Timothy Smith | Attack / 2005

various versions of a hate crime

by Douglas Messerli

 

Timothy Smith (screenwriter and director) Attack / 2005 [8 minutes]

Even as the front titles role for this short British film of 2005, we see the aftermath of an attack, a British bobby taking down the report from the head of a local black gang, Steve (Tyronne Lewis) who declares that he and friends were attacked out of nowhere by the skinhead Malcolm (Callum Walker) who now lies unconscious on the ground.

 

   Steve and his gang, including two teenage boys who offer up their statements, one badly bloodied, who claim they were the one’s attacked, can’t believe that the policeman has called an ambulance for both their friend and the attacker. “We’ll take care of him,” Steve insists. A girl from the gang (Maria Mathurin) steps out of the shadows—a bit like West Side Story’s Anybodys—and spits on the downed skinhead.

    But soon we see events spool out a bit differently, as we watch the bloodied black boy, and his friend running down the alley to report to Steve, their gang leader, that he’s just been attacked.

     In another Rashomon-like version of events, it seems to have just been a stand-off, as the black boys discovered and were challenged by the skinhead in the alley.

    Yet another version, makes it clear that they are stalking Malcolm after he has just left a bar, he repeatedly asking them as he tries to move off down the alley to just let him be, that he wants no fight.

 

  And finally, we get another viewpoint, explaining perhaps an entirely different logic. Both Malcolm and his black lover Max (Eugene Washington) drunkenly explode out of the bar, kissing one another several times before leaving for the night, each on their separate ways home. Malcolm begins his journey once again down the alley.

 

    The teenage blacks appear, clearly having watched the interchange, and brutally beat the white gay boy, who attempts to defend himself.

    The fact that we are led to believe that the latter version is perhaps the most credible is somewhat problematic, since it simply reifies the notion that it is always black men who attack the whites, when we know that it’s usually the other way around.

    David Hall, writing in Gay Celluloid, however, sees it less as a variation of events as he argues that it represents a completely backwards telling of events:

 

“Violent by nature, strong by language and yet equally laced with scenes of homosexual tenderness, this in-your-face work questions how one can at times form an opinion on something or someone based solely upon appearance, without knowing the true facts involved. For does camp equal gay? Does a white skinhead sporting a flight jacket and bovver boots equate to neo-Nazi? And did a racist attack really take place that night?”

 

    What this film most certainly does reveal is that not everything, particularly when it comes to gay sexual matters, is as black and white as it may seem. There are multitudes of reasons why such attacks occur around the world, night after night, and it this case it probably may have been the product not only reverse racism but homophobia as well.

 

Los Angeles, October 24, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (October 2025).

Dan Aeberhard | Anything Once / 1998

maybe

by Douglas Messerli

 

Dan Aeberhard (screenwriter and director) Anything Once / 1998

 

Dan Aeberhard’s 23-minute film, Anything Once bears a superficial resemblance to Lane Janger’s Just One Time, the short version of which was released the same year, 1998. Yet, while Janger’s work hints at the desire for the two central figures to give someone of same sex a try, this short film involves a challenge to explore the opposite of their chosen genders, Joey (Michael Arenz) dared to undergo a heterosexual experience, while he challenges his friend Mike (William Gregory Lee) to try having sex with another male.

     If Joey is a bit confused how to go about it given that fact that he is seeking a girl who has so many special qualities that he would never be able to meet someone who might live up to his expectations, he quickly learns that, at least as the girl he accidentally encounters, Carmen (Traci Burgard) is concerned, it doesn’t really care if they have anything in common, an attitude more in line with Joey’s friend Mike, who argues that what a girl thinks or likes doesn’t matter, “its sex you’re after.”

    And apparently the simple, if a bit unusual fact that Joey sees her dress as looking like something that Audrey Hepburn might wear and that they both love the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s is enough for her; like Mike who just wants pussy, she just wants cock.

     Accordingly, when she follows up their meeting with a visit, she takes over, almost fucking him; all Joey has to do is lay back, take a good look at the picture hanging on his wall of him and his friend, who in the photo looks a lot like James Dean, and let the sex happen. He’s met his part of the challenge, and discovers it wasn’t so bad—although he doesn’t mention the photograph.

     To help Mike live up to his part of the deal, he takes him to a local Los Angeles gay bar; but by the time he lists the numerous do’s and don’ts—if asked if you’re a top or bottom, say neither unless you know what that means; watch out for those guys who try unzip their pants in public; always say yes to “rim jobs,” but if you’re going to do it to him make sure he’s really, really clean; I guess you can just stick to oral if you want to, but otherwise just be safe; always wear a condom—it’s clear that the gay bar scene is a bit too much for a neophyte to assimilate.

     But what do I do now? pleads Mike. At that very moment a waiter dressed in leather straps arrives with some drinks suggesting “Why don’t you have one on me?” Mike agrees, and the go-go like boy picks up a shot glass and pours liquor over his nipple. “But you gotta lick it off, baby.”

     Overwhelmed, Mike understandably flees the place, with Joey close behind. Joey suggests they just try something else, something mellow. And we suddenly perceive that this film is probably heading in a new direction closer to the genre I described in my essay on several films from the films of 2011-2013, “How to Lose Your Best Friend.”

     Sure enough, before Joey’s even parked the car at their shared apartment, they’re complimenting each other on how good they look. There’s a long pause, as Mike asks, “What you lookin’ at?” to which Joey answers, “You.” Leaning into his friend’s face he slowly kisses him before he backs away. “Too weird?” he asks. There is another long pause before Mike answer’s “uh-uh!”

       In the very next frame we see them in bed the next morning. Mike slowly rises, and Joey serves breakfast. “So I did it, okay?”

     Joey asks, “Well, did you like it?”

     “It was interesting.”

     “So, I guess we’re even then, man.”

     A pause. “Yeh.”

     “I mean, you know, unless....”

     “Unless what?” Pause. “Unless you want to do it again?”

     Mike blows air through his lips as if dismissing even the possibility.

     They stare at each other intensely before Joey cracks a smile, Mike finally speaking, “Maybe we will.”

      Evidently these friends will remain friends while taking advantage of the new kind of relationship that has suddenly developed between them. At least Joey no longer just has to stare at the picture but has the real thing close at hand, and, if nothing else, an actual memory. And evidently we have moved past Janger’s Just One Time.

      If this film is highly improbable simply because it presents such sexual shifts as being easy—as if changing one’s sexual orientation was simply a matter of changing one’s taste like becoming interested in Indian food or suddenly developing a craving for anchovy pizza—it represents, nonetheless, an interesting possibility that Mike, if not both of them, may prove Freud right, that all people are basically “bisexual...and their libido is distributed between objects of both sexes, either in a manifest or a latent form.” I used to believe that nonsense. But having lived now to the ripe old age of 78 without ever having sex with a woman, I guess I’ve proven Freud mistaken. I love women, but have never had a desire, openly or latently, to join them in bed.

 

Los Angeles, July 25, 2021

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog and World Cinema Review (July 2021).

       

      

 

 

Douglas Messerli | The Love That Cannot Be Spoken, Heard, or Seen [Introduction]

the love that cannot be spoken, heard, or seen

by Douglas Messerli

 

It’s interesting that in the short time that LGBTQ directors have been able to begin making pictures fully focusing on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender love that a fairly sophisticated group of films have been made in the 21st century regarding men who are physically impaired by being blind, deaf, or mute. One of these, unfortunately, treats the issue a bit more like a comic routine rather than a serious exploration of the difficulties these individuals have in finding gay partners in an already lonely world; yet in each of the seven films I discuss below (one simply an expansion of an early version), I am moved by the basic sense of positivity and hope these directors display in the inevitability of deaf, blind, or mute individuals pairing up with others who, although they don’t have those impairments surely have as many if not more others. In almost all the films I discuss below, it appears that those without the ability to hear, speak, or see are more loving and simply beautiful figures than their partners.

     The schoolboys David and Leonardo of the Mexican director Roberto Fiesco’s film David and Brazilian Daniel Ribeiro’s I Don’t Walk to Go Back Alone and The Way He Looks, as well as the slightly older figures of Brett, Alex, Aaron, Niall, and Mike in US directors Rory Dering’s Pittsburgh, Andrew Keenan-Bolger’s Sign, Julio Dowansingh’s Louder Than Words, and Aleksei Borovikov’s Glances are all true beauties who shine much more brightly than their companions. And through them I felt deep love and empathy—without pity or worry—for their characters. And despite the difficulties these individuals obviously daily face, they have all found ways to bring great joy and love to their worlds.

      Certainly there are probably other films on homosexuals who have problems with locomotion and mental difficulties before and after the ones I have selected. The important thing is that within a culture that has been historically so connected with physical beauty and mental agility that these issues are beginning to be explored. And I look forward to more of these sorts of films in the future.

 

Los Angeles, October 23, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (October 2025).

Julio Dowansingh | Louder than Words / 2017

a body in movement without sound

by Douglas Messerli

 

Julio Dowansingh (screenwriter and director) Louder than Words / 2017 [16.30 minutes]

 

Ansel (Luke Farley) is a guitar player new to the arts school he is attending. Upon his arrival to the school’s central building he discovers that the music hall is locked for the month, and is given, at least at first, a rather chilly greeting when he meets ups with the dancers Kenya (Apryl Wilson) and Niall (Marty Lauter), particularly when he asks for rain check when they invite him out for dinner.

   Luke is now dependent upon using a corner of their space, Kenya seeming somewhat off-putting, although Niall soon after appears to be more inviting.

      For the rest of the next few days, he sits in a corner as Niall performs his modern ballet movements, only later discovering that the reason the dancer has remained so quiet was that he is deaf, the obtuse Ansel responding, “Wow, that’s insane…and you…dance?” asking the question as if the two might somehow be at odds with one another. Kenya suggests that Niall is pretty good at reading lips too, hinting that he might have

found Ansel’s question somewhat offensive. But Ansel, obviously not picking up on the matter suggests to Niall that he should get his bicycle fixed (the chain seems to be loose), but when Niall responds with a simple salute, suggesting “Thanks I will!” Ansel seems unable to comprehend anything and immediately escapes, suggesting that he has no apparent interest in trying to better know his new friend.

      The next day as he helps to put up some new posters, Ansel does ask further questions, however. “When did you lose your hearing?” for example, Niall seeming to suggest that he lost his hearing at the age of 4. Ansel asks one more question, a seemingly interesting one, “Are you and Kenya…” Niall interrupts to mouth the word “no,” but then puts his fingers together in a way that one suspects means “we’re just friends” but also reads to a non-signer as if they might be very close, perhaps contradicting his first mouthed expression.

      The next day after strumming a few bars Ansel goes over Niall and sits upon the floor where he is working out to ask him “Can you hear the music?” Niall waves his hand to suggest that he sort of hears it, and the guitarist asks “How?” which Niall pushes his open hands to the floor in a rhythm pattern as if to suggest that it might be in the sound waves.

      When Ansel leaves later in the evening, Niall goes to his guitar and plucks a few random and atonal chords, putting his ear to the instrument to see if he can indeed hear the music. Ansel returns in the background, observing his attempts.

         Soon after, as Niall makes a spin, Ansel moves forward and asks him to “show me some moves.” He asks Niall to show him how to “make that spinney thing you do on your toes. The dancer repeats the spin, as Ansel removes his overshirt so that Niall can position, raising his hand, placing his feet into the proper stance. Ansel responds, this should be simple and attempts the spin, falling flat on the floor, Niall also falling to the floor, laughing in silent “belly laugh.”  Ansel helps him up suggesting, “I guess dance just isn’t my thing. As the two handsome boys stand face to face, Niall moves toward Ansel with the clear intention of a kiss. Immediately Ansel backs off, insisting, “I should get going,” as we walks off. Niall, embarrassed for the come-on is nearly emotionally devastated. He has evidently thoroughly misread Ansel’s sexuality.

      In the next scene we see Ansel sitting with his guitar in the room, several pieces of paper crunched up beside him. Kenya enters, grabbing one of the crumpled pieces, asking “Writers block?” “Do you want to talk about?” she further probes. But Ansel, true to his inability to properly communicate, responds “Not really.” She watches attempting to write out another note, asking it she might see it. She looks at the paper. “He’s freaking out, you know.”

       Niall answers that he knows, that he hadn’t wanted to offend him, and she suggests that he simply talk to him. But in the next frame, Ansel has obviously chosen to wander off yet again and as we see Kenya trying to comfort Niall, he responding in what is still apparent self-recrimination. He turns momentarily away from her in anger, and she leaves, Ansel, unknown to Niall, taking her place. When Niall turns, he is face to face with his former friend who suddenly signs, “I’m sorry, N-A-I-L-L,” speaking the words “that’s all I’ve learned so far.” Niall attempts to sign an answer, but Ansell grabs his head to bring it near and suddenly kisses him before walking off once more, leaving Niall with his jaw open in amazement.

        Clearly, the two are interested in one another sexually, but Ansel simply needs more time to learn how to communicate, to express his love to the other. It is obvious that the musician is terrified of a body in movement without sound.

        Julio Dowansingh’s film is quite complex and fascinating in its exploration of the difficulties that deaf individuals obviously face in dealing with those who cannot or will not learn their languages. It’s too bad that the cinematographer couldn’t visually equal the intensity of the script filming the work as he did in such muted colors that it might as well have been in black-and-white.

I have somewhat brightened the colors of the stills I chose so they might be read upon the page.

 

Los Angeles, August 21, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (August 2022).

Aleksei Borovikov | Glances / 2020

face off

by Douglas Messerli

 

Aleksei Borovikov (screenwriter and director) Glances / 2020 [7 minutes]

 

As Sunset Boulevard’s Norma Desmond might have argued, faces say everything. But when someone stares at us for too long, particularly when we don’t know the individual, we become confused and even agitated. What is the person looking at? Why does his stare continue? What does he want? What does he see of especial interest? And, of course, a stare in most cultures can represent sexual interest.

     In this case a handsome young man, Mike (Enrique Escarpita), sitting at a table in a restaurant, seems to be looking at the back of a man’s head, which the man’s table mate, a girl (Olivia Long) apparently mentions to him. When she leaves, Mike moves to the other side of the table to better observe what has been happening, literally behind his back.

     At first he seems curious as well, but quickly does become agitated, particularly when the young man staring at him raises one side of his lips with a slight smile. Sean (Ryan Pikofsky), the man being looked at, finally moves to the stranger’s table and pours himself out a mug of tea. “Listen, I don’t know what you’re trying to do here, but I’m not about this.”

    It’s one of only two moments of speech in this short 7-minute film by US director Aleksei Borovikov, but it says a great deal. It presumes that the strange his attempting “to do” something, to make a connection or perhaps sexually insinuate himself into the man’s life. This phrase “I’m not about this,” presumably suggests he is not interested and most certainly not gay.”

      Mike continues to stare, but looks down and aside troubled by Sean’s presumptions. Finally, Sean tries again to get at the heart of the matter: “What’s your problem? Can you talk, can you speak?”

       Sean takes out a small notebook and writes out the words: “I can’t talk.”

      The two men continue to sit face to face for a few moments without words, Mike opening his lips ever so slightly, hinting at a hope or possibility of communication. Sean looks back first from one side and then the other as if checking out if there is someone else to who his new friend’s stare might be meant or perhaps just making sure that no one is watching what is happening between them.

      And slowly, gradually, he begins a light smile, Mike returning it, Sean’s smile turning into something like a grin. The two have become friends. We don’t know either of their sexualities, but perhaps, if there is sexual interest between them, it can proceed. In any event, an odd relationship between the two has begun. I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if Sean invited Mike out for a drink or even a visit to his apartment.

 

Los Angeles, August 18, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (August 2022).

 

Dennis Shinners | Area X / 2007

becoming a man

by Douglas Messerli

 

Dennis Shinners (screenwriter and director) Area X / 2007 [15 minutes]

 

The first few frames of this film remind me a bit of Paul Morrissey’s Forty Deuce, which begins at the location of this work, the New York City Port Authority Bus Terminal, where one of the characters of the Morrisey film has taken up quarters in a terminal bathroom where he hooks up with gay johns.

    In Area X a hustler named Marco (Antony Raymond) is on the phone trying to settle a deal, whether if be a sexual meet-up, a promise to provide services, or some other shady matter we can’t tell. But it’s clearly not going well, and he’s run out of his last quarter, forcing him to enter the bathroom to beg a quarter off someone on the toilet, who finally drops it, only too late for Marco’s call.

    We soon encounter a young boy, fresh off the train, Paul (Matt Schuneman) who’s somehow found his way to underground area known by station authorities as Area X, where a bar serves for hustler meetings with their equally disreputable customers, most of them old men, such as the figure that appears later in this short film (Anthony Galluccio).

     But now sitting at the bar is a handsome young boy, who Marco simply can’t resist. Charming and savvy to the young kid’s likely problems, he listens to Paul’s truly bizarre story. Still at home, but working a job in construction in order to pay his way through community college, he discovers that his values and ideals collide with his father’s, who can’t imagine why he hasn’t yet married.

     One day, his dad inexplicably picked him up from work, again grilling him about his love life and soon after picking up a female prostitute, who as Paul relates it, didn’t even know if the old man or the boy is to be her customer. Neither did Paul, who—in the manner of the central characters in short films such as Gregory Cooke’s $30 (1999), Cameron Thrower’s Pretty Boy (2015), Taisia Deevva’s The Cure (2023), and Denis Laikhov’s The White Crows (2023)—quickly perceives, however, that this is a macho challenge for him to “become a true man,” the father dropping him and the distraught girl off at a seedy roadside motel and handing him two hundred dollars, insisting he not return home until he has become a man.

     Paul used the money to get to New York City, and is now there, ready to pay for a couple of rounds with his newfound confident.

     Marco has already argued that the only the kid is going to survive in the city is to become a hustler, like him, who when things go well can make a lot of money; and it’s clear he knows he has a “gay” pigeon on the hook, soon after luring the cute boy into the john for quick sex. It takes the boy a full trip back to the bar to clear up the bill for him to realize that although he has now truly “become a man,” his wallet is missing with no way to chase after the endless street travelling Marco “Polo.”

     And the next scene finds Paul playing out the very role that Marco has argued that he should pursue; he has no choice, he believes, but to sell his body to find enough money to find a place to sleep.

     I was there, in much the same place in 1969, determined to stay in New York without a dollar in my pocket; but I was clever, offering up my daily services as an office worker or typist until I lucked my way into a gem of a job at Columbia University. But most gay boys like Paul don’t have the luck or evidently the intelligence to get away from the Port Authority Bus Terminal as quickly as their legs can carry them. And I never visited Area X.

 

Los Angeles, October 23, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (October 2025).

Sarah Smith | Black Hat / 2019

the two of us

by Douglas Messerli

 

Phillip Guttmann (screenplay), Sarah Smith (director) Black Hat / 2019 [15 minutes]

 

Shmuel (Adam Silver) is a pious Hasidic Jew living in Los Angeles who everyday attends schul everyday as part of a minyan who celebrate the Torah with their Rabbi Ernest (Shelly Kurz).

    The Fairfax Avenue area of Los Angeles, in which supposedly this small synagogue exists (although many do in that area, the scene inside the schul in this movie was filmed Venice), along with a wide range of other small shops and bars, and theaters, including the famed Beverly Cinema (now owned by film director Quentin Tarantino), the cleaners where Shmuel works, a grungy gay bar named the Plaza, and restaurants, as well as the side streets lined with lovely brick and stucco-constructed houses and apartments.

    Leaving the morning ceremony, Shmuel forgets his traditional shtreimel, the black hat of the Ashkenazi sect. The rabbi calls out to him after the ceremony that he has once more left behind his hat, also taking the opportunity to invite Shmuel and his wife Naomi and their child to dinner, Shmuel explaining that his wife and child are in New York visiting her mother, and that he must hurry off to work.

     We suspect, and it is soon confirmed, that Shmuel is suffering from far more than a slight loss of memory, that his distraction has to do with other desires, and as night arrives we see him, dressed in his traditional garb in which he wears in his neighborhood where he might easily be recognized.

     But soon he darts down an alley, changing clothes and hiding his peiyot or more commonly payes, his traditional long sidecurls under a fisherman’s cap. His black coat and hat safely hidden away in a bag, he darts into the bar past a couple of chatting boys outside, one of whom, a black man named Jay (Sebastian Velmont), he clearly finds attractive. Nervously, however, Shmuel makes his way into the bar to be served up a drink by the bartender (Carolyn Michelle), who knows his favorite beer, Rolling Rock, clueing us in that he has become quite a regular.

     Turning around for a moment, he spots another man closer to his own age sitting alone (Bryce McKinney). But Jay soon reenters the place, joining Shmuel at the bar and soon inviting him into the curtained-off back room where it is clear open sex takes place.

     Jay moves off behind the curtain, with Shmuel soon following, the two meeting up with Jay removing his cap, stroking his lover’s payes before gently tucking them behind his ears and moving in for a deep kiss.  

     When Shmuel leaves, we note that when he goes to pick up his waiting bag of clothing, the black hat drops out without him noticing.

     The scene shifts to the next morning with Shmuel in bed, realizing that he has slept beyond his usual time. He quickly dresses and readies himself to hurry off to the synagogue, only to discover that he is missing his shtreimel. Desperately he rushes off the Plaza, but iron bars have been rolled across the doorway, signifying that it is closed.

   He arrives, fairly abashed, to the worship, only to be greeted by another of the minyan, the other conservative-looking man from in the bar the night before, who graciously hands over his hat, which our frightened believer receives with relief and widened-eyes, realizing that he now has a friend within the schul itself.

    When Lutheran-born director Sarah Smith was asked in an interview with Sophie Duncan & Caris Rianne about her experience of incorporating the most traditional of Jewish sects within her movie about gay sex, Smith answered: “It was important to me that we see the complexity in Shmuel’s struggle with who he is as a gay man and his religion, and through his religion, his relationship to G-d. It was also important to me that we not demonize the Hasidic religious beliefs, that we highlight Shmuel’s struggle, but try not to cast blame for his struggle.”

 

     She argues that she hopes the viewer’s of her film come to the realization that the strange outsider that Shmuel represents to many who know little about his religion are in many ways like all of us. 

 

“Through Shmuel’s story we aspire to raise the notion that these often mysterious and misunderstood religious individuals, typically only seen by the outside world on street covered by hats and sheitels, are perhaps more complex—more like us—than we previously imagined. We all, to some extent struggle with our identity, and I think this is something anyone can identify with and ultimately, my hope is we foster empathy and understanding.”

 

Los Angeles, October 22, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (October 2025).