we're here, we're queer and we're making movies
Tuesday, October 22, 2002
With the Bangkok Gay Film Festival in full swing, the Bangkok Post's Outlook piece on 19 October focused on the new crop of "queer" (their quotes) films currently in production and wondered if this was just another fad or was a sign of greater acceptance of gays in Thailand.
The answer seemed to be the latter, or at least an attempt to engender the latter by portraying a variety of gay characters "in a more positive, understanding manner - in a more humanistic way" rather than just presenting the more stereotypical type of high camp comic characters all too often seen in TV shows and other movies.
Two of the movies focus on well-known local sport stars - Satree Lek 2 (Iron Ladies 2) about a katoey volleyball team, and Beautiful Boxer about kickboxer Parinya Charoenphol, or Nong Toom, who used his boxing prizemoney to pay for a sex change operation for himself. The other two movies - Prang Chompoo (Saving Private Tootsie) and Wai Boom Cheer Krahuem Lok - also feature katoey leads, leaving one to wonder what is really meant by a "variety" of gay characters, but that is a superficial impression only, the movies and characters are quite diverse and explore a number of different social issues.
The full Outlook article is on the Bangkok Post web site (though articles get moved or archived after a time), and for details of the Bangkok Gay Film Festival see the Bangkok Pride web site.
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