Tag Archives: Boys

Scorsese, Pio and making THE CIAMBRA

In the second part of our interview writer/director Jonas Carpignano talks about working with Scorsese, his young lead Pio Amato and the perils of shooting in The Ciambra.

A Ciambra clearly delineates the various tribes in Rosarno – the Italians, Romani and Africans – and shows how only Pio can move freely between them, which makes Pio’s relationship with Ayiva one of the hopeful elements in the film.

I fundamentally believe that besides the coercive political, economic and national structures, exposure to “foreign elements,” whether they be people, food, or music is the only way to dissolve the artificial boundaries between us. To me, Pio can move freely through the complex layers of his world because none of them are truly foreign to him. He has grown up in a Calabria that has now Africans, Bulgarians, Romanians, and so on. For him they are part of the social fabric of his world. That was not the case for the previous generation.

The same is true for Marta in Mediterranea. She doesn’t see Ayiva as an invader. For her, Ayiva is a worker like so many others. She didn’t know what Calabria was like before the arrival of the Africans. Both Pio and Marta see Ayiva as Ayiva. And while both films are realistic about the limits of this relationship, I think they both depict a path forward towards a more “integrated” Calabria.

Pio’s grandfather represents a way of life that has disappeared. There is a wonderful moment in the film in which Pio has a vision of his grandfather, what was the inspiration for this?

History has a certain weight. We like to contextualize ourselves and to feel that we are part of something larger than ourselves, that we have roots and that we are the continuation of something that has come before us. This is true, to varying degrees, for all of us, but it is especially relevant in the Ciambra. Yet, if you really think about it, our connection with the past is more abstract that we would like to think. I mean, we cannot physically occupy the past, we can never experience it for ourselves. The past is something that is constantly reimagined, often to justify who we are or who we would like to be.

How did producer Martin Scorsese get involved?

RT Features and Sikelia have created a fund to support first and second films. The producers at RT saw Mediterranea, they liked it, and they brought it to Martin and his producing partner Emma Tillinger Koskoff, who were immediately supportive and enthusiastic about the project.

The nature of making films in Gioia Tauro is such that everything outside feels very, very abstract compared to what is happening on the ground. I spent the last year knowing that Martin Scorsese was a producer of the film but it didn’t really sink in until we got to the editing process. I was lucky to have his notes on several versions of the cut, and his thoughts surely made an impact on the film. On a larger level, not only his work is massively influential, but his approach to and respect for the medium is what I particularly value.

What was the process for creating the look of the film? What were some of the challenges in filming where you did?

While the building blocks were similar to the process for Mediterrana (and the shorts), the overall picture was very different and that came from the different perspective that the film inhabits. I always believe the film itself should feel like the main character. In that vein, Mediterranea feels very fragmented and closed in. The visual grammar is designed to mirror Ayiva’s perspective: he only has a fractured understanding of his surroundings and therefore the film only presents a fractured portrait of the place. In A Chjana, Pio’s grasp of his surroundings is more assured and, even though we used the same type of camera moves and editing style, the perspective is much larger, more comprehensive.

Shooting in the Ciambra was the challenge. It’s impossible to fully articulate what the Ciambra is like, but from the film I think you get an idea. It is a wild and unruly place where anything that can happen will happen, often ten or fifteen times over. Luckily we knew this before going in, so we gave ourself time. We ended up shooting for 91 days.

Can you talk about the music? As always the score and the pop songs are on.

I love pop music. I got this question a lot while I was on the road with Mediterranea, and I’ll say now what I said then: pop music is the common denominator. No matter what language you speak, no matter where you are from, when the beat drops on a song that everyone knows, everyone is suddenly on the same wavelength. Everyone is moving to the same rhythm and I find that to be a major icebreaker when venturing into less familiar territories.

The film ends with a boy becoming a man, but not without a cost. Do you consider it an optimistic ending?

Optimistic? In my own life I tend to be a very optimistic person, but I try not to think about my films in terms of optimism or pessimism. In the end the goal is to give the viewer my take on what life is like where I live, and to leave them to decide for themselves how they feel about it. While my films are not “objective,” they don’t have a specific agenda, they are not a rallying cry for any specific cause. They are primarily designed to be character explorations. They are about characters who find themselves in conflicting and contradictory situations, who must try to cope with those situations as best as they can.

While this film touches on race relations, poverty, stereotyping, crime, etc., it is ultimately about Pio, about who he is and who I see him becoming. In life, I am optimistic about Pio. I love him very, very much and I appreciate who he is now and who he will become. At the same time I realise that every place imposes certain structures that are often hard to shed when you live within them.

I think that if confronted with the choice he has to make in regard to Ayiva, Pio would do exactly what he did in the film. What happens is obviously very, very sad, but in the end I don’t think that the viewer will dislike him. Good people do bad things, and when our backs are against the wall we usually resort to tribalism and embrace the burden of identity, which is frequently the easy way out. People in the Ciambra have done all kinds of things that are viewed and judged as “bad,” but they are not bad people and I think this film is a testament to that.

So just like with the end of Mediterranea there are those who will view this ending optimistically and those who will view it pessimistically. In the end I think it’s important that, while Pio does what he does, we see how hard it is for him. It takes a toll on him, and ultimately if there is a path to some form of solidarity between the Africans and the Gypsies it will be through someone like Pio. You can be pessimistic about the social architecture imposed on Pio or you can be optimistic about seeing how he feels at home, and made to feel at home, in the African community. Nobody is perfect, and I am personally relieved to know that Pio Amato is out and about, doing his thing.

Find the first part of this interview on how Jonas met the Amato family on the Peccadillo Blog

REINVENTING MARVIN – The Origins

Though “Marvin” was inspired by “The End of Eddy” by Edouard Louis, your Marvin is not an adaptation of that book. Tell us how the film was born.

I felt a very strong connection to the hero of the book by Edouard Louis, and I almost immediately felt like I wanted to make his story my own. I wanted to invent a new destiny for him. Explore the way he had to reconstruct himself after such a difficult separation from that family, and that subculture of France, socially and culturally disinherited. Dream up the crucial influences of his teenage years. In short, adapt it so liberally that “Marvin” could no longer be considered an adaptation, though the book was powerful.

How do you explain the connection that you feel with this character?

I like the idea that powerful people can escape what they are born into, that nothing is ever predestined or doomed, and that it’s possible to transform obstacles into strengths. That is what has always guided me. How do we manage to do that? How do we succeed in transcending difficulties? Those are questions that I, as a completely self-made person, can identify with. Marvin’s journey fascinated me as much as Coco Chanel’s. She, too, was able to invent herself, though she came from an extremely disadvantaged background.

Marvin also has to deal with being different. Having nothing in common with his family or classmates, he is totally alone.

Yes. You’d think he came from another planet. He has the face of an angel, and it’s as if his beauty stimulates the cruelty of others. He is an object of sadistic treatment to his classmates and an object of shame to his family. But that grace, that expression of femininity he carries within him – which is the cause of all that violence – is precisely what will feed his creativity and allow him to find his own path.

Your characterization of the family is never insulting; it even lends them certain humanity.

I felt it was important not to disparage those characters and pin them down like butterfly specimens. It’s their subculture that gave them those often terrifying phrases they say. They do it almost despite themselves; they think from where they stand, with their close-minded languaging. My co-author Pierre Trividic and I didn’t want to judge them.

Despite his ideas, the father is almost touching.

He says “faggots are awful… it’s a disease.” He is obsessed with the norm, but you can tell he is not mean. He has never hit his children, which is already progress by comparison to the previous generation. He is never outright violent. He even makes an effort when he takes Marvin to the train station and gives him money to buy Coca-Cola. He tries to be interested, and that makes him moving because we know full well that he doesn’t care about theater. That’s somewhere else, in another world.

You make him, as well as the character of Marvin’s mother, truly poetic.

There is something theatrical about the father. He makes a show of who he is. He’s not a hick, as his daughter points out. Strangely enough, there is love in that family. It’s lively and complex. Marvin can feed off of that material.

Which feeds them in return?

Yes. In the end, the father manages to say the word “gay” and talk about homosexual marriage. He has opened a door.

The older brother ends up being the only one in the family who is unreachable.

That is also a possible truth of that subculture: the incredible violence that suddenly breaks out from nothing, from the fact that their little brother was hiding in the church to eat candy. Combined with alcohol and his vision of Marvin (a representation of homosexuality), it triggers in Gerald an irrepressible urge to bash. It’s a horrible scene. Dramatically, it was important for the parents to step in. But I wouldn’t say that Gerald is “unreachable.” None of their destinies are set in stone.

You have never delved into that community.

Not being from it myself, I did question my own legitimacy. But I brushed that away pretty quickly. You don’t have to be in it to talk about it. What is essential is to feel things. And I knew them, in a certain way, through one of my grandmothers, who ran a small business under very tough living conditions and who was culturally very close to the Bijou family –

anti-homo, anti-black, anti-everything. As a kid, that intellectual poverty struck me deeply. But she was also a generous woman with amazing humanity. I loved that grandma and got inspiration from her, of course. Just as I got inspiration from the families I met in the area around Epinal – people who are forgotten, living on the edge in incredible poverty and often very close to the Front National. I really settled into the region and stay put. That was the best way to understand it from the inside. Though I’m not obsessed by the documentary aspect, what I showed had to ring true.

Being DISCREET with director Travis Mathews

We caught up with director Travis Mathews to talk about the origins of DISCREET his chilling new thriller that is being distributed by Peccadillo.

What was the genesis of this project?

Late in the summer of 2015, I had just stepped away from a much-delayed project and needed to do something that felt urgent and unafraid.

I dropped into my surroundings and listened to what was going on around me. At the time, I was driving around central Texas in a borrowed van that was a radio/cassette situation, so I indulged in
talk radio. Having grown up in rural Ohio, I was familiar with the A.M. dial, but what I heard sounded noticeably different, like the drumbeat to war. There was an unhinged desperation in these
voices and the rumbling sounds of the “alt-right”.

If these conservative voices were to be believed, some justifiable violence against “outsiders” seemed imminent. White, rural America was prepared to make their country great again!

The zeitgeist was so thick with unease, I wanted to write something that embodied this kind of “nation on the edge” anxiety. I set out to write a story that explored the ways in which populist insecurities about losing power intersected with, and informed, individual views on masculinity and sexuality. Alex, the hero in the film, is a distillation of this caustic soup. He’s unwell, to put it mildly.

As Alex’s mental state came into focus, every creative and editorial choice was made to service his cinematic representation. For me, this is one of the most exciting parts of the process. As a character comes into view, especially one as complicated as Alex, there’s a real joy in discovering what visual or sound expressions would most represent him. It’s also a process that brings real cohesion to the filmmaking team because we start to share ownership of this vision.

How does this film comment on contemporary gay male sexuality?

In Texas towns, both big and small, I turned on gay hookup apps like Grindr and Hornet to see how 2015 was translating among locals. I expected to find closeted guys, but I wasn’t prepared for the degree of racism, internalized homophobia, and the general fear of being seen, that was rampant. What fascinated me most were the profiles labeled discreet, and the men hiding behind black boxes in lieu of faces or even anonymous torsos. Shame was feeding the darkness, amplifying mythologized ideas of what a real man should be. It was the same wholesome mythology being propagated by rural -assumed straight- white conservatives.

Many of these guys on the apps are no different than the men on conservative radio. They’re both terrified of being outed as a lesser version of this kind of a Marlboro man ideal. It’s fear of being emasculated. And as demographics shift, turning America more brown, more tolerant, more fluid and more urban, their entire way of life is felt as under attack. This is how I understand the right’s
perverse and draconian actions and also the black boxes men hide behind.

This film delves deeply into one man’s brutal psyche – what was your cinematic process to create and visualise his internal world?

I think in all my work I’ve put a premium on men who express vulnerabilities very candidly. I’ve
explored this with sex and intimacy, but also in terms of loneliness and isolation. In Discreet, these same themes are explored with Alex, while I’ve also tried to make him an amplified reflection of the zeitgeist. As we all know, it’s pretty damn dark out there. But to be honest, Alex initially entered my head much more innocently. I was at Barton Springs in Austin with one of my producers, just riffing off of each other in the water. It was a little like a Richard Linklater moment, which I think is hilarious, thinking back. Anyway, my producer tells me about this Texas guy who films construction sites, dump truck videos more specifically, and has millions of views. It’s just one camera set up, one shot, for hours. He has all sorts of videos that take distinct sounds and/or images and puts them on a multi-hour loop. An early favorite of mine is a looping 8-hour video of bacon frying. Something really clicked with that one, so I started imagining the kind of person who would think to film this. That’s where my exploration of Alex started, before I knew anything else about him. He could have had a quirky romantic comedy in front of him, but it didn’t turn out that way.

His videos were my first entry point, and where I let my mind wander. When it clicked that his videos were actually a strange attempt to find calm, control, and some sort of psychic peace, it started to make sense with the zeitgeist and his character started to emerge. All around us, there’s the sense that something bad is coming, it feels like dread, like the setup to a dystopian thriller or a horror movie. And it’s only gotten worse since I wrote the early drafts of Discreet. This kind of madness in the air had a real impact on the evolution and the final outcome of the film. Initially, the story was more overtly political, more linear and more violent. But as months passed between the summer of 2015 up to the weeks following the US presidential election, the story of Alex started to take on a more surreal and restrained kind of internal horror. He – like most of us – was trying to survive this onslaught of crazy the best he knew how.

Jonny Mars’ central performance as Alex anchors the film – what was your collaborative process like?

Jonny and I were introduced by the filmmaker, and mutual friend, Kat Kandler. She and Jonny had worked together on Kat’s great Hellion short, where Jonny plays an aging heavy-metal God trying to do right in the world. That was my introduction to Jonny Mars. And when I started to share the bigger ideas of who I thought Alex was, and could be, almost everyone suggested that I connect with him. We were in different cities at the time, so before meeting, we spent a lot of long phone calls just deep diving into politics. Jonny’s really smart, and fully committed to his strong moral compass. He’s also up to do virtually anything on film, if it’s a smart choice that’s right for the character. This was reassuring because I knew from the start that “Alex” would be in some fucked up situations and head spaces.

Jonny jumped into the pool and we became fast friends. We also shared the same sense of urgency about making a film that would speak to this moment. It quickly made sense to bring Jonny even closer, and to have his involvement as a producer. Jonny, myself, and Don Swaynos – our tireless lead producer – were at the center of constructing Alex all the way through, and despite the heavy nature of the film, we tempered it with a lot of playfulness. Both Don and Jonny wore a lot of hats. Jonny, in particular, was somehow able to deliver these gutting performances then switch on a dime with production notes for something unrelated, and happening on another day. I also think that because we were independent, we had the creative freedom to go bold, which is what was required for this story to work. It’s that kind of creative freedom that allows a cohesive team to purr.

What does your film say about technology as something that is alienating society?

There’s a lot of isolation and long-distance attempts at intimacy via strange uses of technology in the Discreet world. It’s almost like traditional coping methods and ideas of intimacy have been proven to be ineffective and Alex is trying out new ones with imperfect results. The connections in Discreet seem transactional, based on primal needs for survival. It’s as if simple desire has become
so scarce that it’s maybe not to be trusted. And you see how that tug of war over desire plays out in Alex’s head. He’s tortured by it and distrustful of it.

As a country, I see us increasingly moving in this protectionist direction, which drives personal isolation and nativist tendencies. There’s the sense that things aren’t good out there, so close the borders, close your doors and just sit with your phones. What’s real, who can you trust? A lot of rational minds feel like we’ve entered a new epoch, and it has the smell of 1984 or Brave New World. There’s so much free-floating anxiety in America right now, that many people’s impulse is to cave inward and to isolate. Alex is a manifestation of all this.

What are your cinematic / aesthetic influences for this film?

Early on we were quite attuned to the Travis Bickle Taxi Driver nature of Alex. I also took deep dives into psychological thrillers like Polanski’s apartment trilogy, and horror, e.g., The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. While I was writing, I binge-watched How to Make a Murderer. Many of my initial dream locations came from freeze frames in that series. The rural community it depicts has a perverse loyalty to maintaining power at any cost, even at the risk of destroying lives. It’s a theme echoed in Discreet.

Unrelated to movies, I was obsessed with the freeways in Texas. Beyond being synonymous with America, the Texas freeways (the interchanges especially) always seemed unnecessarily jumbo-sized. As someone who lives in San Francisco and hasn’t owned a car in almost 20 years, I’m sure it was amplified for me, but it all seemed a little ridiculous. Because Alex is a drifter who lives out of his van, always on the road, it made sense to pay more attention to the freeways in the film’s world. Here are these man-made monsters, an expression of Texas muscularity, that Alex can’t get away from. In almost every location in the film, the freeways are always looming or threatening to strangle.

DISCREET can be seen as both a timely and timeless statement not only one man’s violent internal struggle, but an allegory on social strife in America and even the world. What are your thoughts on this viewing of your film?

By now, we all know that there are populist movements happening around the world, especially in Europe. Right wing nationalists are securing power with the rabid support of voters who feel pushed out by globalization. And this is so often done by appealing to people’s base desire for scapegoats, simple, answers, and fairytales about reverting back to a “more pure” time. From Texas to France, these are mythologies about national muscularity, brute masculinity that doesn’t
answer to anyone.

So, despite the film’s focused critique of America, with few changes Alex could be a Frenchman or an Englishman struggling with the same issues. These “patriarchy on the run” mythologies are not the exclusive domain of America.

Travis Mathews

All about “Buddy”, in Boys on Film 18: Heroes.

A reunion with your ex-lover can be an emotional experience. An odd mix of contradictions. Intimacy and detachment. Awkwardness and familiarity. These casual meetings can have a tremendous impact on our lives. Especially if one still has feelings for the other. Something most of us can relate to. Therefore, it was very important to me that ‘Buddy’ would feel genuine and true.

In my quest to give the short film a sense of realism and believability I gave my actors tremendous freedom to move and improvise. In collaboration with my director of photography we created a shooting style that enabled our actors to move and act freely. The film was shot on location at a real STI clinic.

‘Buddy’ is based on an autobiographical event. What fascinated me about the story, is the inability of the main characters to communicate, despite sitting directly next to each other. The location of this reunion is the waiting room of an STI clinic. Probably one of the most uncomfortable places to be sitting with your ex. Surrounded by nervous pacers bracing for bad news. An atmosphere of tension and tediousness.

Seeing his ex boyfriend in such a vulnerable position, our main character cannot deny his feelings anymore. By being part of this very intimate moment, he feels there might still be hope for the two of them getting back together. There is something beautiful about losing the reality of the situation in favor of the possibility of love. Most of us have been there, I think.

‘Buddy’ is about accepting the truth, no matter how hurtful it may be. And about letting go the one you love.

Niels Bourgonje Director

Boys on Film 18: Heroes is released on 30/04/2018 and you can order your copy here

It’s All About Frankie from BEACH RATS

Director Eliza Hittman and star Harris Dickinson discuss the character of Frankie in BEACH RATS.

Frankie doesn’t really know where he’s headed or what he wants, but he does know what kind of behavior is off-limits in the heteronormative culture he’s grown up in. The web is his only real outlet to explore his attraction to other men. As Hittman describes it, “Frankie’s testing the waters. He’s thinking of the internet as being his channel to a world that might exist a few subways stops away, one that is more adventurous and progressive.” After his father’s passing, Frankie takes the next step and begins hooking up with some of the men he meets online.

Meanwhile, Frankie’s relationship with Simone progresses in fits and starts. Simone, who is also 19, is cut from different cloth than Frankie’s regular companions, Alexie, Frankie and Nick. She has a regular job and is conscientious about her responsibilities. She perceives and empathizes with Frankie’s emotional pain and is willing to forgive his faults, up to a point. “Simone is more aspirational than the men in film; she has a sense of purpose,” says Hittman. “She might want to make it work with Frankie, but in the end she’s capable of letting it go.”

Hittman didn’t write BEACH RATS as a coming-out narrative or a story about someone coming to terms with their sexuality. “Frankie’s an inarticulate 19-year-old who is slowly coming to consciousness about who he is,” she remarks. “For me, what was at the crux of the character was that he kind of knows but doesn’t know. He’s clinging onto his indecision; His answer for everything is ‘I don’t know.’ I think that’s very typical for a guy that age who is kind of incapable of saying anything about how he’s feeling.”

In trying to navigate his competing desires, Frankie makes decisions that lead to unintended and ultimately terrible consequences. Hittman was careful to show that when violence does erupt, it is spontaneous, a long-brewing fury that has found its escape valve.

Hittman spent approximately two years developing and writing the screenplay for BEACH RATS after receiving a fellowship from the nonprofit film foundation Cinereach (BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD, TEENAGE, SALERO), which had previously helped support the distribution of IT FELT LIKE LOVE. To the production executives at Cinereach, Hittman’s screenplay affirmed the promise shown by IT FELT LIKE LOVE and they decided to take on the project as a Cinereach original production. Says production head Andrew Goldman, “Eliza is a bold and insightful filmmaker. She has a unique ability to create a cinematic world wrought with complexities and nuances that few storytellers can capture on film. BEACH RATS is a big leap forward for her and we’re so thrilled to be part of her continued growth and success.”

Brad Becker-Parton and Drew Houpt joined Cinereach’s Goldman and Paul Mezey to produce BEACH RATS and began the casting process in the spring of 2016. The role of Frankie was not an easy one to cast, given the film’s psychological subtlety, sexual candor and frontal nudity. The production found its Frankie in a young English actor, Harris Dickinson, who makes his feature debut in BEACH RATS.

Dickinson says his interest in BEACH RATS was piqued by the email from his representatives in Los Angeles. “They said that screenplay was a bit rough-and-tumble and I might not like it. Those are usually the scripts that I want to read, because they’re unconventional,” he laughs. “I started reading and I loved it straightaway. I felt the tone of it, I felt the pace. The character jumped off the page for me — I was feeling it and reading as Frankie. It’s rare when something like that happens and it makes you really enthusiastic about the project. You want to be that character and you want to tell that story.”

He appreciated the observational nature of the script. “It’s not a typical problem-and resolution narrative. It’s an honest and raw look at a period in someone’s life,” the actor remarks. “We start the film and we’re introduced to the fact that Frankie’s father has cancer. It’s a time for Frankie where nothing is secure, nothing is solid in his own head. His father dying is a weird thing for him. He doesn’t really show much emotion in the script or in the film, he doesn’t react to it in the traditional way. A lot of the time, someone is a closed book and there are these brief moments where the book opens for a slight second and you see the underlying sadness, the underlying hate and fear and insecurity.”

Dickinson wasted no time making an audition tape, which made a powerful impression on Hittman. “The first thing that stood out to me was his very deep voice. But then he had this sort of gangly, teenager body and very intriguing eyes,” she recalls. “Harris’ acting was very subtle and didn’t telegraph anything that was internal. He didn’t transform, he didn’t take it to melodrama. He had a natural sense of rhythm and understanding of the dialogue. It was clear that he was a leading man and that he could carry the weight of the film on his shoulders.”

Dickinson’s upbringing in suburban London gave him a certain insight into the environment he would inhabit as Frankie. Says Hittman, “Harris is from the outer edges of London, which is not that different from the outer edges of Brooklyn and Queens and there are a lot of similar class issues. He understood the world perfectly. It was like he knew these guys without ever having been to New York,” she comments. She also felt affinity for his approach to acting. “Harris is very intuitive. He doesn’t want to talk in depth about the character. He wants to focus more on the behavior. He understands that acting is an act of doing. He’s a very serious and thoughtful young actor, very mature and focused.”

Read about the origins of BEACH RATS here.

BEACH RATS – The Origin

Writer / Director Eliza Hittman talks about the original ideas behind her award winning film BEACH RATS.

BEACH RATS

When Eliza Hittman’s debut feature, IT FELT LIKE LOVE, premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, it was hailed as a refreshingly unsentimental, original and visually poetic portrait of a teenage girl’s sexual coming-of-age. Hittman was lauded as a filmmaker to watch, and the accolades continued as IT FELT LIKE LOVE played additional festivals and went into theatrical release in 2014. Richard Brody of The New Yorker named it one of the 20 best films of 2014 and wrote “Even as the movie delves deep into the characters’ complex emotional lives, it subtly and gradually—yet ineluctably—conjures a world that I was sorry to leave. I didn’t want the movie to end.”

Hittman knew she would be expected to tell another female-centered story with her second feature, but she wanted to challenge industry assumptions and herself as a filmmaker. She wanted to continue to plumb the outer and inner lives of young people, but chose a different focus. “I grew up in a family where all conversations around sexuality were taboo. I watched someone be brutalized because of their sexuality, but I’ve been barred from writing about my family specifically. My firsthand experiences with homophobia haunt my youth and inspired me to tell a story about a character wrestling with sexuality. I wanted to take on something that was very masculine, and explore the intense pressures on young men to live traditionally masculine lives in an environment with no clear alternative, role model or way out.” BEACH RATS began production on July 25, 2016, and shot for 25 days in different parts of Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island.

In considering a setting for the story, she was drawn back to the South Brooklyn working-class neighborhoods of IT FELT LIKE LOVE. A native of Flatbush, Brooklyn, Hittman came to know the borough’s coastal communities through high school friends who lived in places like Manhattan Beach. “I’ve always been a little bit fascinated with those neighborhoods and I’d spend a lot of the summer just flopping around those beaches,” she says. “It’s a part of Brooklyn that feels caught between past and present. Those areas have a history of violence of all kinds–crimes against people of color and gay men, and organized crime–and, unlike other parts of the City, change has come very slowly.

Harris Dickinson plays Frankie in BEACH RATS

Her image of the main character in BEACH RATS came from a Facebook image she’d found while researching wardrobe and set design for IT FELT LIKE LOVE. “It was a guy standing at a mirror holding his phone, with a big flash from the camera,” she says. “He had his shirt off and this hat on, and the visor was sort of masking his eyes. It looked like he was about to pull down his gym shorts and take a picture of his dick. There was this tension between hyper-masculine and homoerotic that the picture so clearly illustrated.”

At the same time, Hittman also became interested in Internet-related violence in the LGBTQ community, violence that has had a significant presence in these outer reaches of the City as a microcosm of events that happen throughout the world. The horrifying nature and similarities within stories where dating sites are used to lure people into sexual encounters that end with robbery, beatings, and even death. Hittman says “it’s a very dark subject, one that I know will have a divergent response as it’s a difficult topic that continually recurs.”

From there, Hittman started building out the world of Frankie, a 19-year-old facing an aimless summer at an uncertain moment in his life. His father is in the last stages of cancer, dying in hospice care in the family living room. Frankie spends his days killing time, getting high and hanging out with three delinquent fellow beach rats. At home, he squirrels himself away in the basement, where he can flirt with older men online without anyone knowing. But when a self-assured, sexy local girl named Simone makes a play for him on a Friday night at Luna Park, he awkwardly goes along with it.

Eliza Hittman writer / director of BEACH RATS

Revealing the BODY ELECTRIC

Director Marcelo Caetano

BODY ELECTRIC is a boudoir film. With each bed Elias lies in, a new universe opens from the narratives told by the characters. Bodies embracing and caressing each other, voices that speak softly and quietly, lovers who tell of their encounters, sexual adventures and dreams. My desire was to address love as something serial and repetitive, portraying a kind of affection that distances itself from romantic love and its already soiled conflicts.

Elias loves in a lightly, solar and anarchic way. He is 23 years old, openly gay, a migrant from north-eastern Brazil. He uses each encounter to shape his personality by becoming a kind of human prism, capturing what he can from his partners. He changes his colour, and transitions between the masculine and the feminine. He can be a committed worker, but also a mocking anarchist. In this way, the film questions the socially established places for gay people, black people, immigrants, and workers. My aim is always to seek the individual, avoiding the discourse of identity that tries to capture and classify everybody.

BODY ELECTRIC is also a Bildungsroman. Elias comes into adulthood with great difficulty while trying to balance his personal pleasure with professional life. He is resistant to some conflicts simply because he does not believe in the high value that professional success and marital happiness have in our society. For him it is necessary to grow on his journey. I love filming these encounters and I love them more, the more unlikely they are. Perhaps the film’s most prominent political face is resisting intolerance by building links between socially distant people.

The film is influenced by Walt Whitman’s poem I SING THE BODY ELECTRIC in which the American author celebrates the beauty of bodies, regardless of age, gender, colour and form. I was also very touched by cinema of the 60’s and 70’s, especially the relation between word and image that I found in the poetic cinema of Pasolini and Joaquim Pedro de Andrade. The choice of words and the strength of the narration are structural to me. This is how I found the way to speak of these bodies, this group of workers, and Elias is my spokesman: Like Scheherazade in ONE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS, he recounts his adventures as if he wanted, by the seduction of the story, to postpone the end of his youth.

Marcelo Caetano

What are little boys made of..?

If you’re blind to what is different, this story is not for you. But if your eyes are open, you should listen carefully

Every so often a film comes along where it is incredibly difficult to find the right tone. With GIRLS LOST we have been through countless design concepts and have really discussed, argued and fought over how it should look, how the synopsis should read, how to present this to the audience and even who that audience should be.

We’ve never had it like this on a single title before. But I have to say that after months of changing minds, designs and words we’ve finally cracked it, literally the day of release!

It’s an amazing film, in fact one for all the family! Read more below…

Kim (as a girl) and Momo (as a girl) from GIRLS LOST

Kim (as a boy) and love interest Tony from GIRLS LOST

“Girls Lost is maturely executed, offering a discussion that presents us with ideas that cannot be considered in haste, the post-contemplation of the film necessary.” HeyUGuys

Here’s the synopsis follow link

You can find out where and how to watch GIRLS LOST : http://www.girlslostfilm.com/

Regarding Abandoned Sites and Sexual Discovery

Abandoned sites usually cause curiosity for exploration and adventure. There’s a sense of excitement when we are surrounded by uncertainty and a thirst for danger. These sites also allow for a chance to remove oneself from everyday life and have a moment of self-reflection. From a young age, while exploring my sexuality, I can recall finding hidden spaces and out of the way locations with boyfriends in which, for a brief moment, no one could tell me what to do or who to love, where we could escape society and just be together. We construct these sites for satisfying our sexual pleasures and urges, they’re made into cruising grounds, runaway spots or sites to release our destructive nature. There’s a bridge between desire and death and these will be further explored in the following 5 shorts.

With the release of our DVD of BOYS ON FILM 13: TRICK & TREAT, I look back at some of our memorable shorts from the BOYS ON FILM collections that examine these discarded spaces as sites for escapism and sexual-discovery.

Remission – Dir. Christopher Brown (Boys on Film 13)

In our latest BOYS ON FILM release, we take a look at two young men and a boy who roam the overgrown English countryside over the space of 2 years, in an attempt to escape an unknown deadly virus. The two men are forced to take a horrific decision after the boy’s behavior puts them in increasing danger. These dangers become apparent in the unknown territories these boys are positioned in, the uncertainty of what’s to come and the boy’s display of unusual behaviors which, eventually, become life threatening. Exploring abandoned houses in search for safety and supplies, there is a moment in the film in which the two young men engage in sex, possibly to relieve frustrations or, perhaps, out of love.

REMISSION is a terrifying short about survival in the unknown and the consequences of trust as a tool for life and death, the last five minutes of the film will no doubt leave you speechless.

Boys Village – Dir. Till Kleinert (Boys on Film X)

Set in St. Athan Boys Village in South Wales, a holiday camp opened in 1925 as a summer camp for the sons from families in the South Wales coalfield.

The film focuses on a young boy and his imagination – at first we’re unsure of why Kevin roams the abandoned camp while talking to his friends made of twigs and rubbish. Is he in the process of exploring? Escaping? He has been eleven years old for quite some time now. Has it been years or decades? Shattered glass and debris lay scattered all over and the countless trap falls and opportunities for injury become a haven for young boys and exploration. After witnessing a group of vandals who visit the site in a destructive manner, Kevin’s sexual curiosity is awakened when he sees a particular attractive teen.

Prora – Dir. Stéphane Riethauser (Boys on Film 9)

Prora is a good example of abandoned sites as a stimulant for sexual discovery in moments of excitement and danger. Two teenagers, Jan and Matthieu, embark on an adventure in the deserted former Nazi holiday camp and communist military complex in Germany. Whilst exploring their surroundings they put their friendship at risk. Running through the corridors in a destructive manner, smashing windows and playing rough. The two boys, high on adrenaline, end up confronting their feelings in a moment of sexual realization. The two teens end up making love across the scattered glass on the complex floors. Away from the world and positioned in an empty complex all to themselves, this triggering of emotional discovery is further heightened.

The Strange Ones – Dir. Christopher Radcliff & Lauren Wolkstein (Boys on Film 7)

An unknown destination, a man and a boy travel in search for the unknown. Finding respite in what seems to be an abandoned motel swimming pool, the two travelers are confronted by the motel owner where truth and lies become one blurring situation. On the surface all seems normal, but as the owner asks more questions, nothing is what it seems to be.

Bramadero – Dir. Julián Hernández (Boys on Film 2)

Bramadero: A place where deer and other wild animals in heat prefer to go.

Our final short explores our animalistic nature. Hassen and Jonás find a spot on the outskirts of Mexico City where they seduce one another in a merging of body and mind. The construction site holds as a playground for desire: the positioning of a mattress in the middle of the floor becomes an immediate invitation for sexual discovery. The industrial steel scaffolding acts as barriers between the two men, yet as they move in between the structures a divergence between their raw naked bodies and the man-made barriers is constructed. The uncertainty of the dangers of abandoned construction sites ultimately lead to death, as Bramadero is described as a pole animals are tied to in order to tame them or kill them.

by Serden Salih

Coming-of-Age! Peccadillo’s Top-10

Now – I’m not in any way claiming this is the top-10 coming-of-age movie listicle. Such a thing could never be written, this is a contentious (and probably slightly annoying) list of the Peccadillo office’s favourite coming-of-age movies.

Two films, however, have been excluded. The first is ‘Boyhood’, a film which both inhabits, examines and exults its genre, and is so ‘coming-of-age’ it would just occupy a place on this list which – although it more than deserves – could go to a smaller film which needs some love and care. The second that’s missing is our new DVD and Blu-ray release ‘THE WAY HE LOOKS’, an ‘impossibly charming’ (DAZED AND CONFUSED) love story about a blind teenager looking for his first kiss, and is the film which inspired us to write this list. So – let’s go:

1. Stand By Me (1986)

Obviously. This was Rob’s choice. Rob is generally a great source of wisdom on everything from Japan to sausage rolls, and so we trust him on this one. Anyone who’s seen the film will never forget the scene where one of the boys gets a leech stuck to his balls, nor the classic, wonderful, timeless theme song which you already have stuck in your head. Mehehe.

2. The Lion King (1994)

“Remember me, Simba!” Is this a coming-of-age film or a brilliant re-hashing of Shakespeare’s Hamlet? It’s both, and so much more. Everyone on earth loves this movie and I personally think it’s a fantastic choice from Jude – our graphic designer – as a coming-of-age movie. Jude says it’s the movie that everyone can relate to, and who can’t relate to being raised by a warthog and a lemur in rural Africa?

3. Heavenly Creatures (1994)

This is an odd coming-of-age movie. Not because it’s directed by LORD OF THE RINGS behemoth Peter Jackson, nor because the two protagonists live in an intense fantasy realm inside their own heads, or because it’s got Kate Winslet or that one off-of Two and a Half Men in it. Heavenly Creatures is odd because it’s about women. Sadly, most ‘coming-of-age’ movies are told, unapologetically, from a male perspective, but this one spectacularly and triumphantly bucks the trend.

4. American Beauty (1999)

Olivier went with American Beauty. It’s weird, subversive, funny, dangerous, with one of the most memorable dream sequences in cinema history. It’s coming-of-age but not how you know it, as Kevin Spacey’s character, stuck in arrested development, seemingly comes of age at the same time as his teenage daughter, and dismantles his life – and the American dream – in the process.

5. Submarine (2010)

Really randomly directed by the squeaky one from The IT Crowd, this movie is my choice. It’s funny and weird, and set in ugly, lovely Wales (my homeland). I’ve always thought South Wales is cinematic in its own, clunky way, and this film definitely gave it the camera angles and colour-grading it deserved. A real gem, plus my nan auditioned for the role of ‘Dinner Lady 3’.

6. North Sea Texas (2011)

Although it might sound like an epic American oil-guns-and-corruption drama, this is in fact a ‘delicate little heart-warmer of a film’ (The Express) about two teenage boys falling in love in northern Flanders, Belgium. Intimate and tender, this is coming-of-age at its most raw and, with the protagonists being 14, youngest. A very brave film made by Bavo Defurne, a very brave filmmaker.

7. XXY (2007)

Brash, sugar-rush-inducing American coming-of-age movies are obsessed with gender, but for all the wrong, labell-y reasons. Lucia Puenzo’s 2007 feature, then, is a tonic drama about an intersex teenager’s turbulent relationship with her father and the teenage boys around her. A ‘wonderful’ film (The Guardian), XXY forces us to reconsider the binaries that so often restrict our films: a big, welcome middle-finger up to the genre.

8. An Education (2009)

“This was the first time I got to see Carey Mulligan’s face.” Ollie our head of press yet again cuts through anything superfluous and gets to the heart of what makes this film fantastic. Beautifully shot and fiercely intelligent, this film about a young girl applying to Oxford whilst incidentally falling in love with a much older man, was nominated for THREE Academy Awards (which I only found out in writing this article), including Best Picture and Best Actress.

9. The Last Picture Show (1971)

Effortlessly cool Nicky (in the production department) naturally chose this 1971 comedy about a small town in 50s Texas; starring a young (and staggeringly handsome) Jeff Bridges, as well as the beautiful Cybill Shepherd. A particularly apt choice from cineaste Nicky, the film laments the closure of the town’s last cinema; and therefore this movie is not only a classic of the genre but a poignant and important film about the close links between culture and economics.

10. Boys (2013)

Straightforward and sweet, BOYS is the coming-of-age genre distilled. A tale about two boys in an athletics club who initially resist their burgeoning feelings, but then, they kiss. This film is unadulterated understatement, and really captures the fact that, more often than not, the moments we ‘come-of-age’ are not momentous, tectonic events, but rather fleeting moments that last for mere seconds.

11. Bonus Film: The Leather Boys (1964)

Tom asked me to add this in at the last minute as a very special entry, and, after reading about it, I think it should actually be at the top of the list. I’ve not seen it – but it sounds incredible: a 60s, British-made movie about a biker gang, with Americana sweeping in, and featuring one of mainstream cinemas first openly gay characters! Do as I did (and, as always, as I say) and click the image to buy a DVD and watch ASAP!

As I said, this is not an exhaustive list. If anything this post has probably angered you because we’ve left off you’re favourite coming-of-age film, if, indeed, you think it even counts as a genre (lots don’t.) Let us know on Twitter or Facebook exactly where we’ve gone wrong. Film arguments are fun.

If you’re blind to what is different, this story is not for you. But if your eyes are open, you should listen carefully

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