João Victor Borges | Vigia (Night Watch) / 2018

watchman, what of the night?

by Douglas Messerli

 

João Victor Borges (screenwriter and director) Vigia (Night Watch) / 2018 [22 minutes]

 

Magno (Alexandre Amador) has been working the night shift at a huge Rio de Janeiro supermarket for 13 years now, and is tired. The movie begins, in fact, with Magno in bed and follows him, still drowsy to the market where he serves as the watchman, the one who watches over all the nightwalkers who shop the huge aisles.

    His job is to keep an eye on their movements, particularly the young boys with backpacks who wander up and down the long lanes of groceries with no clear intention. We see Magno early on in the movie, stop a young man as he is checking out, demanding to see his own arm bag since he the customer has also been seen lifting up bottles of champagne.

    He claims to have put them back, deciding against their purchase, and he has paid for the items he has selected, so he is righteously angered for the demand. And when Magno forces him to open his bag, he sees nothing inside.

   As soon as Magno turns away, the new cashier, Bismarck (Maya de Paiva) quietly apologizes to the young man. But later he equally apologizes to his colleague for not treating his job seriously. He even suggests they ride the train back together since they live not far from one another.

    So begins a strange friendship between two highly unlikely beings, Magno, a loyal working black man who wears a suit and the pink-haired, effeminately gay Bismarck.

    If Magno can be said to be asleep in life, nearly dead, the already worn-out cashier, only 3-weeks on the job, is like a jolt of energy to Magno’s seeming dead life. Bismarck insists that he go swimming with him in the ocean, which is not far from Bismarck’s place. And although he at first refuses, Magno joins him, even smiling for the first time, enjoying a swim for the first time in many years.

    Bismarck invites him to his place where they drink beer and continue to smoke joints, expressing that the place would be perfect if it only had a nearby pool. The boy attempts to explain to the loyal guardian of the supermarket that the young boys who steal from the store are not doing it to bring down the company, but for a number of unrelated reasons. And others are out of work.

    Yet the loyalist argues that order must be retained. He has never stolen and he feels the petty thieves are attempting to corrupt the business, to destroy the supermarket’s service. Bismarck, on the other hand, is filled with dreams, and can hardly bear sitting all night dealing with stupid customers and the “beep, beep, beep” or ringing up the orders. He hopes one day to open a bar, clearly not a significant aspiration, but far better than the life Magno works wandering the aisles night after night. And we recognize in the elder’s description of never hearing anyone say hello or even acknowledging his existence just how isolated and lonely this man is.

     For the first time apparently in his life, Magno has met up with someone willing to challenge his strong code of order and obedience to the system. Both men complain of the customers who often treat them as if they did not exist, that they are there only serve them. In the midst of their discussion the Brazilian director João Victor Borges concentrates of Magno’s eyes as we are made to realize just how tired, how worn down this man has become. Without saying anything, we realize that his job is something close to a “night of the living dead.”

     The film returns to an image like the first of the film, with the repetitions of Magno’s life, rising from bed, catching the train to work. But when he arrives this evening, Bismarck is missing. The manager tells Magno that the boy has been fired. The camera operator Anderson has caught him stealing, and rechecking the tapes has discovered that “the kid stole something every day,” food, deodorant, even a pool. Anderson cannot comprehend why Magno has never discovered the lefts, never even patted him down.

   Anderson’s bank of camera views reveal the petty robberies, but suddenly for Magno they come alive as various variations of him and the kid with pink hair kissing, making love, swimming, enjoying life together. Bismarck has brought the almost dead Magno back to life, and the boy’s loss means that he can only return to the aisles of the dead. Can he escape? Borges and his film does not answer that.

 

Los Angeles, September 9, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2025).

    

Jordan Firstman | Call Your Father / 2016

a phantom from another planet

by Douglas Messerli

 

Jordan Firstman (screenwriter and director) Call Your Father / 2016 [20 minutes]

    In Jordon Firstman’s 2016 short film, Call Your Father Greg (Craig Chester), a man in his 50s, is seen talking to a friend on his cellphone, probably about the date he’s about to pick up. The boy, age 24 who immediately appears, Josh (Firstman), begins the strange evening by arriving at the car door with a giant stuffed panda bear saying “I’m always late.” The panda is evidently a gift he’s brought to the startled Greg, Josh suggesting immediately that he’s fallen in love with it so if Greg doesn’t want it “that’s cool.” Greg simply replies that it’s a little large, to which Josh replies, “good it goes home with me then.” Before Greg can even catch his breath, Josh leans over and plants a long, intense kiss of his new friend’s mouth, Greg once more startled, ruminating, “Isn’t that something you end the night with?” Josh simply replies “No,” and without a beat asks Greg, “What was your name?”  The incongruity of his endless comments is apparently lost on him, and when Greg suggests that he’s “funny,” the boy immediately insists, “No, I am fun. Not funny,” obviously interpreting the world to mean “strange, odd, or queer,” which he most certainly is.

      He may be fun to some, but he’s a total befuddlement to the 50-some-year old. The minute they sit down for drinks, for example, the boy asking, “How much money do you make?” Again nonplussed, Greg doesn’t know what to answer, certainly it’s none of this kid’s business, but Josh insists that whoever makes more has to pay for the drinks, as if it were a kind of unstated rule.  And immediately Josh orders up two whiskeys, Greg hardly being able to even mouth the words that he’s “sober,” obviously a former alcoholic who’s stopped drinking. 

       So follows the kind of cultural, social, and generational assumptions that Josh has established as his personal truths: “I don’t think my generation will be sober. We don’t crave excess like you guys.”

       A moment later, while sitting together now at a table, where Greg attempts to establish a conversation, Josh suddenly takes out his phone and as Greg attempts to tell a story about his trip over to visit he utterly ignores his new friend, Greg stopping mid-sentence and observing with startlement what Josh is doing. When Josh finally finishes his cellphone communication, he observes, “Isn’t it crazy, I can just cut off a conversation because it’s acceptable now.”

      When Greg dares to suggest it isn’t at all acceptable, Josh shouts back at him, “It’s acceptable because you didn’t stop me,” an illogical observation with just enough sense of reason that it appears to be sane, but is in fact something out of this boy’s private “twilight” zone, a world that pretends to be real, but is completely manufactured moment to moment in his head.

       One is tempted to immediately declare, given such a vast generational difference, that we know how the date will end. Perhaps Greg has made a mistake in his attempt to appeal to a younger generation. With his thin build, his handsomely angular face he is still good-looking despite his gray hair. And when later Josh asks to see a photo of him at his age, Greg producing a Facebook image, Josh describes him as “hot,” just the kind of comment that Greg must have been looking for in making this date, some sort of reminder that he is still sexually attractive as a gay man and viable in the world of sex.

       A moment later, while sitting together now at a table, where Greg attempts to establish a conversation, Josh suddenly takes out his phone and as Greg attempts to tell a story about his trip over to visit he utterly ignores his new friend, Greg stopping mid-sentence and observing with startlement what Josh is doing. When Josh finally finishes his cellphone communication, he observes, “Isn’t it crazy, I can just cut off a conversation because it’s acceptable now.”

      When Greg dares to suggest it isn’t at all acceptable, Josh shouts back at him, “It’s acceptable because you didn’t stop me,” an illogical observation with just enough sense of reason that it appears to be sane, but is in fact something out of this boy’s private “twilight” zone, a world that pretends to be real, but is completely manufactured moment to moment in his head.

       One is tempted to immediately declare, given such a vast generational difference, that we know how the date will end. Perhaps Greg has made a mistake in his attempt to appeal to a younger generation. With his thin build, his handsomely angular face he is still good-looking despite his gray hair. And when later Josh asks to see a photo of him at his age, Greg producing a Facebook image, Josh describes him as “hot,” just the kind of comment that Greg must have been looking for in making this date, some sort of reminder that he is still sexually attractive as a gay man and viable in the world of sex.

       But as he admits, he certainly wouldn’t have known that Josh found him even worth his time, given the boy’s instability. When he asks him what he “does,” Josh replies with a totally straight face and even a bit of enthusiasm, “I’m a poet.”

       Greg cannot help but release a slight snicker which so offends the younger man that he stands and leaves the place, Greg trotting along after.

      On the street it gets even worse. When Greg asks him whether he generally dates older men, Josh replies that indeed he does, but his following statement reveals an utter lack of comprehension of the older men that he may “supposedly” be regularly dating:

 

"I do, but I can’t free them. Most of them are traumatized. You know all your friends died of AIDS. And that just doesn’t go away, no matter how hard you try. ... I mean you should be fucked. You should fucking closed off as shit."

 

        When Greg attempts to suggest that his statement does not at all represent everyone of his age’s reality, Josh immediately pretends some sympathy, despite his own stated wish to die soon—after all, he argues he’s a poet—but he too was traumatized by his friend. He doesn’t know whether or not his friend was gay, but he committed suicide. Oh, he corrects himself, they did talk about gay issues once, when his friend asked him what it was like to be gay. Josh replied, “Well it works for me because I’m really strong, but otherwise I’d kill myself.” And the next day his friend committed suicide in Josh’s room.

       By this time, I might have been long gone, but Greg, totally speechless, is nonetheless clearly intrigued by his Ionesco-like monologues, or perhaps they are a little closer to a particularly witty rendition of Saturday Night Live.

       A few minutes later Josh runs into a friend on the street, evidently a transgender individual who prefers the pronoun “they,” reporting that they have just had a wonderful experience beyond “their” expectations, “they” also congratulating Josh for his great success. When Greg introduces himself, they look him over and immediately insists, “You should take up writing. You should get a journal. It saved my life.”

     When Greg asks what wonderful thing has happened to Josh, he responds, “Oh, it went viral,” presumably referring to a poem that he had posted on the internet.

      Finally, Josh drags him into a small shop with outrageously overpriced objects, a regular coffee mug saying "I’m drinking Rhianna" going for $40.00. But a minute later, the boy has absconded with the mug, racing out and down the street, Greg obviously left to pay and after unable to track down his whereabouts. Checking out a nearby club where they were planning on going, he still is unable to find him, and is about to head home when suddenly Josh shows up again, insisting that he come up to his room, but also explaining that he stole the mug because Greg was such a bore.

       The strangely-lit apartment is filled with odd objects such as a highly flowered noose, created by his friend evidently to signify the fact that marriage meant the death of gay culture. Surprisingly, Josh proves an excellent cock-sucker, after which he begs Greg to fuck him. When Greg finds that he has no condoms, he insists he can’t do it, but Josh keeps insisting that he still can, that he’s fine. “But can I trust you?” asks Greg. Turning over to put up his butt for inspection, Josh responds, “Of course, you can’t,” but demands it do it anyway since he’s otherwise such a bore.

       By the time he’s finished having sex, Greg finds Josh back in the other room with his head in the noose. He insists that Josh remove it from around his neck, but Josh refuses, insisting he just having fun. Finally, Greg has truly had enough, suggesting, “You need to call your father.”

       Furious with the lame solution to his obvious problems, he lobs a bomb back at the older man, insisting that it’s not he who has the problem that demands he seeks out younger boys with whom to have sex. “I know you’ve been fucking all my friends.”

       We can’t know the truth of that statement, particularly since it comes from someone from a different planet than the one in which Greg exists, but again it’s obviously close enough to the truth that Greg finally admits, “I don’t want to be here right now.” Josh’s response: “Then get the fuck out.”

       When Greg turns to leave, the boy begs him to stay, admits to being insecure and pleading with him to tell him that he’s okay. Greg seriously pauses, thinking through the events of the evening without being able to make sense of anything: “I don’t know. I wasn’t anything like this when I was your age.”

       Back in his car, finally alone, Greg’s face suggests a kind of shell-shock, a sense of deep confusion, frustration, any apprehensions of the situation he may have had seeming to have come true. But then, shaking his head, he attempts to laugh it off, perhaps simply chalking it up to experience, while also muttering that he will never do “that” again, presumably meaning that he will never again give into the desire for a sexual relationship with someone of another generation. His apprehensions proved all too real, the young person with whom he had sex appearing to have been some kind of phantom from another planet. 

 

Los Angeles, January 15, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (January 2022).

Christopher Manning | Jamie / 2016

jamie’s kiss

by Douglas Messerli

 

Christopher Manning (screenwriter and director) Jamie / 2016 [9 minutes]

 

British director Christopher Manning’s Jamie of 2016 is a truly simple film with rather deep feeling. The 19- or 20-year-old Jaime (Sebastian Christophers), still living at home, is sexually out—at least to his father—but living in the London suburbs or even a bit further away, hasn’t yet had many gay sexual experiences.

     As the film begins his younger brother (Sam Atkinson) is apparently celebrating a birthday, but Jaimie stands away from the group seated around a table fiddling with his cellphone, his father (Paul Clerkin) finally telling him to put the phone away and visit with the guests. For a few moments he returns, greeting his brother, but soon after he is standing apart working on his cellphone once again.   

     Obviously he is making a date, clearly one of his first, to meet up with someone since in the next frame we see him on the train or tram into the city. There finally, a bit late, Ben (Raphael Verrion ) arrives at the predetermined spot and the two begin to chat, Jaimie even showing appreciation for Ben’s having shown up since his previous “date” never appeared.

      Ben seems to have gone along with the meeting more because he didn’t have something else on his schedule than for any deep interest in the younger man. He describes his own reluctance to turn the internet chat into a real date, a feeling Jaimie shares and is happy to hear that others feel similarly

     Yet most of their talk is centered around questions that Ben asks about Jaimie. Is he out to his family? Who was his first love? etc. Certainly not deep or probing questions. But Jamie seems happy just to have another gay man to talk to and readily explains that although his father knows, he has asked him not to tell his younger brother, yet another way of forcing his son to remain in a sort of closet.

       His first love, a fellow school mate, John, was a footballer with whom one night as they strolled off the smoke, he suddenly began to exchange kisses. Fellow classmates, however, were standing behind a nearby gate, saw what happened, and began the catcalls, the kind of reaction that would usually end in ostracization and bullying. The two boys seldom spoke to one another ever again.

       There is nothing special in Jaimie’s confessions, but they speak of typical experiences for young homosexuals and lesbians living away from the life of the central city. And they convey a deep sense of loneliness and self-isolation. He has confessed early that he doesn’t go to the bars.

        Hardly has he begun to talk, when Ben readies to move on, Jaimie putting his telephone number into his friend’s phone without being offered the other. And Ben expresses the usual brush-off “See you around.” Suddenly Jaimie leans forward and kisses Ben on the lips. And then Ben leaves.

       The denouement of this short, moving piece is the fact that a moment later Jamie breaks down into tears before we see him on the train again, returning to his family flat, and in a subtle stage direction, opening a door, perhaps to his bedroom, and closing it as he remains where he is, in the dark of the hall.

       Surely he liked the casual manner of Ben, the fact that his internet photo looked very much like his date actually did. And he might have imagined joining him for sex and simply more conversation.

       He is left, however, the emptiness of the very space in which he stands at the end of this small gem.

       As one responder to the open notes at the end of this film commented, “Being gay isn’t easy.”

He might have added, “Even in 2016.”

       It is important to remind heterosexuals that as recent as a 2021 a poll among individuals in 27 countries found that 80% of people worldwide identified as heterosexual, 3% as homosexual, 4% as bisexual, and 1% each as pansexual, asexual, and other. I have to presume that the other 10% refused to answer. Ignoring the restrictions of appearance, personality, or just population displacement (most gays live in urban areas), imagine that out of every 100 people you met in your life, only 7 or 8 individuals might be interested in even thinking about gay sexual contact, let alone any serious interchange. If you live in the suburbs or rural areas and don’t visit gay bars your chances of encountering another gay man is even slimmer. And we’re not even talking about differences in age or gender or the circumstances being allowable for the possibility of any communication about sexuality. Then imagine someone who is still somewhat closeted or shy or uneasy about talking about his or her sexuality. It is truly amazing that there are any LGBTQ relationships.

 

Los Angeles, July 14, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (July 2022).

 

Seamus O’Dare | Stung / 2016

just looking

by Douglas Messerli

 

Seamus O’Dare (screenwriter and director) Stung / 2016 [10 minutes]

 

Angus (Kieran Iyer) wakes up in a Dimitri’s (Adrian Osman) bed, quickly takes a shower, reminds his friend of their sex and despite Dimitri’s question, “fancy round two?” suggests he’s just “looking” and heads off.

     In the next frame we discover that he keeps records of everyone, but until he visits his transvestite friend, Poppy (Marcus Massey), we couldn’t have known that he’s now slept with every available gay man in a five- mile radius and he’s still single.

     Poppy jumps up, “What!?” He hands her his little book.

     “How many?”

     “62.”

     “I don’t know whether to shake you by the hand or disinfect you!”

     But she is amazed when she discovers that he has even been to bed with “One-armed Leo. Not “Pissy-Pete!”

     “What do you suggest then,” Angus asks.

      “How about a normal man.”

      “Well, that’s pretty rich coming from a Tranny psychic!”

      Together they decided to check out the one man left on Angus’ list.

      “Jason, 22,” wants “No beach walks or basic bitches,” but Angus says he’s never on line.

      But when Poppy checks him out on Stingr, she finds that he’s available at the local bar at that very moment. Poppy likes the look.

       The place is empty. But Jason is at the bar, and Poppy finds him “gorgeous!” Poppy demands that she will introduce him to Angus. Jason recognizes Poppy as having been in the bar previously, she stressing that obviously she might be “hard” to miss. Jason interrupts, pointing out to Poppy that she was supposed to introduce him.

      “Introduce yourself,” she insists. But Jason suggests he already knows Angus; “You sent me a dick pick back in May.”

       Jason explains that Angus is not his type—but Poppy most certainly is. A few minutes later we see Jason leaving with Poppy in hand.

       In the last frame, Dimitri shows up for a dinner with Angus. Was Angus the best of the 62 men, and might they hit it off as human beings out of bed as Dimitri recalls they did inside the covers? Or is Angus simply tracking back his conquests in reverse? There’s an old cliché somewhere haunting this silly film about burning bridges.

 

Los Angeles, August 6, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (August 2023). (screenwriter and director) 

 

Cédric Desenfants | Burning Soul: The Raising of the Flag / 2016

the shamed-boy

by Douglas Messerli

 

Cédric Desenfants (screenwriter and director) Burning Soul: The Raising of the Flag / 2016 [14 minutes]

 

Obviously, a lover of history, for his graduating film from The Sydney Film School Cédric Desenfants directed a full costume drama of the remaining crew from a ship of The Dutch East India Company, wrecked in 1727 upon the shore of the hostile world of New Holland, now Australia. The captain of the ship Jan Steins (Mal Bailey), and five of sailors survived and are now stranded. But as the film begins, we realize that two of these men, Pieter Engels (Teo Falck) and Hendrick Armanse (Rasmus Hansen) have evidently committed some horrible crime, since they alone are tied up to trees, having been beaten, and left without food or drink for several days, their lips dry and swollen.

     As they awaken just before dawn, Pieter begins to howl like a wolf, with Hendrick soon following, the echo making it sound as if a true wolfpack were on the prowl. Hendrick is quickly silenced by the guard on duty, Adriaen Spoor (Rasmus Callmer), who beats him his face with the butt of his rifle. When Pieter howls again in response to his friend’s treatment, he too his beaten.

     Left alone for a period again, the two find that by reaching their feet out as far as possible they can almost touch each other’s toes, and they do so, again stopped by Adriaen.

     The press material tells us that the two young men “grew up together, sailed together, survived together.” And we soon get a glimpse of their crime as a flashback reveals them bending toward one another with a kiss. Obviously, these two men are in love and have been caught fornicating, an unforgiveable crime even though with long months and often years sailing together without any women, everyone knows that sailors were forced to rely on one another for sex. It is perhaps that these two have been seen kissing or simply the fact that they were caught having sex that is their crime, not the word used to describe, soon after, as they are brought to trial: Sodomites.

     Soon Adriaen begins loosening their ropes, Pieter, who evidently also grew up with Adriaen, reminding him that he was once a young boy unable to even tie a rope. But Adriaen can evidently not forgive him for his sinful act, and both are taken before the captain, who reads out the crime and is about to pronounce the punishment, when another of the sailors begins to taunt Hendrick as no longer being a man.

      Suddenly they stand in unison and rush toward the others, Adriaen following behind them with his sword in attack position and slashing into Hendrick’s neck, almost beheading him. As blood rushes from the boy’s wound, Pieter falls over him in spasms of tears and expressions of his love. Pieter is pulled away, a gunny sack put over his head and, apparently, tossed into the ocean. What also becomes subtly apparent in his choices previously of beating Hendrick more brutally and now choosing to kill him, is that Adriaen is perhaps quite jealous of Pieter’s love.

      In the very next frames of the film we see him in shallow waters attempting to free his face from the sack. When he succeeds, he falls upon the beach in exhaustion, the scene depicting what is obviously a fantasy or feverish delusion: Hendrick bending over him to kiss his lips.

      When he finally awakens, he finds a flag, in the same bands of red, white, and blue of the Dutch flag, also tied to his wrists. Pulling it off, he recognizes it as a special flag with the words  “Schandjongen” written upon it, which in Dutch reads “Shamed-boy,” but is translated in the film as “Sodomite,” presumably to make sure the audience, had they missed it earlier, would know what he was being shamed for.

      He ties the flag to a stick of wood and, standing upon a high cliff looking out to sea, proudly waves it.

      Desenfants’ movie is quite beautifully filmed and fascinating in its presentation of yet another little known aspect of gay history, reminding us of the more complex tale of an innocent sailor killed for his beauty and honesty, Billy Budd.

 

Los Angeles, August 18, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (August 2023).