Nir Sadeh | First Time / 2010

checking out the territory

by Douglas Messerli

 

Nir Sadeh (director) First Time / 2010 [4.15 minutes]

 

This very short Israeli film, shot during the Tel Aviv Gay Pride Parade of June 2010, is the tale of a young man (Age Greenbaum) who wanders purposely if rather terrified into the parade route.

 

    Just as he is about to reach the parade site he receives a call from what appears to be his female girlfriend (in the English translation he calls her “sweetie” and “baby”) to whom he lies, saying that he has got “caught up in work,” and begs to see her later in the evening.

      He starts out again to the parade, for a moment losing his courage as he pulls away, red-cheeked, into a small alley way, an older man who notices him checking to make sure he’s all right.

      But the attractive young man regains his courage watching the parade approaching as he sits on the street curb, but getting up and moving back to watch it pass.

      After, he goes to the beach where thousands have gathered to party, he only standing at a distance to watch the celebrants with fascination.

      He soon returns to the street where we see him finally take a seat a bus bench, obviously waiting for a bus to return him home. A beautiful young man sits down beside him, our first-timer momentarily revealing his discomfort by moving ever so slightly over, his cheeks again turning red as the seemingly gay boy catches glimpses of him out of the corner of his eye before finally rising quickly to get his ride.

    And there the film ends. The young man having obviously taken everything in, even if from a distance and with some discomfort; and it is clear from the way he looks at the gay flag, staring at it for a few moments, he has taken some sense of comfort in seeing so many people involved in a world into which he has not yet been able to enter.

 

     Our questions are endless, which include clearly what he might tell his girlfriend that evening or simply how long before he does tell her where and why he has been there, to the LGBT parade. But of course, we have no answers; and several of the respondents to this short film on YouTube suggested that they had gone through some of the same feelings upon their “first time.”

      This is the kind of movie one wants to recommend to anyone who even hints of a curiosity about gay life. Start here with the evidence of some of the more vast gay community which for most the year remains totally invisible except for those already on “the other side.” For in a sense by attending this event, no matter how tentatively, the hero of this tale has indeed “come out,” if in no other manner than in taking interest in a world about which he clearly feels might someday include him. 

 

Los Angeles, August 30, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (August 2022).