desires
2015 · 32 min
Two stories expose the ways in which medicine, law and religion shape discourses of the gendered body: Martina’s, who lived in Colombia in the 19th century and was prosecuted for being a hermaphrodite, and Nour’s, who lived in Beirut during the Ottoman Empire and was forced to marry to her female lover’s brother.
Directed by Carlos Motta · Written by Carlos Motta
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A close match in mood and era.
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The Devil's Work · 2018The Devil's Work
2018
Movie
A historical documentary and filmic poem that interprets the story of José Francisco Pereira, an enslaved man who was tried by the Lisbon Inquisition for sorcery and sodomy. An adaptation of Pereira’s trial is interwoven with passages from Saint Peter Damian’s passionate 11th-century condemnation of sodomy as an unrepeatable sin in Letter 31 (also known as The Book of Gomorrah), and Walter Benjamin’s iconic elucidations on historicism and progress in Theses on the Philosophy of History. The film revisits the morally and legally charged figure of the sodomite as a violent historical construction and expression of ecclesiastical, institutional, and colonial patriarchy.
Mourning Stage · 2022Mourning Stage
2022
Movie
A series of drawings are used as a score for ating. These images portrait different representations of the devil in hell. Among these devils, there are feminized characteres suggesting sexual perversions typified in the Catholic imagination. Performer Paeatau interprets and reacts to these drawings using her body and her facial expressions in a ritualistic performance in which the body, fetichized and colonized by morale, laments.
Shipwreck · 2013Shipwreck
2013
MovieDocumentary
A fictional adaptation by Carlos Motta of "Misadventures of a Sodomite Exiled in 17th Century Bahia," a text by Brazilian anthropologist, historian and gay rights activist Luiz Mott that documents the unfortunate story of a Portuguese man called Luiz Delgado, whose life was defined by innumerable confrontations with the inquisitorial system. Delgado was a known sodomite who persistently defied the social and religious values of the epoch through engaging in romantic and sexual homoerotic relationships. He was first exiled to Brazil where he continued to disobey the strict social values and norms of colonial societies and later sent back to Lisbon where he was tried and ultimately condemned to permanent exile in Angola, after being tortured and publicly humiliated.
The Vision of the Defeated · 2013The Vision of the Defeated
2013
MovieDocumentary
In The Vision The Defeated an indigenous slave, who is guiding a group of Spanish conquerors up the jungle, describes the moment in which an army commander witnesses a collective homoerotic ritual, angrily condemns the act as "abominable and unnatural," and orders the immediate execution of the men. Shot in the Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta, Colombia, The vision of the defeated is based on an undocumented chronicle selectively passed on from generation to generation by oral transmission.
A New Discovery: Queer Immigration in Perspective · 2011A New Discovery: Queer Immigration in Perspective
2011
Movie
Throughout the narrative, viewers are presented with the political struggles of the queer and immigrant population from an intersectional perspective, showing how they relate to each other in the public sphere by confronting, challenging and transforming the state mechanisms that control borders and bodies in the United States, from a more inclusive perspective. Interwoven with this narrative is A Timeline of Queer Migrations (fanzine published on the occasion of the event, tracing a history of queer migration from the "discovery" of America to the present day), which offers a perspective on key events in the history of queer migration, with a focus on legal and cultural aspects in the United States.
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