“So Gay” homo homo cryptus to publicus on Arte – Télérama.fr

Maxime Donzel explains how the gay culture is out of the closet. And demonstrates it has even become a common heritage

We can not invent, his first show called Pédérama .: “a foolish on program broadcast on Radio Libertaire” . It was confidential and community, everything Maxime Donzel now trying to overtake. Former columnist for the site Yagg this Franco-Canadian tinkers since 2012 fake movie critics delirious (the “Tutotal”) in the magazine Nobody move , on Arte, and has just completed an ambitious documentary on gay culture, it is more the margins of the common culture but rather – and this is what makes the salt of the film -., the very basis of our collective imagination

Built in two parts (the second part will air next Saturday), So gay! first explores the hidden works (because of censorship) and this incredible “culture of subtext “ which outcrops in such famous films as Ben-Hur, Tiffany or The Hunger (Tony Scott). It is the time of “crypto-gay” where everything works as allusions to a gay audience quickly learns to read between the lines. Maxime Donzel it takes several examples from The Celluloid Closet, this book by Vito Russo on the representation of homosexuality on the screen. The second part, he, part of the Stonewall riots in 1969 tipping point where the gay community out of the closet, where the discourse is no longer disguised but frontal and militant homo culture, where finally seems better accepted by the general public. – to sometimes be recovered by artists (David Bowie to Katy Perry)

“We have too often spoken of homosexuals by saying ‘them’. But homosexuals is ‘us’ “(Maxime Donzel)

Maxime Donzel emphasizes the notion of pop culture, which distinguishes France. – Where the word homo is more carried by intellectuals – and the US – where television was in charge of awakening the public to these issues, including by fictions like The L Word or is the Orange new black . “This is what is happening with trans. The company begins to enter their daily through popular figures like Caitlyn Jenner or series like Hit and Miss or Transparent . “

Among the film archives and interviews (the director Céline Sciamma, journalist Didier Lestrade, actress Lea DeLaria …), Maxime Donzel tells the story of the increasing visibility of gays and lesbians on screen. Accuracy: he insisted on not play himself commentary of the film, but to entrust it to a recurring voice Arte. “I wanted it to be the voice of French television. A recognized voice, institutional, speaking in the first person. Too often talked about homos saying “them”. But gays is “us.” We are one and the same society, united by a common culture. “

Trailer Documentary Maxime Donzel