What makes a body masculine and who gets to decide? Five films approach the question through bodybuilding in Lagos, working class men posed as objects of desire, a testicle freed from the shadow of the phallus, a body resisting violence and a transmasculine person’s changing relationship with their own body. The films play with the poses and fantasies attached to gender while staying close to the bodies and experiences behind them. (Boris Hadžija, Clarer Winter)
Bodybuilders train in a makeshift gym in Lagos. The camera stays close to arms, backs and faces, while breath, movement and clanging weights set the rhythm. Between strength and exertion, the film considers how Black male bodies are seen without fixing them in a single image.… >>>
A fictional manifesto by working-class men from Turkey who want to be more sexually fetishised. Using the tools of gay pornography, the essay film subverts nationalism and contrasts the aggression of physical labor with the emotional vulnerability of hardworking men.… >>>
The scrotum steps out of the phallus’ shadow. Orchids, latex sacs, sperm under a microscope and testicle-shaped pastries form a playful, sensual world of images. A polyphonic voiceover asks about pleasure, shame, relationships and responsibility.… >>>
CN: Sexualized Violence
Kha lives in Barcelona’s Raval neighborhood, moving between stage and street. Confronting the violence that shapes her daily life, she turns performance and her own perspective into an act of resistance and a claim to life and desire.
OUR JOYFUL ENDINGS follows the diary of a trans masculine person who sees his own and others' views of his body change during his transition. Between desire, apprehension and questioning. From there, comfort grows with people who share this experience.… >>>