Lionel Soukaz Day

‘Born in 1953, Lionel Soukaz was a confederate of those active in France’s gay-liberation movements, such as Guy Hocquenghem, who founded FHAR (Front Homosexuel d’Action Révolutionnaire) in 1971 and whose writings served as the foundational texts for queer theory. Soukaz and Hocquenghem teamed up to make Race d’Ep (1979), an experimental documentary charting a century’s worth of the representation of gay desire. The film’s title is French street-slang for “homosexual”; the term was bellowed at the offscreen narrator (presumably Soukaz) as he was “looking for a notorious urinal,” an anecdote recounted in Race d’Ep’s prologue. “The shout was less an insult than about my belonging to another history,” the chronicler declares. “This film wants to visualize that lost history.”

‘Race d’Ep searingly does just that in four densely collaged chapters, beginning with the first decade of the twentieth century, “the period of the pose.” For Soukaz and Hocquenghem, the era’s signal figure is the German photographer Wilhelm von Gloeden, best known for his studies of Sicilian ephebes. In this segment, actual von Gloeden photos are interspersed among fanciful re-creations of the artist’s studio and his models, the beautiful young men indulging in some XXX alfresco fun when not standing motionless in front of a camera. The ludic historical re-enactments continue in the chapter centered on Magnus Hirschfeld, the valiant Weimar-era physician and sexologist, before the film shifts to more autobiographical reflections. Of the 1960s, our narrator says, “The modern world was made for orgasms….For a young fag, those years were close to paradise,” his Arcadia illustrated by scenes of deep-throating and group love and scored to a symphony of California pop.

‘The utopian promise of those years, however, is thoroughly interrogated in the concluding episode, “1980,” structured around an encounter between a hard-left gay separatist played by Hocquenghem and a closeted American portrayed by Piotr Stanislas (a porn star in France). As the two men stroll along the banks of the Seine and walk through the Tuileries Garden and other Paris cruising grounds, we hear various offscreen voices, some excoriating homo-bourgeois complacency and assimilation (a formal strategy also deployed in German auteur Rosa von Praunheim’s It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse but the Society in Which He Lives, his incendiary Brechtian soap opera from 1971).

‘Like Soukaz’s earlier Le Sexe des Anges (1976), a salute to same-sex teenage desire replete with sixty-nining couples and jizz-covered bellies, Race d’Ep outraged French authorities, who censored it — a decision protested by Roland Barthes and Marguerite Duras, among many other intellectual grandees. Soukaz’s own response to the ban was the dizzying, inflamed IXE (1980), a double-screen eruption of even more provocative sights and sounds. There’s plenty of man-on-man action here, but also scenes of extreme despair: Comely, vacant-eyed guys tie off, shoot up, and nod out, their self-destruction augmented by footage of mushroom clouds and other apocalyptic scenarios. As aurally dense as its predecessors, IXE intermittently features the sound of maniacal laughter, a diabolical guffawing that may be the film’s most despondent element.

‘And yet throughout this angry, anguished project, the word “vivre” — to live — appears, an apt infinitive for a film that, however death-obsessed, also teems with a seething vitality. A similar kind of fervor is wonderfully captured in the short doc La Marche Gaie (1980), a fifteen-minute chronicle of the first National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights in 1979. English subtitles for La Marche Gaie weren’t available by press time, and my French is so pitiful that I could make out only fragments of the narration. The images, though, are indelible: Among the footage of the throngs of demonstrators proudly hoisting banners, Soukaz shows a beaming Hocquenghem (who would die of AIDS complications in 1988) meeting Kate Millett, author of the landmark 1971 feminist text Sexual Politics. Watching these revolutionaries shake hands, I thought only of the alliances that must be forged in the grim days ahead.’ — Melissa Anderson

 

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Stills

 

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Further

Lionel Soukaz @ IMDb
Lionel Soukaz works @ Dailymotion
Lionel Soukaz, le capteur amoureux.
Eros militant : le cinéma de Lionel Soukaz
Lionel Soukaz | Experimental Cinema Wiki
Lionel Soukaz page @ Facebook
Lionel Soukaz — Cinéma du Réel
Une lecture queer d’un film de Soukaz
Lionel Soukaz, une vitalité désespérée
Lionel Soukaz 100 polaroids
La personnification de tout ce qui m’attirait dans la vie: Luinel Soukaz on Pierre Clementi
«L’EXPÉRIMENTAL, C’EST UNE PRÉFÉRENCE, COMME LE SEXE»

 

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Extras

Autoportrait – Lionel Soukaz

Eros Militant: le cinema de Lionel Soukaz

Lionel Soukaz

Interview de Lionel Soukaz – 2002 – Zaléa TV

 

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Interview
from VICE (France)

Vice: Where did you start? Cinema or homosexuality?
Lionel Soukaz: The Movie! Homosexuality was not mentioned at the time. I was born in 1953 and homosexuality was considered a social scourge. In the schoolyards, everyone said “fucked, fucked” but it was a terrible unspoken. We never talked about it, even the parents. In short, we are in 1953, the year when Stalin died and the cinema … The cinema I always liked, because my mother took pictures and she organized slideshows on Sundays. It was annoying, but it was good. And I really started attending the cinematheque around 1967. Then 1968 falls on me, I am 15 years old and it is the great upheaval. Before, I was like my father, rather a Gaullist, but with all these events, I wanted to meet other boys.

It was the right time?
Not really. 1968, it’s very macho. The women cook while the men play Che Guevara, and the fags are very badly seen. Hocquenghem says in an interview with the Nouvel Observateur in 1971 he was forced to deny three times as Saint Peter, because if you were homosexual, you were shit. I remember communist lovers I had at the time; They spoke of it as a “bourgeois deviance” which had no future.

I heard that, too. I have the impression that everything blended naturally for you, cinema and sexuality.
Yes, because cinema is very related to sexuality. We go there with her friends, we masturbate watching movies not necessarily sexy, but hey. With the appearance of the erotic cinema, we have its first experiences, we are dragged by old gentlemen … There was an embarrassment because I knew that I was homosexual, but I later learned that my Hetero mates fucked together. But as for me it was important and much harder to admit, I fucked much less than them and I spent my time refusing everything.

You knew there was a homosexual cinema?
Of course, but there were not many movies at the time. In the Hollywood cinema, the homosexual was always the alcoholic, the impotent or both at the same time. In Suddenly Last Summer for example.

Is it to show the truth that you have gone to the realization?
Not at the beginning anyway. In my very first films in Super 8, I was playing straight. In Ballad for a single man, I film my boyfriend at the time and I try to be stripped, but in fact it is a film about ecology. When I do Chausey Paris in 1973, this is the great era of 8mm film, it stings the camera’s uncle, it facilitates all, and no one can censure. It was a feature film and I was still playing the hetero who asks questions. In the script I tried to imply the homosexuality of the character but I quickly gave up because when the actors learned that I was homo, they mocked me by playing the tarlouze on the phone. It was very difficult to manage.

What allowed you to tell people, then?
It was with the Homosexual Front of Revolutionary Action in 1971 that we were able to reveal a little. Before, there was a group called Arcadie, where we could dance on a Sunday afternoon if we had a tie and we did not kiss. But the FHAR has exploded everything. Intellectuals such as Daniel Guérin, Françoise d’Eaubonne and Hocquenghem who wrote at the time in all! Had drawn up the manifesto. As a result, young people came from all over France to kiss and finally live their homosexuality. In fact the Fine Arts, it was a big orgy.

You were at the Beaux-Arts?
No, I was 18, I was forbidden to stay in this world, the majority was at 21 years. I hid in the toilet. There were RGs everywhere and always had to hide.

Was the toilet a good plan?
Yes. The French policemen could have put cameras in the toilet to watch us. At the time, it cracked everywhere. Thanks to the feminist movement, because they were the first to claim sexuality, in relation to abortion, contraception, and so on. Besides, the FHAR was mixed at the start. Then it broke up. Like everything else. The women reproached the guys for thinking about the ass. It is true that it was the brothel. It is a movement that disappeared as quickly as it appeared.

Hocquenghem you met him how? It is thanks to him that you start the Race of Ep?
The first few years was just an acquaintance. He was at the FHAR, I was madly in love with him, I was reading his books without understanding everything, but I understood that the problem was not homosexuality but homophobia. His speech was very much influenced by Deleuze, who was his teacher and friend. In 1969 there was the creation of the university of Vincennes and I went there, but rather to smoke joints. There was too much going on at Deleuze but I was able to meet him later, with Michel Cressole, Gilles Chatelet, François Chatelet, Foucault and all that band. I was a kid at the time. I was going because everybody was talking about it.

And your first films start from that?
Yes, I resumed extracts Co-ry, text Hocquenghem, Scherer, and Tony Duvert Matzneff. All those writers who talked about things we can no longer talk about now. It was also an opportunity to do stuff that I could show to Guy – you have to know that everyone was in love with him. He was sublime beautiful and he spoke well. I had several missed opportunities and it took me to wait 1976 a lover invite me to a producer in France Culture after airing Sex Angels to a festival in a house near Avignon. And what happens? Guy Hocquenghem.

Pretty cool.
We talked all night, I showed him the beginning of my film. I think that intrigued him. I told him I wanted to adapt bird of the night he had written with Bory – it later became the last part of Race Ep. And he decided to tell me the beginning of history, the invention of the word homosexual in 1860, and so on. With a little help from the CNC and all of Guy’s buddies, we could make the first three parts. It was a fabulous chance to meet them and an unfortunate losing them so fast.

The Race of Ep is the first film essay like that back on the history of homosexuality?
It is possible, yes. It is at the same time as Foucault has released The History of Sexuality, the first volume of his History of Sexuality.

You were involved in the FHAR?
I was too young. I saw that from a distance, I read, and it excited me as much as it scared me. I was at the May 1, 1971 demonstration and it was great to see Hélène Hazera, Genet as well. Not Jean Genet, eh, Philippe Genet! At last Jean Genet I had read, he was a little our great mentor. Hocquenghem had already met him, but not me. I had the opportunity but I was too intimidated. But I was reading Genet, Hocquenghem, Bory who was Goncourt Prize and one of the first to make his coming out on a TV set. It was unbelievable, especially at a time when there were only two channels. I saw him at that moment, I turned to one of my friends with whom I looked and said, “I’m also a fag. ” He left. I never saw him again. At the time to be a fagot, you had to give up all your friends, all your life before – and that’s what happened to me.

About TV, Jean-Edern Hallier had taken up the cause for homosexuality on a tray Antenna 2 on the occasion of the release of The Race of Ep.
Ah, ah, yes, it was funny. It was the first of a show by Lionel Chouchan that was after a film by James Dean. Very little pub, and the show begins with Les Charlots in the background, and we at the first: Jean-Edern, Hocquenghem and me. Jean-Edern then share in a poetic frenzy around homosexuality, Guy chains and I’m going against the censorship of Race Ep was hit. Chouchan was summoned the next day and there was no sequel, it was the one and only show. The Charlots were surprised but after the show, there was one who came to me and said, “Ah but you know I have nothing against it, quite the contrary …”

Ah ah. Besides Kenneth Anger and Jean Genet, who inspired you for your films?
Gérard Blain, the director who turned the Friends. A beautiful movie. Molinier, too, with his heels, troubled me very much. But there was nothing at the time to share Anger, who had Fireworks. Cocteau had shown it to everybody in France. But what I did not know, and I learned by Hocquenghem (this is also the subject of Race Ep) is that in the thirties there was a very important movement in Germany, like New York and Paris – the famous Magic City of the Roaring twenties. But the cinema, for me, was the films that had a white square on television, and the cinematheque where we paid 1 franc to see all the films. Then I took care of the cine-club in my high school where I was passing Dziga Vertov, Eisenstein. But there was nothing about homosexuality, though Eisenstein was gay, had to decipher Que Viva Mexico.

Hence the desire to make a festival?
Frédéric Mitterrand had already organized a festival in 1977 at the Olympic in Paris, but he spent only Hollywood movies and a Soviet film. Following this, in La Rochelle, were grouped with Jean-François Garsi Cinémarges and Super 8 films of Michel Nedjar. Bank of sperm, the film of Gazolines FHAR those of Isabel Mendelson … Suddenly the Films flocked from everywhere. And The Love Song of Jean Genet was always prohibited.

Compared to the legislation of the time, it was not an incredible bag of knots to program something like that?
Oh yes ! When we did La Rochelle, we wanted to call the festival “Ciné pédé, gouine and the others”, but the municipality of La Rochelle fell on us – and yet they were left. We were told, “Call it” Images of deviance “because you understand, your title will not pass …” It was part of Cinémarges and it was the start of everything. Finally it really is all! , The newspaper of 1971, which was the departure of everything, but then very quickly, groups of liberation homosexual have developed almost everywhere.

You were part of it, indirectly.
I went around the villages with my 8 mm films. Obviously, we were not always very well received. And short, The Song of Love was always prohibited. What is funny is that at the base it was banned following a complaint from prison guards who did not like to see themselves on the screen mistreating a prisoner. And as Genet had been freed from prison by Cocteau, he had to be held in check. We had a copy at the Collectif Jeune Cinéma and I passed it on the right, on the left. Going back to the first question, sexuality went through the cinema, the cinema through sexuality and all that was very related. It was together in festivals and La Pagode was violently repressed in the second edition, by the way.

The Pagoda? The cinema of rombières of the 7th arrondissement?
Yes. At the time it was a cinema that belonged to the Malle. This is where Salo Pasolini was out. As we were presenting homosexual candidates in the 1978 parliamentary elections, for us it had become a prop platform and the government did not appreciate it. The police invested the festival, there were RGs every day, they recorded the debates. Prohibition of the festival, seizure of films … but I had stashed most so they took only those of Cocteau, who had visas. But more serious, it is the attack of about thirty masked fascists, Jeune Nation. They pummeled people … There were very serious injuries, including filmmaker Guy Gilles.

A little Stonewall in Paris.
In Stonewall, the transvestites succeeded in repelling the cops, but the opposite happened. We were beaten in the dark by the extreme right while the cops were in the projection booth. This resulted in a demonstration on rue Sainte-Anne where a police van was overturned and then repaid. After this story, people were afraid and the festival flipped while the first week there were very long lines – if I may say so – in the street of the ministries. It was packed.

The arrival of the left in power has relaxed the ranks, right?
Let us say that it made it possible not to be considered a scourge any more, but it also brought new laws, the double penalty for people who had dealings with teenagers and this ambiguity about the sexual majority. New censors too. It was above all a disappointed hope with the affair of the Rainbow Warrior, the Coral affair, the eradication of the extreme left by the PS. Everyone had waited so long for this moment that once the Left was in power, there was no longer any resistance.

As long as we talk about it, I wanted to know if the FHAR was close to the situationist movements and annexes.
Yes, in the use of slogans and all that. But situationism was there before, and lettrism and surrealism. The FHAR was centered on the homosexual revolt, it was neither a school nor an artistic movement, although it produced a lot, and it gathered anarchists like Daniel Guerin. And Situationism was very straightforward. At the time the fagot was really the least that nothing, it was the friend of the gypsies, the Arabs, outlaws. The FHAR allowed us to claim to be fagots, dykes, transsexuals, mad, perverse, as the blacks were called “negroes” with the Black Panthers. Turn insult into pride, return the weapon of exclusion to claim it. But total transparency has its perverse sides.

That is to say ?
There is a very beautiful sentence by Pasolini who says: “Sex shops are not a proof of liberalization but of the state’s control over the sexuality of people. I remember in Actuel, Hocquenghem and Cressole had issued a questionnaire to know the sexuality of this or that personality. They were attacking Deleuze and Deleuze had raised himself by pointing out that it was a fascism to force people to be transparent about their sexuality. Guy (Hocquenghem) came back a lot later on about the double life he led, the importance of having different friends, and especially not having a monolithic existence. Out of oneself.

The excitement around the gay and lesbian festivals rejoices you?
It is very well yes, and I support them all but the side “ghetto” bores me a little. At the Strange Festival, I like to see a varied audience. Sexual films are political, political films are sexual, we can not differentiate them as we can not differentiate thought from the body. Above all, I think that every sexuality is an eternal possibility of change.

Today, it seems that the work of the FHAR and the GLH has borne fruit. Is there still need to fight?
Right now, I’m very close to collectives like Existrans. What is happening today with transsexuals is a bit like what was going on with us at the time. We were witnessing the relationship with the Arabs, of homosexuality, of another way of living. When we see the female to male and male to female today, they have other claims, other reasons to revolt. We are far from Herculine Barbin, who saw no other solution than suicide.

 

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20 of Lionel Soukaz’s 58 films

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Ballad for a Lonely Man (1968)
‘I’m filming my boyfriend at the time and I’m trying to get him naked, but in fact it’s a film about ecology.’ — LS

 

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Paris Chausey (1975)

the entire film

 

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w/ Guy Hocquenghem Race d’Ep (1979)
‘Race d’Ep – Paris street slang for homosexual, is a four-part French film that argues that ”gay liberation was not born in the 60’s” but, instead, had its roots in the mid-19th century. The film, which opens today at the Agee Room in the Bleecker Street Cinema, is modestly scaled but not amateurish, acted by what appear to be nonprofessionals who never overreach themselves. It seems to have been shot silent, with soundtrack narration added later.

‘It is the point of Lionel Soukaz and Guy Hocquenghem, who conceived and made the film, that the more or less concurrent development of photography and the birth of an unashamed homosexual consciousness in the 19th century were not a coincidence. Photography, says the narrator, ”created a new definition of ‘mankind’ ” and gave the homosexual the means by which he could express his ”forbidden” desires.

‘The film begins with ”The Pose Period,” a consideration of the life and work of Baron von Gloeden who, we are told, gained a reputation in the second half of the 19th century by his photographs of nude Sicilian boys. The film rather amusingly recreates the baron’s fussily fancy visions of naked goatherds and streetboys idealized in classical poses. Intercut into the film’s new footage are what I take to be some examples of the baron’s actual work.’ — nytimes

the entire film

 

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La marche gaie (1980)
‘The gay march on Washington in October 1979 with Guy Hocquenghem, Kate Millet, Allen Ginsberg and thousands of lesbians and gays.’ — Telerama

the entire film

 

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Ixe (1980)
‘Ixe (written X and pronounced EEKS – as it is pronounced in French –, like a scream, a wound) is an imploded, crucified film. Made to be projected on four screens at once, X is drawn and quartered. At the four points of the compass, at the four ends of the cross, War, Sex, Religion and Drugs, the double exposures, the colliding glimpses the eye barely recognizes, the skillful repetitions of themes, remind us that Sex is also the war of bodies, and the pope, the Drug of the people. And the story of this young man, shooting up in order to experience all the horror of the world in front of his TV set, reminds us that the heroin orgy is indeed the subjective locus of the monsters of the modern unconscious.’ — Guy Hocquenghem

‘Ixe is a film dedicated to the law of the same name. Ixe may make you tremble or shudder, these images of escape, crisis, or decadence, of transvestites, bodies in erection, of fits and starts, of repression, war, political violence, shooting up heroin, bodies lost in space, of boxing matches, jungle life, survival, tennis, political or religious personalities that make you vomit in shame and anguish; Ixe may be all that – an analysis, working on oneself (a mirror), a snapshot of the ’80s, anything you like, it doesn’t matter – but let Ixe be the shiver of life, that thing that gives you goosepimples.’ — Lionel Soukaz

Excerpt

 

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Maman que man (1982)
‘A mother who was afraid that he would make movies, a sick mother. The film that we are going to see is the narrative, which is strongly autobiographical, of the end of an adolescence in the Paris of the early 1980s. The young main character (who will be called L. That he is not named in the film) lives a difficult daily between a mother with cancer and an alcoholic father. In the family apartment, you suffocate. L. watches at the bedside of his mother, growing weaker. The father is in a room next door, drinks, refuses to see the announcement of an imminent death. This father next to the plate, fleeing his responsibilities out of desperation is the subject of a voice-over comment. The director apologizes to his mother by showing the drinking dressing gown: “That you do not forgive me. Dad was not that. OK mom, but, you know, this is cinema. ” He also mentioned a doctor who said that the patient had an ulcer. The first minutes are rough, sad, it smells like catharsis. The simple opening credits suggests an ultra sensitive film and personal, also dark. The bond with the mother is very beautiful, very strong, and offers to this medium-length intense some very striking scenes. A true cry of love to a missing mother. One could say that the film works in two stages, with on one side life at the bedside of the dying and on the other the thirst for life of L., who wants to live and love. Unfortunately, both end in misfortune and suffering. What gives rise to a lively work, which upsets and terrace, which revives the most intimate wounds, which recalls difficult things like the loss of a loved one or his innocence.’ — Pop + Films

the entire film

 

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La manif contre le Sénat et ses militants (1991)
‘A rare and secret author, Lionel Soukaz will certainly remain on the side of this art which does not need consensus and rather offends himself. Not that he is seeking difficulty or hermeticism, but because he refuses any censorship and above all. Self-censorship which already, already before the realization, is a hindrance to the momentum, the flight.’ — René Schérer

Excerpt

 

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La cuisine de Cunéo (1991)

Excerpt

 

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Balade dans le Treizième (1996)

Excerpt

 

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Vivre halluciné (2000)
‘An extraordinary abstract meditation.’ — René Scherer

the entire film

 

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Vers l’Inde (2000)

the entire film

 

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L’année des treize lunes (2000)

the entire film

 

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Amor (2000)
‘Amor is built from unreleased footage of Ixe, found after 20 years and offers a kaleidoscopic vision of the past, almost subsided vision that leaves much room for tenderness, gambling, Unfettered pleasure.’ — 360degrees

Excerpt

 

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Ex-voto (2000)
‘An ex- voto is a votive offering to a saint or to a divinity.’

the entire film

 

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L’année du serpent (2001)

the entire film

 

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La vérité danse (2002)
‘Today we are witnessing the emergence of a new explicit protest film, which prolongs the great French tradition of visual pamphlet opened by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Jean Vigo. Soukaz represents a perfect example of an artistic reflex, simple, radical, critical, human, facing the immediacy of an oppressive history.’ — Nicole Brenez

the entire film

 

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w/ Tom de Pekin Fist Power (2002)
‘Lionel Soukaz followed Tom de Pekin in Paris, filming on a cheerful rhythm a succession of rapid portraits of the entourage of the graphic designer.’ — nova

the entire film

 

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Non à la guerre (2004)
‘les annees 2000 la guerre en Irak et les consequences actuelles ;;;;; la reponse du peuple francais a l epoque contre la guerre et sa suite de malheurs de morts innocents de tragedies ;;;;pensons y ;;;;;;’ — ls

the entire film

 

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Le Problème de Chirac (2004)

the entire film

 

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Notre trou du cul est révolutionnaire (2006)
‘”Gettare il proprio corpo nella lotta”, Throw his body into the fight; This formula borrowed by Pasolini in the song of resistance of the black Americans, took yesterday all its meaning. “For the body must be understood, either of the individual of flesh, or as a component of the expression.” I quote René Schérer here. And my body became a spirit crossed with chills and love for those who resist.’ — Lionel Soukaz

the entire film

 

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L’état tire dans le tas (2009)
‘Participation of Lionel Soukaz in the collective film Outrage and Rebellion constituted following the violence and the police repression during the expulsion of the squat The clinic in Montreuil, in 2009.’ — Eros activist

the entire film

 

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p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Cool, glad you liked her stuff. If there’s a Halloween adorned building — we don’t really have actual houses here — I’ll find it. A clone of me would be very useful right now, it’s true. Dang. Oops, I didn’t think about the heart attack part. Sorry. His head looks like a David Altmejd head naturally already, ha ha. Sorta true. Love making my neighbor realise that he actually doesn’t like The Eagles’ ‘Hotel California’ album, G. ** Charalampos, Thank you kindly. Oh, right, you’re Mr. Wild Instincts, of course. I don’t know what giouvarlakia is, no, but if it doesn’t have meat in it, I’d like some. Upwardly mobile vibes from Paris. ** David Ehrenstein, Of course you had encounters with Ms. Laurie. Her greatness was very underrated. I think I’ve told you that I used to see Ray Bolger at this swanky hustler bar on the Upper East Side frequently. Shostakovich was wildly popular at one time? That’s wild. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hm, it is strange, you’re right. Biggest congrats to Scotland then. Whoop! ** Misanthrope, People used to say life is short to me when I was young, but you just can’t conceive of it when you’re young. But I was never a dawdler luckily. I.e., novels, do it, man. You’ll old enough to know about time running out. I’d like to see your mom on your roof, you’re absolutely right. ** Steve Erickson, I’ll never cease to be amazed by the sadistic idiocy of American insurance. Ugh, sorry. Yeah, makes sense: your take on the McKamey phenom. I watched that doc. Interesting, of course, but it also felt like a salacious hit job. I believe that criticism came from The Guardian, but I’m not 100% sure. ** Bill, Lucky you re: seeing ‘Make Me Famous’. I’m dying to see it. I knew Brezinski. I was in his social circle and used to do studio visits with him during my Artforum reviewer days. Really have to find that somewhere. Can’t imagine it’ll make it over here. ** Toniok, Hi, man. Wow, you shared a studio with Eugenio Merino, how very cool. That ‘Burning’ piece looks great. I’ll look further into it. Thanks! Zac and I went to a program of experimental films by teenagers (age 13 – 18). There was one really great one that was kind of an homage to ‘Pink Narcissus’, and a couple of other quite good ones. Super inspiring. I hope you’re doing splendidly. ** DARB🐊, So happy you liked it. You don’t sound weird, but I never think you sound weird. But my coffee hasn’t fully kicked in yet, so maybe you are, but I can’t tell? I will listen to Christoph De Babalon, for sure. I have to go jet off to work on the film in a minute, but there’ll be space later. Thank you for sharing the great stuff. With fake sfx third degree burns? Well, sure, of course. How could I possibly say no to that. ** Cody Goodnight, Hi, Cody. My feet are freezing cold, but I’m fine otherwise. Happy anniversary! A little late, I guess, but sincerely. One year, not bad, not bad at all. I’ll put some party music in my earphones when I metro across town in about five minutes in celebration. (Normally I just stand there in silence looking at everybody). Happiest day! ** Okay. The blog takes on the oeuvre of the pioneering French queer filmmaker Lionel Soukaz today. Not very well known outside of France, I don’t think, but well worth your investigations, I propose. See you tomorrow.