Solos (Kan Lume and Loo Zihan, Singapore, 2007) Utterly poetic and visually stunning, Solos is a purely cinematic film about the relationship between two men -- a teacher and his student -- as well as a mother’s struggle to accept her son for who he is. The complicated emotions that bind the three protagonists are eloquently revealed through beautiful digital black-and-white cinematography and excellent sound design. The complete absence of dialogue only enhances the subtlety of the acting by the film’s acclaimed trio of leads. (Maria Komodore)
6 p.m., Victoria

Still from Citizen Nawi

MONDAY, JUNE 23
Citizen Nawi (Nissim Mosseky, Israel, 2007) Activist Ezra Nawi, a queer Sephardic Jew living in Israel, devotes much of his life to the assistance of South Hebron's Palestinian community. He provides emergency support, helps develop infrastructure, and undermines the Israeli Defense Force's efforts at demolishing such infrastructure, all while deflecting the homophobic taunts that regularly register from the nearby Jewish settlements. He does all this with the kind of brazen showmanship that inspires the worst documentaries, yet Citizen Nawi is a restrained, beautifully disciplined mess. The requisite domestic scenes feel as legitimate and beefy as any others, and there are at least three points where the opportunity for director Nissim Mossek to tease out high drama is respectfully declined. (Jason Shamai)
9:15 p.m., Roxie
The Edge of Heaven (Fatih Akin, Germany, 2007) It takes a while for Head-On (2004) director Akin’s new movie to get to the lezzy stuff -- male ‘mo material comes even later, and is merely suggested -- but don’t let that dissuade you from this complex drama in German, Turkish and English. Those languages encompass the story’s considerable reach, as several lives unpredictably intersect between Bremen and Istanbul, political radicalism and prostitution, passion and imprisonment. (The latter doesn’t look half-bad -- are women’s prisons in Germany and Turkey really so humane?) An unrecognizable Hannah Schygulla – who has finally let herself look fat and old -- is poignant as the mother of the rebellious daughter who falls in love with the exiled female Turkish agitator who’s daughter to an expat prostitute whose benefactor is a horny older Turkish emigre whose son is a German university lecturer, etc... I told you it was complex. But despite a near-overload of accident-of-fate plot turns, it’s also vivid and engrossing. (Dennis Harvey)
9:15 p.m., Victoria
La León (Santiago Otheguy, Argentina, 2007)
Set amidst the tiny communities that dot the verdant canals and reed marshes of Argentina’s Parana River, Santiago Otheguy’s debut feature is both a somnambulant study of simmering desire and a verite-style portrait of its setting. Seemingly drawn in chiaroscuro charcoals, La León follows the geographically and sexually isolated Alvaro, who is fascinated with his village’s garrulous and crude tugboat captain, El Turu. Only the surrounding jungle bears witness as we do to the muted wrongs that gradually unfold. (Sussman)
11:30 a.m., Castro. Also June 25, 7 p.m., Victoria.

Stills from La León (top) and Love My Life (bottom)

TUESDAY, JUNE 24
Love My Life (Kôji Kawano, Japan, 2007) Young college student Ichiko (Rei Yoshii) is enjoying an exciting love affair with law student Eri (Asami Imajuku). But when Ichiko decides to come out to her father, she’s flabbergasted by the discovery that both of her parents are gay. In the meantime, Eri is going through her own personal struggles, leaving Ichiko with plenty of time to try to understand who she really is and what she wants from life. Unfortunately, the tender, playful, and multi-layered moods that prevail through most of this film adaptation of a manga by Ebine Yamaji give way to an unnecessarily cheesy ending. (Komodore)
9:30 p.m., Victoria

FRIDAY, JUNE 27
Chris and Don: A Love Story (Guido Santi and Tina Mascara, US, 2007) Brit writer Christopher Isherwood was 49 in 1953, when he met star-struck 18-year-old local Don Bachardy on the Santa Monica beach. Now in his mid-70s, Bachardy says his lifelong companion (until Isherwood died in 1986) played a “role [that] could be described as that of the art villain -- he took this young boy and he warped him to his mold. He taught him all kinds of wicked things. It was exactly what the boy wanted.” Their decades together encompassed a dizzying social circle of Hollywood, intellectual and high-art celebrities, many of whom Bachardy painted as he found his own eventual calling as a portraitist. Featuring lots of starry home-movie footage, plus Isherwood diary excerpts read by Michael York (who played his alter ego in Cabaret), Guido Santi and Tina Mascara’s documentary is delightful and surprisingly poignant. (Harvey)
9 p.m., Victoria

SATURDAY, JUNE 28
A Double Life (Ruby Yang, China/US, 2008) “Our feelings stay underground like the subway,” comments “Frog” Cui, one of the three young tongzhi profiled in Ruby Yang’s brief snapshot of the difficulties faced by gay Chinese men. Though “Frog,” his boyfriend Xia Feng, and their acquaintance Long Ze are able to be with other men somewhat comfortably within the anonymity of urban Beijing, their ongoing conflicts over fulfilling their filial obligations as sons and heirs are often just a parental visit away. Yang is clearly sympathetic to her subjects’ ongoing struggles to reconcile their two lives, but the film still feels like a small portion of a larger picture. (Sussman)
2:30 p.m., Roxie
A Jihad for Love (Parvez Sharma, US, 2007) This documentary is the first major filmic study of gays living in the Muslim world, still faithful to their religion despite its apparent, often violent opposition to homosexuality (which is based on interpretation of a short single passage in the Qur’an, much as Christian homophobia focuses on those few, historically debated bits in Leviticus). In Iran, over 4,000 people have been executed for alleged homo acts since the 1979 revolution; in other primarily Muslim countries -- Turkey being one relatively tolerant exception -- gays face fines, whipping, prison, and other punishments. But those ongoing human rights won little international attention until the “Cairo 52” were arrested for simply being on a floating Queen Boat gay disco. Producer Sandi Dubowski previously directed the doc Trembling Before G-d, about gay Orthodox Jews -- a similar (if seemingly oppositional) subject that also reaped admirable yet frustrating results. Like Trembling, Jihad has an inevitable hot-button fascination, yet the limited interviewees (their identity understandably often obscured) and uniformity of prejudice faced make for a somewhat repetitious film that can offer little insight into the reality of those closeted folk who will no doubt comprise the majority of Islam’s gay population for many years to come. (Harvey)
6 p.m., Victoria

Derek director Isaac Julien and actress Tilda Swinton

SUNDAY, JUNE 29
Derek (Isaac Julien, UK, 2008) Perhaps the highest compliment that can be paid to Tilda Swinton and Isaac Julian’s sustained love letter to the late, great British guerrilla filmmaker, gardener and gay rights activist Derek Jarman is that it makes you want to watch Jarman’s films. Julian intercuts excerpts from a wonderful BBC TV Jarman interview recorded towards the end of his life (he passed away from AIDS in 1994) with clips from his films, home movies and gratuitous footage of a brooding Swinton stalking aimlessly through London. Like Jarman’s art, Swinton’s voiceover -- addressed directly to her departed collaborator -- is alternately impassioned, pedantic, richly imagistic and slightly pretentious. Above all, though, it is inspiring. (Sussman)
4:30 p.m., Castro