9th Lisbon Gay and Lesbian Film Festival

While in Berlin, in the past month of February attending the Berlinale, I had my moment of epiphany, not inside a movie theatre, but in the loneliness of my hotel room when, turning on the television, by chance I was confronted with the news of a lively polemic that burst in the USA, concerning the airing cancellation or not, of the cartoon Sponge Bob Squarepants. Still not very well known in Portugal, in cause was the supposed lack of a defined sexuality or even the androgyny of the cartoon. As frequently in the conservative right and, curiously, nowadays even in the so-called neo-liberals, especially in the USA, who prime for their facileness and fanaticism, there is no thorough reflection trying to bond the enormous success of this cartoon in all the American continent and some European countries, nor its modernity and contemporariness, and its link with what is though of as the world of tomorrow, a world in which all stereotypes will be progressively erased, as we can already foresee.

The constant refusal, on the one hand, on facing the facts of life with a least amount of clarity and, on the other hand, the preference on opting for the ostrich’s attitude of “pretending not to see” or, even worst, of forbidding others to “see it” is no less than an absurd attempt to protect children from the so-called “menacing influence of this creature” which seeks nothing but happiness, constantly questioning itself, never hiding his humanity, mostly whenever it concerns his fragilities.

Just like conversations and cherries (the fruit that likewise revolutions doesn’t last long), one fact throws in another, a memory, one or other story: In this moment in time, in all the western world, where until now we’ve managed to score some points in the equality laws, independently of our sexual orientation, some events have taken place, some isolated, some not, that have sent the shivers up my spine, for they seem bad presages, as if, very soon History, in all that’s worst in the History of Humanity, could repeat itself, especially through one of its darkest moments concerning the glbt community: the Nazi Holocaust.

Sixty years having passed over the Auschwitz liberation, and although they allow us a sufficient detachment towards a more acute and exempt History, they haven’t given us, unlike what happened to other specific groups persecuted by the Nazi terror machine, what would be the most important: Recognition. Without recognition, or what José Gil refers to in his “Portugal Hoje”, “inscription”, all the malevolence in the world can still freely, and with the complicity of many, go down on the glbt.

This is how I observe radical Muslims stalking and stabbing gay men outside Amsterdam clubs, or how I observe the laws which forbid erotic images in the internet in the USA (where does freedom end?), or, even attacks to gay men in Viseu, with the permission of the police authorities themselves. I worry especially with homophobia disguised as economic crises, the same which closes down glbt art galleries in Norway (a rich country as far as I know), or publication houses all over the USA. I’m astounded by those Christians who pray for us and for all our sins as we march during National Swiss Gay Pride, and right here, in our beloved Lisbon, we have the obvious example of the homophobic attitude of the City Hall (progressively reducing all sponsoring to our Festival, alleging financial crisis while, simultaneously, creating other events…) and other official institutions, not only towards this Festival, but towards the glbt community as a whole, aiming directly at what I believe to be the basis of this or any other community: the Culture.

To deprive a community of Culture and Education is one of the most effective ways to neutralize it. Displacing the Gay Pride to the Parque do Calhau, for example, is to conceal in the outskirts of an outskirt park something, which the members of City Hall are ashamed to see in the heart of the city. A Gay Pride is an event that must be lived in the city centres and not in the suburbs, the Gay Pride is a party celebrating not pride as arrogance, but simply as not being ashamed of whom we are.

The attempt to change, or in other words, to obliterate the designation of this Festival (again the attempts towards non-inscription) in the past, by the now Town-Councillor for Culture, Mrs. Maria Manuel Pinto Barbosa, is a crime perpetuated against our identity and an act which clearly reveals a shy and dissimulated homophobia. Our refusal to give in to this blackmail cost us the almost total loss of Town supports.

It hurts me thus to observe the retrocession that the Portuguese glbt community suffered these last four years. To observe how many men and women searched for refugee again inside the closets and inside the “dirtiness” of their own minds, where homosexuality is still associated to something indecorous that must be concealed. It hurts me to see a community with such a low self-esteem, to the point of turning it into almost non-existent, who allows others to vilify them in this ignoble way; and it hurts to see what psychologists call “internalized homophobia”, that is, glbt people with such a low self-esteem to the point of being themselves the ones who destroy the work of the few creditable associations, or even those who fear that the visibility of these same associations muffle their own weak or null contributes. HOMOPHOBIA, in my opinion, begins, unfortunately, inside the glbt community. The only way to surpass this stigmatisation is through Education and that has been our role, motivation and goal.

Education, Civility / Civics and Culture are more than words for me, they are my personal “faith” in a better world where one can freely pursue personal happiness. This Festival and all its, by now, considerable archive is a value which belongs to Lisbon (and not only) and, being so, my biggest wish is that Lisbon, on the one hand, knows how to conserve it and, on the other hand, knows how to deserve it.

This is my first detachment from the direction of the Lisbon Gay and Lesbian Film Festival and, as its creator and founder, I feel grateful and happy for these nine years and I offer my greatest trust and acknowledgment to the new team who will continue this project, especially to its new Director, João Ferreira and the President of the Associação Cultural Janela Indiscreta, Albino Cunha.

I feel my mission is accomplished. The “blood” has been renewed, the inscription, I believe, has been done and I can now go back to my individualism, where I believe I can partake the struggle with even more strength and perseverance towards all these ideals on which I insist believing.

The Lisbon Gay and Lesbian Film Festival is here and will go on…
Enjoy!

Celso Junior
Artist and founder of the LGLFF