Gay: Celebs Rumors

Annika Pham In its second collaboration with the Marché du Film’s Goes to Cannes showcase strand, Australia’s Queer Screen Mardi Gras Film Festival will unveil four projects and a finished film, all looking for global sales, distribution, top-up financing and festival selection. The five projects to be pitched May 18, will vie for the first €10,000 ($10,700) Goes to Cannes Award.“We set out to curate a selection that embraces a rich tapestry of stories and identities, while also giving prominence to Australian talent,” says festival director Lisa Rose about her program, which “showcases narratives spanning the spectrum of gay, lesbian, pansexual, bisexual, and transgender experience.” For instance, “From All Sides” fearlessly tackles queer sexuality, “a rarity in cinema originating from Western Sydney, says Rose, who also cites “Strange Creatures” and its story about two brothers, one of whom identifies as pansexual, as “a perspective rarely centered in film.”As fresh in its take, the third Australian pic, “Heart of the Man,” “delves into the intersection of First Nations and queer identities, a theme seldom explored in Australian narrative cinema,” says the festival honcho.In a fine example of a queer perspective from another part of the world, the ambitious Indian-U.K./French co-production “Arms of a Man” (“Sabar Bonda”) tells of a city-dweller who falls for a young farmer while grieving his father in rural India.