love restrained
by Douglas Messerli
Sean Devaney and Brandt Miller (directors) Behind the Blue Sky / 2009 [5
minutes]
This very short work that lists no writer and whose
actors are hidden under the traditional blue death head-wrappings (khadag) of Inner Mongolians to hide their identities,
is not truly a narrative as much as it is a visual ode to the land and hidden
queer people of the Chinese controlled country.
The country queer shares his experience of goat herding as well as a vision of wild horses on the run through the rugged green mountainous landscape.
They come together at several locations, under a large electric tower, in a disserted field, and finally in a bedroom where they briefly remove their blue veils and kiss one another before making love.
As their love-making continues, we soon see a knife about to slit a goat’s neck, and in the very next moment men enter their room pulling one of the men away from the other, and hauling him off.
As the ode
comes to a closure, both men are now seen wandering alone, the city boy
seemingly locked out of his own urban world by walls constructed of wooden
slats. Interspliced with these scenes of the men now alone are images of former
Soviet monuments, remnants of the Post World War II Communist world before the
Chinese Communist Party conquered the region, turning it into an autonomous
region. A small part of Outer Mongolia still exists under Russian control.
What we
perceive is that these actors are wearing the khadag not only to hide
their identities, but as a symbol of their spiritual and sexual deaths.
This film
was created for an exhibition of the Mongolian National Modern Art Museum.
Los Angeles, October 29, 2025
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (October
2025).
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