Word: Ash Pritchard

Showcasing features from all over the world, the HKLGFF brings a host of fabulously queer characters to our shores. DS Magazine profiles the good, the bad and the ugly of the class of 2009.

Hong Kong’s lesbian and gay film festival is one of the bastions of the city’s homosexual community – Asia’s longest running film festival focusing on lesbian, gay and alternative sexualities. Every year we are treated to the latest and best that gay cinema has to offer, and 2009 is no different. With movies from as far afield as Sweden, Israel and Argentina, the festival is a window to the gay globe – allowing us mere observers to gain insight into how “the other half” live, love and laugh in far distant shores.

The hotties
No gay film festival would be complete without its parade of gorgeous man-flesh. After all, how are us gays to sit through as long as TWO HOURS without some eye-candy to keep our attention on the screen. The 2009 festival does not disappoint. For brooding, sultry French good looks, go no further than the Cassells. These handsome and ripped TWINS (yes, identical twins – goodness, doubled!) may not say much, but they reveal hidden depths to their souls as they shag their way through their movie, Give Me Your Hand.

If you like your men a little less, well, bi-sexual, then I’d advise you to pay your attention to the hunky Zach, star of Eating Out Three: All you can Eat. He’s more than just chiseled abs, a square jaw and a very decent package (yes, it is in display in all its glory – hurry now before the tickets sell out). He’s also sweet at heart, and looking for a boyfriend. Just like that guy you met on the www.gayhk.com chat-room, who’s still not calling you back after your last meet.

The nymphettes
While I hesitate to reinforce the stereotype of the promiscuous gay man, sleeping with anything and anybody, a few of us are indeed a bunch of dirty bastards. Take 21yo Ricky, not only is he embroiled in a three-way relationship with an older couple, but when they leave for the holiday season, he decides he’s going to sleep with as many guys as he possibly can. He threatens each hook-up with suicide (drama-queen as well as slut apparently), but eventually he comes to his senses. We’ve all gone through that phase, check out The Houseboy to see how Ricky deals with it.

But Ricky isn’t the only nymphette on the HKLGFF block. And it’s not only the gays that mess-around big time. Xiao-Bu may look like your sweet and innocent, hello-kitty loving femme baby dyke, but she hides dark secrets. She has a hard home life, its true, but does that really mean she has to seduce a series of older men, including her friend and first-love’s father! Her actions are all too well suited to the title of her movie: Beautiful Crazy.

The innocents
Having met the hotties and the nyphettes, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the festival is bringing only the worst of the gay community to the screens: sex-obsessed, or people relying on their looks to get them ahead. Yet do not despair, for the kind, sweet and good-hearted also appear. Goran is everything you’d expect in a Swedish guy. Friendly, open, honest and caring, (a newly qualified doctor for goodness sake!), all he wants is to take care of a little baby of his own with his husband Sven. Soon however, he has to put up with a violent troubled teenager, and a grumpy and emotionally abusive turn from his spouse. Luckily, nothing seems to dent his Scandinavian cheeriness and he seems confident that all will end well. If only life were as easy for us as it is for Goran in Patrik, 1,5.

Carrying on the theme of innocence, at least Boy has his youth to blame. A wealthy Manila kid on the cusp of manhood, he finds true love in a prostitute/dancing bar. Selling his beloved collection of comics to pay his crush’s bar fine, he nonetheless finds a sweet and innocent love from this inauspicious start. He even introduces his new lover to his most cherished family: momma and his fish collection. Singapore didn’t think that BoY was that innocent (banning the film), but go see the movie yourself and decide if you agree.

The pubescents
Getting even more innocent, we all remember how the halcyon days of our youth gave way to the hormonal rollercoaster that is adolescence. And the movie selection this year also remembers, as two boys experience growing up gay, and reminds us of our own childhoods, painful or otherwise. Take young Edy, the slightly chubby and effeminate 12 year-old boy in Dose (Twelve). Obsessed with the dancing Filipina divas of the screen (much like many an Anita Mui loving gay HK boy) he is rejected by his family and sent to live with his aunt. There he falls for the older man, no doubt bringing the infatuations of our own misspent youth to mind.

If this story is all too familiar to you, look no further for proof that you’re a stereotypical poof than the “coming of age” tale, For A Lost Soldier. Twelve-year-old Jeroen, again sent from his family (although this time for his own safety). A quiet, self-contained kid, he meets and is befriended by an older handsome soldier. Think of your own obsession with uniform, and then tell me this is not also your story.

The hags
Ahh, what would life be without our lovely leading ladies: the beauties who counsel us through hook-ups, comfort us through break-ups, and dance beside us at Volume and Propaganda. We love them, so why do we call them hags? Film festival 2010 of course features luscious lady-friends. Larger than life Tiffani (Eating Out Three: All You Can Eat) is the over-the-top friend, making you wear glitter and pushing you onto the dance-floor in the direction of that guy who’s caught your eye. She’s so avant-garde, she’ll even share her man with you (as long as she can watch).

Bethesda, an American-Filipina may deny her love for all boys who like boys, but with her singing and dancing campness its clear that she is with us. She truly is a Fruit Fly. Julie (from The New Twenty) may seem like the driven career woman, but underneath all that seriousness is a raging hag waiting to be released. She has two gay best friends: her brother Tony and her friend Ben. As all of us who have shared a bff with a rival can attest to, sometimes hags can be as back-stabbing as fags.

Sadly there is not enough time to talk about all the wonderful, boys, girls, girly-boys, men, women, transsexuals and people of unknown sexual origin that will parade across our screen in the following few weeks. All we can do is say, “Go out, buy tickets and meet some new friends from all over the globe.” Well, you won’t actually meet them, but for a few minutes you too can share their lives and experiences, and become part of the big gay world out there.