THE SIGN FOR LOVE (OmeU)

No More “I Love You’s”

This year, we grew into our 14th edition with 16 feature films and 8 short film programs. We’re proud to expand, not for the sake of expansion but to reflect the varieties of queer stories, communities and characters that are out there. The classic love story is entirely absent in this program, but love is not.

XPOSED has always been about more than the representation of LGBTQI on screen. We love a queer cinema that allows for wildness, for failure, for withdrawal. A queer cinema that refuses the logics of assimilation. Our characters are outcasts, living on the fringes of society. Our directors question the state of the world through the art of montage. Hetero/cis-normativity is observed in everyday life and queered in the archive. Norms take their toll on all of us. Family is central to this, and here, our films open up complexities. Children struggle, but so do their parents, caught in precarious and repressive circumstances. And then, when the subconscious collides with fantasy, new worlds emerge.

With a strong visual language, experimental filmmaking unfolds the loss, love and craziness of our times. Barbara Hammer (1939-2019), whose life and work we celebrate in our program, had mastered this skill beautifully. We love her, and all the other filmmakers that unveil their hearts and minds.

Zum Film:
El-Ad and Yaeli want to be parents. Co-parents to be precise.
When El-Ad was small, his mother told him: “Raising you is like raising three kids.” Ever since that moment, he felt guilty for being deaf, and tried extra hard to be like everyone else. He became even more alienated after the death of his mother and the breakdown of his family. Fearing he won’t find a partner in their small deaf community, Cohen and his best friend Yaeli, who is also deaf, decide to have a baby – a hearing infant.

Hetero normative constructs just fall in love and produce children. In queer contextes one has to think of all possibilities, all conflicts and all legal and social problems beforehand. The problems and the possibilities El-Ad and Yaeli are facing in their journey through becoming parents are both empowering and eye opening. They raise the baby together, revealing the challenges of parenting and the ways that a child can repair a family.

Regie:
El-Ad Cohen, Iris Ben Moshe 2017 Israel

Tickets:
9,00 € | erm. 8,00 €

Weitere Informationen unter:
www.xposedfilmfestival.com