Djiby Kebe | L'avance / 2024

selling his family

by Douglas Messerli

 

Djiby Kebe and Ahmadou Bmba Thiam (screenplay), Djiby Kebe (director) L'avance / 2024 [18 minutes]

 

I have certainly seen films that our far more painful about the gay world, and we don’t, in this case, even know that the central figure, Aliou (Saabo Balde) even might be gay, although his sister or at least one the many family figures who inhabit his home is lesbian. But this film about the art world really hit home.

     Aliou, an African living in Paris, has painted, based on a photograph, has created a meaningful portrait of his mother and himself, an almost sacred object for both him and his family. In the beginning, although he has aligned himself with an art dealer, he brings a collector, Marie (Julia Faure) to his ramshackle studio, filled with friends playing card games, to see the work of art.

     The fairly wealthy woman immediately perceives its beauty and, perhaps, its potential value; and, as we later discover, she is devoted to young African-French artists. She argues that if he sells its through the dealer, the work he has struggled to create over several months will be sold with 50% if his price going to the dealer. She is ready to pay 3,000 euro which will go directly into his pocket. Despite the small price, how is a young artist, desperate for the money, to resist? She gives him an advance.

     He might have realized just how temporary her interest in art is when she asks him to deliver it to her home that very evening when she is giving a party.

    But he dutifully wraps it up and carries it through his home community, being stopped along the way by friends, and later angrily greeted by his elder sister who is quite furious for his selling it, at home. Yet, for the first time Aliou has money, some of which he immediately shares with his nieces, which when his sister discovers the gift, she quickly returns to him. To her it is an open sacrifice of their most sacred object.

     He arrives at the party where Marie hails him as a genius, leaning the painting on the wall like it were a small object to display. Soon after she greets back another black artist, hugs and embraces him as she has already forgotten the artist and the painting she has just acquired.

     There is very little dialogue about this exchange of art for money, but we feel from the bottom of our stomachs, helped along with the terribly (and I do mean terrible, almost, at times sickening) by Lyele, that Aliou has made the wrong decision, that he has sold his life to the barbarians instead of holding out to create an exhibition that might lead to further possibilities.

      Living so many years in the art world, I can well sympathize with his decision, and his failure of vision. Dealers, moreover, are not always trustworthy. But we know that, in this case at lease, Aliou has sold himself and his own history short, a decision he will regret for the rest of his life.

      When he asks the other artist at the party, does he also paint, the answer is a vague “Yes, among other things.” Obviously sex is involved. And we suddenly realize that Aliou has been bought, not beloved as an artist.

 

Los Angeles, March 15, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (March 2025).

Unknown director | Lypsinka on The Joan Rivers Show / c. 1993

i’m getting married

by Douglas Messerli

 

Unknown director, Lypsinka (performer) The Joan Rivers Show / c. 1993

 

From 1989 to 1993 Joan Rivers, after leaving her longtime association with Johnny Carson and after the failure of her own late-night talk show, began a morning talk show. As opposed to the others at that hour, Rivers invited popular celebrities from both stage and theater including Kim Novak, Bob Hope, John Travolta, Roddy McDowell, Anthony Quinn, Whoopi Goldberg, Pee Wee Herman, Elizabeth Ashley, Little Richard, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Debbie Reynolds, Brooke Shields, the Chippendale strippers, Betty White, Rita Moreno, James Earl Jones, Lily Tomlin, Dudley Moore, Eva Marie Saint, Marla Maples, Janet Leigh, Donald Trump, Valerie Harper, Jaime Lee Curtis, Tyne Daly, Robert Blake, Bobby Rydell, Della Reese, and so very many others. She even devoted an entire show to the gay, transgender film Paris Is Burning, seriously discussing with its major performers and director the various contests weekly held in Harlem. It remains today as one of the most innovative and original talk shows that ever existed on TV. And I can almost forgive all of Rivers’ course and often thoughtless jokes for this series.

     Sometime in 1993 she invited onto her show John Epperson, better known as Lypsinka, who performed a series of her various imitations of cinematic telephone conversations which included everyone from Bette Davis to Joan Crawford and several others before she broke into a truly innovative rendition of “I’m Getting Married in the Morning.”

     It is still one of the best of TV and general performative moments in history.

 

Los Angeles, March 15, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (March 2025).

Harry Jenkins | In Another Time / 2025

time machines

by Douglas Messerli

 

Harry Jenkins (screenwriter and director) In Another Time / 2025 [17 minutes]

 

In this rather unbelievable sci-fi like short, a young British boy, Peter Savage (Callum Hart) decides to visit the Paris in which his grandmother evidently lived during World War II as a gunrunner in the Resistance movement.

     To his surprise he is assigned a hotel room in which a young French boy of his age, Matthias Moret (Robert Moreau) has already been ensconced.

     At first, the two boys are a bit testy, neither of them having expected to have to share a room. But gradually, in particular when Matthias hears what he imagines is a bombing raid, they realize they are from different times (foretold in the fact that Matthias is reading H. G. Wells dystopian fiction, The Time Machine), Peter living in 2024, while Matthias is a frightened gay man from 1944.

      They briefly discuss their own relationships with their families, Peter suggesting he doesn’t much get on with his family since he came out, while Matthias speaking about the necessity to keep his boyfriends secret at all costs. Actually, had the film more fully explored those differences it might have been a far more interesting and complex film. But basically the closet is where the differences stop.

      Despite their ephemeral existence, the boys have sex, Peter awakening in the room alone with no trace of his supposed ghostly bed mate—except for the Wells book, which evidently must have triggered his French fantasy.

      Jenkins’ script repeats “We all have our own time machines,” without really bothering to explain why the young British boy might have even wanted to call up a boy from Paris during the War, let alone have sex with the phantom.

      Presumably it’s the only way he can imagine his grannie’s youth. Perhaps the whole trip to Paris is even imaginary. But, at least, he has a new book for his library.

 

Los Angeles, March 15, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (March 2025).