Posts Tagged: History
The first gay-positive movie ever
I’d read a bit about the very early homosexual rights movements in Europe, about Magnus Hirschfeld and some of the organisations that operated in the 1910′s and 1920′s. But I didn’t know anything about what they published, or how they made their case to the general population. Well, now I know a little bit more, thanks to Anders als die Andem (Different from the Others), a German silent film released in 1919. Banned a year afterwards, most copies were destroyed when the Nazis took over. Only fragments of this fascinating piece of gay history exist.
Vancouver Queer Film Festival Review: Queer History Project Retrospective
For all the people (including me) who missed any of the Queer History Project films from past years! I’ve already reviewed the five shorts in Riffs on the Theme of Activism so I won’t cover them here, but it was lovely seeing them again. Given the choice I might have skipped them since it was almost midnight when I came out of the theatre, but I’m not complaining. Too much.
Davie Village Walk with Gordon Price
How and why is Davie Village a gay neighbourhood? How did gays shape it? And where is it going in the 21st century? All these questions and more were answered last night in a guided history walk hosted by Gordon Price, city councillor from 1986–2002, writer and consultant, who came to Vancouver in 1978 as a fresh-faced gay man.
Vancouver International Film Festival Review: Palimpsest
Gustav Shpet: Russian philosopher, teacher, writer, polyglot and interpreter; born in Kiev in 1879; exiled to Tomsk, Siberia in 1935; executed in 1937.
This movie is mostly narrated by Shpet’s 92-year old daughter Marina in a series of informal interviews, intercut with contemporaneous film reels, photos and music, as well as Shpet’s letters to Marina during his exile.
Apology to Alan Turing
The UK government apologises for its treatment of Alan Turing.
A pointless feel-good exercise? Too little too late? A fitting tribute to a national hero? I don’t know. Maybe all of the above, but on the whole I’m happy with it. Turing damn well deserves some recognition for being one of the founding fathers of computer science, not to mention his cracking of the Enigma ciphers.
Book Review: The Five Books of Moses Lapinsky
Wow, that took a while. So much for my New Year’s resolution to read a novel a month, eh?
I started on this book in late January, after skipping through three quarters of the Mortal Engines quartet. Then I was taking a class, which left me with very little time and energy for such frivolities. But the class ended, and on Easter weekend I decided to pick it up again. I was immediately hooked, and devoured it in a three-day binge of more-or-less nonstop reading.
Accidental Community
I’ve just returned from the first meeting of the Accidental Community project. There was a photo slideshow by local artist John Kozachenko, a very brief overview of the history of gay men’s communities in the West End, Q & A and interactive discussion, and a look at future directions for the project.
He Had A Dream
Would you believe I’d never listened to the entire speech before last night?
Happy belated Martin Luther King, Jr. Day from a non-American!
That Sweet Silver Age Goodness
I recently bought Showcase Presents: Justice League of America, reprinting the first 20 adventures of the JLA, from 1960 to 1962. I already had a reprint of The Brave & the Bold #28 (the JLA’s very first adventure together) from a few years back, as well as a few other reprints from that era, and I decided it was time to expand my collection a bit.
