Đẫm Queer | Queer Lust! 2019
Dirty Looks, Echo Park Film Center and Queer Forever! invite you to Đẫm Queer | Queer Lust! curated by Nguyễn Quốc Thành, a raunchy shorts program by Vietnamese and Vietnamese American filmmakers that takes queer sex quite seriously.
Đẫm means: full of, but has a thoroughly wet and "soft", feeling, soaking up in liquid, like đẫm tears or blood.
In the past few years, two LGBT documentaries took Vietnamese multiplexes by storm, a sign that audiences are open to watching films about LGBT life and its struggles. But what about the films that are defiantly queer: experimental, bizarre, silly or kinky? Who will watch that sort of cinema? The gays and lesbians? The sex addicts or the cinephiles? Ironically, when Đẫm Queer | Queer Lust! was first screened in Hanoi, the house was packed with young queers but the LGBT activists were absent.
These six films explore queer sexual pleasure and celebrate sex magick: Vietnamese-Americans Vu T. Thu Ha and Nguyen Tan Hoang clearly have fun turning the camera on themselves or their milieu, while simultaneously taking aim at race and sex wars. In the case of the Vietnamese filmmakers, dealing with the taboo of queer sex seems to spark experimentation: Truong Minh Quy’s “The Sublime of Rectum” is composed of one, long hard take, while Chu Tran Minh Duc’s “The Lover” is based on still images. Viet Vu’s “The Ant-man” explores longing and what lies behind physiological needs.
Program:
Trương Minh Quý, The Sublime of Rectum, video, 14:29min., 2017
Việt Vũ, The Ant-man, video, 26min., 2018
Chu Trần Minh Đức, The Lover, video, 12min., 2012
Nguyen Tan Hoang, look_am_azn, video, 5:36min., 2012
Nguyen Tan Hoang, Forever Bottom!, video, 3:52min., 1999
Vu T. Thu Ha, Shut Up White Boy, video, 13:34min., 2002
Thanh is a co-founding member of Nha San Collective and has been organizing the Queer Forever! arts festival in Hanoi since 2013.
We are also screening films from Nhà Sàn Collective during the A Right to Defiance, organized by Jasmine Nyende on Saturday June 15th.
Thành and I talked about this project in the Journal Of Vietnamese Studies , Vol. 15 No. 1, Winter 2020.
