Life of Stud Sorell, by Orlando Paris; It's a Gay, Gay, Gay, Gay World, by Guy Faulk; Gay on the Range, by Dick Dale; Queer Belles, by Percy Queen; and Gay Pals, by Peter Grande.Howard, John. Men Like That: A Southern Queer History. The University of Chicago Press, 1999.
Sometimes, these past ephemera can become useful community history resources. As Susan Stryker and Michael Meeker note in a new preface to Lou Rand's The Gay Detective (1965), San Francisco area LGBT historians found that the paperback in question turned out to be a valuable document in describing past prominent if closeted social figures, ethnic conflicts over police corruption and the emergence of a narcotics underworld in their city, as well as referring to bygone LGBT venues
(en.wikipedia.org)

ΤΑ ΣΟΝΕΤΑ ΤΟΥ ΣΕΞΠΗΡ 2


'Two loves have I'
Shakespeare's sonnets appeared to tell a story - of his anguished private life. So who were the Fair Youth, the Dark Lady and Mr WH? William Boyd on the Bard's love triangle
William Boyd (The Guardian, 2005)

There are many mysteries in the life of William Shakespeare and perhaps none is more intriguing than the one he initiated himself when he published, in 1609, a collection of his sonnets. When we start to consider the enduring enigmas and controversies that circle and shroud the sonnets, it is a good idea to establish the few unarguable facts first. The sonnets - the greatest lyric sequence of love poems ever written - were published seven years before Shakespeare's death in 1616, and some years after the last poems were written. There are 154 sonnets in total: 126 of them are addressed to a "Fair Youth", a young man of aristocratic breeding; 26 of them concern a "Dark Lady", conspicuously not aristocratic. The last two are bawdy allusions to the notorious mercury baths, the favoured contemporary form of treatment for the pox.
Furthermore, the sonnets possess a baffling dedication to one "Mr WH", described as "the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets". What more can one add before entering the lists of contention and dissent? It is fair to say that some of the sonnets to the Fair Youth are unabashedly homoerotic, others display a wistful, unrequited sensuality, rather like that of Aschenbach for Tadzio in Thomas Mann's Death in Venice. On the other hand, some of the sonnets addressed to the Dark Lady are unabashedly misogynistic, full of lingering physical detail, and relentlessly explore the consuming and destructive power of lust. However, the problems inherent in the sonnets begin to multiply incrementally when someone asks you to write a film about them.
This happened to me last year when the BBC approached me to write a full-length film - a drama - about Shakespeare and the emotional background to the sonnets as a counterpoint to their modern-dress Shakespeare Retold season. We would have to cast Shakespeare, Mr WH and the Dark Lady (Rupert Graves, Tom Sturridge and Indira Varma, as it turned out). In which case, there could be no place for scholarly equivocation: "It might be argued that", "Evidence would seem to suggest", and so on. If I were going to make Shakespeare, the Fair Youth and the Dark Lady live and breathe on screen I would need to establish their particular identities - if not once and for all (that will never happen), but at least for the duration of the film. And so the reading began.
The very rough narrative of the sequence (and there is no evidence to establish the sonnets were written chronologically) goes something like this: the first 17 sonnets are somewhat orthodox - the poet encourages the young man to marry and bear children. Then the obsession begins to grow and become more sexually orientated, more yearning and infatuated:

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate"

And,

"Since [nature] pricked thee out for woman's pleasure,
Mine be thy love, and thy love's use their treasure."

The salacious pun is intended. And then eventually, at sonnet 127, the Dark Lady arrives:

"In the old age black was not counted fair
Or if it were, it bore not beauty's name"

Now the tone alters, becomes more tormented and idealisation gives way to the concrete:

"If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow upon her head."

The poet's relationship with the Dark Lady is obsessive, rapt and often hate-driven; full of distress and anguished self-analysis. Then it becomes clear that the Dark Lady and the Fair Youth are engaged in some sort of sexual dalliance. The poet can only look on, impotent and suffering:

"Two loves have I of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still;
The better angel is a man right fair, The worser spirit a woman coloured ill.
To win me soon to hell, my female evil
Tempteth my better angel from my side ... "

The sequence ends with the poet "sick withal" going to the mercury baths seeking a cure:

" ... I, my mistress' thrall,
Came there for cure, and this by that I prove;
Love's fire heats water, water cools not love."

The conclusion would seem to suggest that desire - love - is wholly out of our control, whatever the emotional agonies endured or other physical penalties paid. All this is to make highly complex poems and knotted, sophisticated arguments seem concise and relatively clear cut. But I think this redaction essentially conveys the main business of the sonnets.
From the outset of any reading of the sonnets there is an inevitable and natural tendency to link the Fair Youth with the dedicatee, Mr WH, the "only begetter". Many candidates have been suggested over the years but the academic consensus focuses mainly on two: the Earl of Southampton and the Earl of Pembroke. The arguments for both are strong; there is a biographical Shakespearean connection with each man and the dates fit (though Southampton is older than Pembroke).
The Southampton case, however, requires a fair bit of casuistry to hold securely as the Earl of Southampton's real name was Henry Wriothesley, which, one would have thought, would make him "Mr HW". But no, the Southamptonians argue, Shakespeare was trying to disguise the real identity of the dedicatee, and so swapped the initials round. This might just be acceptable if the Pembrokians didn't hold the ace in their hand. Pembroke's real name is William Herbert, so no initial-juggling is required.
The other fact that favours William Herbert is that it makes the composition of the sonnets occur later in Shakespeare's life. The Shakespeare-Pembroke connection means that Shakespeare was in his 30s and 40s when the sonnets were written - a middle-aged man by 17th-century standards - approximately twice Mr WH's age. Again, evidence in the sonnets makes the poet seem substantially older than the Fair Youth ("My glass shall not persuade me I am old"). If it was Southampton then he and the poet would be coevals, young men together - it just doesn't work or read as plausibly.
Certainly, identifying the Fair Youth as William Herbert is dramatically more satisfying. The date range of the drama then becomes roughly 1596-1604. It places Shakespeare at the height of his reputation (Hamlet was written in 1600); he is making serious money from his share in the Globe and his disastrous marriage to Anne Hathaway is long over in all but name. Enter William Herbert: "A woman's face with nature's own hand painted/ Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion." Dramatic licence aside, I feel that all the evidence, scholarly and historically, points to William Herbert, the Earl of Pembroke, as Mr WH.
So who was the Dark Lady? Here, the arguments enter pure speculation. The most favoured candidates are aristocratic women such as Mary Fitton or Emilia Lanier (the latter famously championed by the historian AL Rowse: "I have found her!") but Rowse and others fail to see that such conjectures ignore the irrefutable class differences; a mere gentleman like Shakespeare, socially well below the salt, could never have had a sexual relationship, of the sort described in the Dark Lady sonnets, with an aristocratic woman.
Indeed, the more one reads the Dark Lady sonnets the more one sees the lust-driven nature of the relationship and the concomitant self-loathing on the part of the poet as the key to her identity. I take the title of the film from sonnet 129: "Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame/ is lust in action ... ", one of the more embittered and unceasingly reproachful poems. To be honest, no one will ever know who the Dark Lady was and perhaps, as some scholars have suggested, she should be regarded as a deliberate inverse of the idealised Petrarchan love object - a pointedly anti-romantic stereotype. However, this will not do for a film, and my own reading of the sonnets leads me in another direction.
Shakespeare's working life was in Southwark, south of the river, and London Bridge, a noisome, rank and dangerous district, freer of the City of London's legal edicts by virtue of its location, and home to its theatres, pleasure gardens, bear-fighting pits, innumerable taverns and brothels. Historical records establish that there were black and mulatto prostitutes in Southwark brothels at the time, and it seems highly feasible that the Dark Lady might have been such a working girl.
Certainly, such an identification makes immediate sense of the sonnets' rage and misogyny. It also rather neatly explains how Mr WH and the Dark Lady could have met - and why the poet was powerless to intercede in or prevent their union as it was overtly and strictly commercial. Moreover, one of Shakespeare's known associates was a brothel-keeper called George Wilkins, a violent man, arraigned on at least two occasions for savagely beating up prostitutes (one of them pregnant). I cannot prove that Shakespeare was a brothel visitor but the numerous documented connections between Shakespeare and Wilkins attest to the fact that he would have been no stranger to Wilkins's rebarbative and sordid world. All that I require, as a screenwriter, is circumstantial evidence - and this circumstantial evidence, conjoined with the tone and deeply troubled spirit of the Dark Lady sonnets (not to mention the allusion to the pox and its cure at the sequence's end) makes a convincing case that the "woman coloured ill" of sonnet 144 could have been a prostitute who worked in a Southwark brothel. Read the poems - it makes very valid sense.
And so our characters assemble: William Shakespeare, middle-aged, successful, famous, very unhappily married, sexually stirred and enthralled by William Herbert, the talented and epicenely handsome son of the Earl of Pembroke. But love - or lust - was requited not with the "lovely boy" but with Shakespeare's "black beauty", a prostitute available for anyone in Southwark with a shilling to spare. These identifications are, though inevitably conjectural, highly plausible all the same, and can be stringently defended from the scant evidence that exists. And this starting point is all the licence the imagination requires in the making up of a story that unites these three people in a disturbingly passionate and fraught love triangle.
But, overarching all this speculation, the sonnets stand themselves, irreproachable and magnificent. It is, in a way, quite extraordinary that we should have this sequence of intensely intimate poems from Shakespeare to set beside the great masterpieces of the plays. Park Honan, in his biography, remarks that Shakespeare's "curiosity about human nature was in a sense remorseless, though it never outran his sympathy for the human predicament." This seems very true about the plays but it applies equally to the sonnets, I feel, though perhaps in a slightly different sense. We have no real, absolutely verifiable grounds for thinking so, but all the same I believe it is impossible to read Shakespeare's sonnets without concluding that in this case the particular human predicament that he is so remorselessly curious about and so sympathetic to is, in fact, his own.

1973. 20.000.000 ΟΜΟΦΥΛΟΦΙΛΟΙ ΑΝΔΡΕΣ ΚΑΙ ΓΥΝΑΙΚΕΣ ΕΙΣ ΤΑΣ ΗΝΩΜ. ΠΟΛΙΤΕΙΑΣ


Μακεδονία, 12/1973

26.10.10

ΜΕΞΙΚΟ 1810 - 2010. ΦΕΣΤΙΒΑΛ ΓΚΕΪ ΚΑΙ ΛΕΣΒΙΑΚΟΥ ΚΙΝΗΜΑΤΟΓΡΑΦΟΥ (ΑΚΑΠΟΥΛΚΟ) - ΔΙΕΘΝΕΣ ΦΕΣΤΙΒΑΛ ΓΚΕΪ ΘΕΑΤΡΟΥ ΚΑΙ ΚΙΝΗΜΑΤΟΓΡΑΦΟΥ (ΠΟΛΗ ΤΟΥ ΜΕΞΙΚΟΥ)



GAY PUPL FICTION 1


Gay pulp fiction, or gay pulps, refers to printed works, primarily fiction, that include references to male homosexuality, specifically male gay sex, and that are cheaply produced, typically in paperback books made of wood pulp paper; lesbian pulp fiction is similar work about women. Michael Bronski, the editor of an anthology of gay pulp writing, notes in his introduction, "Gay pulp is not an exact term, and it is used somewhat loosely to refer to a variety of books that had very different origins and markets". People often use the term to refer to the "classic" gay pulps that were produced before about 1970, but it may also be used to refer to the gay erotica or pornography in paperback book or digest magazine form produced since that date. (en.wikipedia.org)