Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

CULTURE: Mexico’s First International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival

Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Jan 27 2006 (IPS) - Nearly a dozen full-length films, more than 50 shorts, five plays and several discussion panels are among the fare offered this week at the First International Gay and Lesbian Film and Theatre Festival in Mexico, a groundbreaking event that has taken 10 years to come to fruition.

“Bringing greater visibility to quality films and plays that address questions of homosexuality will help tear down prejudice and promote tolerance towards all kinds of art,” Alberto Legorreta, director of the Jan. 24-29 festival, told IPS.

The festival is taking place in a small local cinema and a large theatre in the capital of Mexico, a country where 94.7 percent of members of “sexual minorities” say they have suffered discrimination, according to a survey carried out last year by the Secretariat of Social Development and the National Council to Prevent Discrimination.

The festival is presenting high-quality works, which help change the idea that art focusing on homosexuality is restricted to the realm of nude or erotic photography or pornography, said Legorreta, an experienced theatre director and artistic promoter.

Among the films showing this week are the lesbian romantic comedy “Saving Face”, by U.S. writer-director Alice Wu, in which a young Chinese-American doctor begins to fall in love with a beautiful ballerina while helping out her widowed mother, who finds herself pregnant at the age of 48.

The festival is also offering “The Garden” by late British filmmaker Derek Jarman, “Rocky Horror Picture Show”, a cult film by British director Jim Sharman, and several films provided by the organisers of the International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in Barcelona, Spain, as well as more than 50 shorts from Mexico and abroad.

In addition to the films and five plays, the festival is organising panels on issues like HIV/AIDS and the meaning of art in the homosexual community.

“Several elements came together to allow us to finally hold the festival, which we have been planning for about 10 years,” said Legorreta. “One is the waning of certain prejudices towards homosexuals, which in the past led many artistic promoters to censor themselves. Another is the much greater openness today in society as a whole.”

Over the last 10 years, gays and lesbians in Mexico have organised arts events, taken to the streets to demand their rights, and succeeded in getting their concerns addressed by the government.

Nevertheless, sexual minorities continue to face discrimination and abuse, while bills that would have authorised same-sex marriage and adoption by same-sex couples failed to make it through Congress.

Studies estimate the number of gays and lesbians in Mexico to be between five and 10 million, out of a total population of 106 million.

Discrimination against members of sexual minorities sometimes even takes the form of violence. Around 30 homosexuals are murdered every year in Mexico solely because of their sexual orientation, and the majority of these crimes go unsolved and unpunished.

According to a survey conducted in 2005 among 1,482 members of different “minorities” by the Office of Social Development and the National Council to Prevent Discrimination, most people in these groups feel rejected by Mexican society.

The poll found that 94.7 percent of the homosexuals interviewed said they suffered discrimination, as did 94.4 percent of disabled respondents, 90.8 percent of indigenous respondents, 88.4 percent of senior citizens, and 80.4 percent of people who practice minority religions.

In addition, 71 percent of the homosexuals said that the greatest hardship they face is discrimination, 54.5 percent felt rejected by society, 43 percent said they had fewer educational opportunities than heterosexuals, and 72 percent reported difficulty finding employment because of their sexual preferences.

Close to 45 percent also said that their families had tried to force them to change their sexual orientation.

“Art can help to break down barriers, and even more so if it is high quality art and open to the broader public,” said Legorreta.

The festival also attracted the attention of a large number of private companies. “There were so many that some of them were left out, but they have given us their commitment to participate in the festival that we are planning for next year,” Legorreta reported.

The idea is to make the festival an annual event, as is the case in other countries, particularly in Europe, he added.

“The goal is to create an international space for plays and films with a high artistic level, works that portray a personality, a community and a gender orientation – gay – but that move beyond mere naked bodies and explicit sex,” he stressed.