by Margherita Fontana
Guilty Pleasures, which by now is a recurring event at our August festival, tries to explore the complex theme of pleasure in an ironical, sensitive and radical way. The selected films give eccentric and unconventional insights into vulnerable and subversive sexualities, as well as into the complexity of human relationships in an era marked by hyper-consumerism and a paradoxical sexophobia.
In the video-essay A Brighter Summer Day for the Lady Avengers, Birdy Wei-Ting Hung revisits the Taiwanese cinematography through b-movies: this time, though, the male gaze focused on provocative heroines is turned over by the young female viewer. Les filles c’est fait pour faire l’amour, with the French trio Paturle, Rousset e Drouet, is an animated documentary that investigates female sexuality in straight couples, torn between frustration and desire. With Bull’s Heart, Margarita Bagdasaryan’s debut, tenderness and incommunicability are intertwined in a complex father-son relationship. Homunculus, by Bonheur Suprême, transports us to a surreal journey among the bodies and the fluid, and racialized , identities of the online French gay community. Naomi Pacifique comes back to Concorto with Looking she said I forget, a poetic story about the fragmentation of affective ties in the era of polyamory. Finally, the animation Carrotica by Daniel Sterlin-Altman narrates with irony births and rebirths of desire, from youth to adulthood.
A Brighter Summer Day for the Lady Avengers by Birdy Wei-Ting Hung, Taiwan, 2024, 11′
Bull’s Heart by Margarita Bagdasaryan, Uzbekistan, 2024, 15′
Carrotica by Daniel Sterlin-Altman, Germany, 2024, 13′
Les filles c’est fait pour faire l’amour (Girls Are Made to Make Love) by Jeanne Paturle, Cécile Rousset, Jeanne Drouet, France, 2024, 15′
Homunculus by Bonheur Suprême, France, 2024, 17′
looking she said I forget by Naomi Pacifique, Netherlands/Switzerland, 2024, 25′