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New Statesman
18-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New Statesman
The search for queer cinema
The Milanese filmmaker Luchino Visconti was both a Marxist and an aristocrat. He found squalor amid opulence and beauty in decay, and is perhaps best known today for directing Death in Venice – a clammy-palmed yet masterly 1971 movie about an ageing composer who encounters unattainable perfection in the form of a 14-year-old boy. It's a picture with a narrow focus on an unappealing protagonist's inappropriate desire, but its unhinged commitment to feeling suggests that there's also something more metaphysical going on. 'The love in my film is not homosexual,' Visconti insisted. 'It is love without eroticism, without sexuality.' That's probably what Gustav von Aschenbach – the tortured composer played in a register of permanent desperation by Dirk Bogarde – would have told you, too. Ryan Gilbey, who was for many years the New Statesman's regular film critic, is a bit ambivalent when it comes to Visconti's masterpiece but concedes that it 'captures one thing with mortifying accuracy: the alienating force of queerness in a world hostile to difference'. In It Used to Be Witches, a daring, unconventional memoir wrapped inside a study of LGBTQ+ cinema, Gilbey initially introduces himself in the third person as a character observed from without, as if in a novel or a screenplay. We first see him, like Aschenbach, arriving in Venice – though only to deliver lectures about cinema to students on an art history course, rather than to stalk a waif. On his flight there, he frets over whether the selection of illustrative clips that he has brought along with him is too revealing of his sexual orientation; prepped on his hard drive are scenes from Ron Peck's Nighthawks, about a gay teacher in late-1970s Britain, alongside a smattering of Warhol, Fassbinder and other works from the queer canon. For Gilbey, cinema and sexuality have always been 'closely intertwined'. Though now happily out and married, he spent many years in relationships with women, fathering three children. (In a movingly candid passage, he confesses that he recognised in Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee's 2005 neo-Western about the frustrated romance between two American cowboys, 'the sort of constricted existence he had engineered for himself'.) Having grown up in a conservative 'two-pub tumbleweed village' in Essex in the overtly homophobic 1970s and 1980s, he was, for much of his life, 'apologetically queer', and 'traces of the fear and shame from those years' still linger inside him. Even now, at a time when Marvel superheroes share same-sex kisses and words such as 'inclusion' and 'diversity' are worn as badges of honour by (non-Trumpian) corporations, Gilbey largely experiences his sexuality as an 'identity crisis'. Hence, perhaps, his decision to start his book in the third person, dramatising his sense of dislocation. In Jenni Olson's 2015 documentary The Royal Road, a poetic rumination on American history and her butch lesbian identity, the narrator-director says that imagining herself as a fictional character has been 'a mode of survival' for her. This tendency, writes Gilbey, is 'an occupational hazard for anyone obsessed with cinema' and also a familiar part of growing up gay around hung-up homophobes. 'Building a persona, or observing yourself as a character, creates space for play and performance, but it also means that the bad things aren't really happening to you,' explains Gilbey. 'They're happening to the fictional you, the counterfeit one.' The problem with shielding yourself in this way is that the same goes for the good things: they're happening to the fictional you, too. You're at best one step removed from what you want. In It Used to Be Witches, Gilbey grapples with a sense that he has missed, or is in the process of missing, the boat heading towards some sort of authentic gay self-realisation. One profound consolation throughout his life, however, has been cinema. Queer narratives that he encountered at the movies helped him to comprehend his desires as a younger man; later, whether he was 'in or out of the closet', they 'provided a kind of IV line for his queerness, feeding him the necessary nutrients to keep that part of him from dying off even while it was outwardly dormant'. Today, LGBTQ+ visibility is part of the cinematic mainstream. Whether it's Daniel Craig's gay detective in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery or the lesbian daughter in the Oscar-winning Everything Everywhere All at Once, queer characters are no longer exceptions found almost exclusively in polemic issue-of-the-day movies or simply exploited for cruel comedy. But when Gilbey was first discovering cinema, they were more often than not merely glimpsed at the peripheries. So he collected them. In his teens, he learned of the existence of gay bars while flicking through a copy of Time Out. Hesitant to visit one, he dreamt up his own and crammed it full of gays he'd encountered on screen: the assassins Mr Wint and Mr Kidd from the Bond movie Diamonds Are Forever; Colin, the cruising gangster 'sliced up at the start of The Long Good Friday'; Murray Melvin's Geoffrey in A Taste of Honey, with his 'pinched Pierrot face'; the flasher in Mel Brooks's Alfred Hitchcock parody High Anxiety. And he would imagine himself peering through the door at them in wonder, amazed by their very existence. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe But are such characters representative of all that it meant to be gay? The true richness of queer cinema was something that Gilbey would only later come to discern; indeed, It Used to Be Witches is an account of his continuing exploration of its myriad forms as it restlessly evolves. However, 'queer cinema', like queerness itself, is beyond simple definition. There's little consensus on what it entails. Early on in It Used to Be Witches, Gilbey describes himself sitting in the British Film Institute library, working on a few paragraphs that he hopes might make for a compelling introduction to the book. 'Though the narratives of queerness and gayness overlap,' he writes, 'there is a difference between how those modes manifest themselves on screen.' He proposes that whether the major protagonists in a movie are gay or not, queerness is something that can be perceived in the 'denial of specific pleasures and consolations, and a rejection of convention'; he cites Todd Haynes, the director of the 2015 lesbian drama Carol, who once described the LGBTQ+ cinematic mode as 'a critique of mainstream culture'. To Gilbey, queerness is intrinsically 'an innovating force and a catalytic power', and he concludes his draft introduction with this rallying sentiment. Yet what it means to him isn't necessarily what it means to others – especially younger people for whom the term 'queer' has 'no negative connotations'. Jessie Jeffrey Dunn Rovinelli, the director of the 2019 trans drama So Pretty, complains of a 'homogenising impulse' contained in the word, which, to her, seems somewhat passé – too palatable, too marketable. ('No one's ever called me 'queer',' she says. 'They called me 'faggot'.') There's evidently a generational divide. The 71-year-old German filmmaker Monika Treut, who directed 1999's Gendernauts: A Journey Through Shifting Identities, is nostalgic for a 'time when queer people were outcasts', associated with activism and 'not agreeing with family values'. In some ways, the wider embrace of LGBTQ+ communities and culture by the Hollywood mainstream seems to have sapped the term of its oppositional force; it now feels almost 'polite'. As Paul Mescal's 20-something character Harry puts it in Andrew Haigh's romantic fantasy All of Us Strangers (2023), 'It's like all the dick-sucking's been taken out.' Gilbey nonetheless persists in his survey of queer cinema and seeks out filmmakers whom he deems to be at its forefront, from Cheryl Dunye – the Liberian-American director of The Watermelon Woman (1996) – to current trailblazers such as Isabel Sandoval (Lingua Franca), Lyle Kash (Death and Bowling) and Rovinelli. In a Weird Weekends-style episode, he shadows the Canadian underground filmmaker Bruce LaBruce on the set of a gay-porn take on Pier Paolo Pasolini's Theorem; he interrogates the enduring influence of Chantal Akerman's debut, Je Tu Il Elle (1974), which contains the first explicit lesbian sex scene in a mainstream film. He touches upon the coyness of crossover hits such as Philadelphia and Call Me by Your Name ('Mainstream movies about homosexuals are not for homosexuals,' the LGBTQ+ activist Vito Russo once put it) and the importance of the 'toilet-based sexual encounter' for many gay men, as documented in William E Jones's 2007 art film Tearoom. What he finds is that there are as many versions of queer cinema as there are queer filmmakers, and that is a mark of its vitality. When it comes to telling LGBTQ+ stories, writes Gilbey, the 'options are infinite' – and the same goes for his own life, too. He starts the book with a self-loathing identification with Death in Venice's Aschenbach, trapped in a life of disappointment and impossible longing. By its conclusion, however, he has accepted that he doesn't have to play any role that he doesn't like because he can simply choose, or create, another. Good for him. As he discovers, there's nothing more authentically queer than that spirit of liberating self-invention. It Used to Be Witches: Under the Spell of Queer Cinema Ryan Gilbey Faber & Faber, 352pp, £20 Purchasing a book may earn the NS a commission from who support independent bookshops [See also: Will Iran surrender?] Related
Scottish Sun
16-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Scottish Sun
Iconic hotel loved by major celebs to finally reopen after 15 years with new £170million revamp
And two other UK hotels undergoing multi-million renovations ROOM FOR MORE Iconic hotel loved by major celebs to finally reopen after 15 years with new £170million revamp Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) AN iconic hotel on the European seaside is set to reopen after 15 years. Grand Hôtel des Bains in Venice first opened in 1900, with 180 rooms for the "seaside elite". Sign up for Scottish Sun newsletter Sign up 4 Grand Hôtel des Bains opened more than 100 years ago Credit: 4 However it closed back in 2010 Credit: 4 The beachfront is also being revamped Credit: Alamy Built on the Lido of Venice, it was forced to close back in 2010, with previous plans to turn it into luxury apartments. However, a new €200million (£170million) investment hopes to reopen the hotel. The project is being backed by Italian developer and COIMA and Abu Dhabi's Eagle Hills, behind a number of resorts in the Middle East and Africa. Not only will the hotel be restored, but the nearby parks and beachfront will be renovated as well. Mohamed Alabbar, Chairman and founder of Eagle Hills, said: "This is more than a restoration – it is a revival of European legacy through modern excellence. "Venice has always been a bridge between worlds, and we are proud to be part of its future, bringing our experience in luxury hospitality to one of the most symbolic hotels on the continent." One of the first famous guests to visit was Thomas Mann, who was inspired to write Death in Venice while there. The hotel was then even used to shoot the film in 1971. It also hosted the International Film Festival in 1932, with guests such as Liz Taylor and Robert de Niro attending as well as Audrey Hepburn and Marlon Brando. Roma producer David Linde said it was the "place to be seen, to do your thing" in the film industry. New European Sleeper Train Route Goes Through 15 Destinations He also said it was a "significantly more intimate and concentrated version of Cannes". Along with nearly 200 rooms, there was also a solarium and a private underground tunnel that went straight to the beach. Another hotel undergoing a huge renovation is The Grand Brighton. The £16million revamp of the hotel is set to be complete this year, after celebrating its 160th anniversary last year. There is also the Roslin Hotel, undergoing a £10million revamp. Otherwise the Sun's Deputy Travel Editor has stayed in hundreds of hotels - here are her favourites.
The Irish Sun
16-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Irish Sun
Iconic hotel loved by major celebs to finally reopen after 15 years with new £170million revamp
AN iconic hotel on the European seaside is set to reopen after 15 years. Grand Hôtel des Bains in Venice first opened in 1900, with 180 rooms for the "seaside elite". Advertisement 4 Grand Hôtel des Bains opened more than 100 years ago Credit: 4 However it closed back in 2010 Credit: 4 The beachfront is also being revamped Credit: Alamy Built on the Lido of Venice, it was forced to close back in 2010, with previous plans to turn it into luxury apartments. However, a new €200million (£170million) investment hopes to reopen the hotel. The project is being backed by Italian developer and COIMA and Abu Dhabi's Eagle Hills, behind a number of resorts in the Middle East and Africa. Not only will the hotel be restored, but the nearby parks and beachfront will be renovated as well. Advertisement Read more on hotels Mohamed Alabbar, Chairman and founder of Eagle Hills, said: "This is more than a restoration – it is a revival of European legacy through modern excellence. "Venice has always been a bridge between worlds, and we are proud to be part of its future , bringing our experience in luxury hospitality to one of the most symbolic hotels on the continent." One of the first famous guests to visit was Thomas Mann, who was inspired to write Death in Venice while there. The hotel was then even used to shoot the film in 1971. Advertisement Most read in News Travel It also hosted the International Film Festival in 1932, with guests such as Liz Taylor and Roma producer David Linde said it was the "place to be seen, to do your thing" in the film industry. New European Sleeper Train Route Goes Through 15 Destinations He also said it was a "significantly more intimate and concentrated version of Cannes". Along with nearly 200 rooms, there was also a solarium and a private underground tunnel that went straight to the beach. Advertisement Another hotel undergoing a The £16million revamp of the hotel is set to be complete this year, after celebrating its 160th anniversary last year. There is also the Otherwise the Sun's Deputy Travel Editor has stayed in hundreds of hotels - here are her favourites. Advertisement 4 It will also restore the hotel beachfront Credit: Alamy
New Indian Express
05-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New Indian Express
Edmund White, groundbreaking gay author, dies at 85
Childhood yearnings White was born in Cincinnati in 1940, but age at 7 moved with his mother to the Chicago area after his parents divorced. His father was a civil engineer 'who reigned in silence over dinner as he studied his paper.' His mother a psychologist 'given to rages or fits of weeping.' Trapped in 'the closed, sniveling, resentful world of childhood,' at times suicidal, White was at the same time a 'fierce little autodidact' who sought escape through the stories of others, whether Thomas Mann's 'Death in Venice' or a biography of the dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. 'As a young teenager I looked desperately for things to read that might excite me or assure me I wasn't the only one, that might confirm my identity I was unhappily piecing together,' he wrote in the essay 'Out of the Closet, On to the Bookshelf,' published in 1991. As he wrote in 'A Boy's Own Story,' he knew as a child that he was attracted to boys, but for years was convinced he must change — out of a desire to please his father (whom he otherwise despised) and a wish to be 'normal.' Even as he secretly wrote a 'coming out' novel while a teenager, he insisted on seeing a therapist and begged to be sent to boarding school. One of the funniest and saddest episodes from 'A Boy's Own Story' told of a brief crush he had on a teenage girl, ended by a polite and devastating note of rejection. 'For the next few months I grieved,' White writes. 'I would stay up all night crying and playing records and writing sonnets to Helen. What was I crying for?' He had a whirling, airborne imagination and New York and Paris had been in his dreams well before he lived in either place. After graduating from the University of Michigan, where he majored in Chinese, he moved to New York in the early 1960s and worked for years as a writer for Time-Life Books and an editor for The Saturday Review. He would interview Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote among others, and, for some assignments, was joined by photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. Socially, he met Burroughs, Jasper Johns, Christopher Isherwood and John Ashbery. He remembered drinking espresso with an ambitious singer named Naomi Cohen, whom the world would soon know as 'Mama Cass' of the Mamas and Papas. He feuded with Kramer, Gore Vidal and Susan Sontag, an early supporter who withdrew a blurb for 'A Boy's Own Story' after he caricatured her in the novel 'Caracole.' 'In all my years of therapy I never got to the bottom of my impulse toward treachery, especially toward people who'd helped me and befriended me,' he later wrote.
Los Angeles Times
04-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Edmund White, a groundbreaking gay author, dies at 85
NEW YORK — Edmund White, the groundbreaking man of letters who documented and imagined the gay revolution through journalism, essays, plays and such novels as 'A Boy's Own Story' and 'The Beautiful Room Is Empty,' has died. He was 85. White's death was confirmed Wednesday by his agent, Bill Clegg. Along with Larry Kramer, Armistead Maupin and others, White was among a generation of gay writers who in the 1970s became bards for a community no longer afraid to declare its existence. He was present at the Stonewall raids of 1969, when arrests at a club in New York's Greenwich Village led to the birth of the modern gay movement and for decades was a participant and observer through the tragedy of AIDS, the advance of gay rights and culture and the recent backlash. A resident of New York and Paris for much of his adult life, he was a novelist, journalist, biographer, playwright, activist, teacher and memoirist. 'A Boy's Own Story' was a bestseller and classic coming-of-age novel that demonstrated gay literature's commercial appeal. He wrote a prizewinning biography of playwright Jean Genet, along with books on Marcel Proust and Arthur Rimbaud. He was a professor of creative writing at Princeton University, where colleagues included Toni Morrison and his close friend, Joyce Carol Oates. 'Among gay writers of his generation, Edmund White has emerged as the most versatile man of letters,' cultural critic Morris Dickstein wrote in the New York Times in 1995. 'A cosmopolitan writer with a deep sense of tradition, he has bridged the gap between gay subcultures and a broader literary audience.' White was born in Cincinnati in 1940, but at age 7 moved with his mother to the Chicago area after his parents divorced. His father was a civil engineer and his mother was a psychologist. Feeling trapped and at times suicidal, White sought escape through the stories of others, including Thomas Mann's 'Death in Venice' and a biography of dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. 'As a young teenager I looked desperately for things to read that might excite me or assure me I wasn't the only one, that might confirm my identity I was unhappily piecing together,' he wrote in the 1991 essay 'Out of the Closet, on to the Bookshelf.' As he wrote in 'A Boy's Own Story,' he knew as a child that he was attracted to boys but for years was convinced he must change — out of a desire to please his father (whom he otherwise despised) and a wish to be 'normal.' Even as he secretly wrote a 'coming out' novel while a teenager, he insisted on seeing a therapist and begged to be sent to boarding school. One of the funniest and saddest episodes from 'A Boy's Own Story' told of a brief crush he had on a teenage girl, ended by a polite and devastating note of rejection. 'For the next few months I grieved,' White writes. 'I would stay up all night crying and playing records and writing sonnets to Helen. What was I crying for?' Through much of the 1960s, he was writing novels that were rejected or never finished. Late at night, he would head out to bars. A favorite stop was the Stonewall, where he would down vodka tonics and try to find the nerve to ask a man he had a crush on to dance. He was in the neighborhood on the night of June 28, 1969, when police raided the Stonewall and 'all hell broke loose.' 'Up until that moment we had all thought homosexuality was a medical term,' wrote White, who soon joined the protests. 'Suddenly we saw that we could be a minority group — with rights, a culture, an agenda.' White's debut novel, the surreal and suggestive 'Forgetting Elena,' was published in 1973. He collaborated with Charles Silverstein on 'The Joy of Gay Sex,' a follow-up to the bestselling 'The Joy of Sex' that was updated after the emergence of AIDS. In 1978, his first openly gay novel, 'Nocturnes for the King of Naples,' was released and he followed with the nonfiction 'States of Desire,' his attempt to show 'the varieties of gay experience and also to suggest the enormous range of gay life to straight and gay people — to show that gays aren't just hairdressers, they're also petroleum engineers and ranchers and short-order cooks.' His other works included 'Skinned Alive: Stories' and the novel 'A Previous Life,' in which he turns himself into a fictional character and imagines himself long forgotten after his death. In 2009, he published 'City Boy,' a memoir of New York in the 1960s and '70s in which he told of his friendships and rivalries and gave the real names of fictional characters from his earlier novels. Other recent books included the novels 'Jack Holmes & His Friend' and the memoir 'Inside a Pearl: My Years in Paris.' 'From an early age I had the idea that writing was truth-telling,' he told the Guardian around the time 'Jack Holmes' was released. 'It's on the record. Everybody can see it. Maybe it goes back to the sacred origins of literature — the holy book. There's nothing holy about it for me, but it should be serious and it should be totally transparent.' Italie writes for the Associated Press.
