Happy Pride everyone! While planning our celebration at the Goethe-Institut Toronto (see details below), I started talking to Maxime Desmons about what influence gay films in general --and the German coming-of-age film "Summer Storm" which we will show in particular-- had and have on his work as a filmmaker and gay man.
"Growing up in France I was learning German as a second language in Grade 8. After the war, France & Germany worked hard on rehabilitating a friendship – many French towns would be twinned to a West German city.
I am so thankful to this Great Governmental Program for arousing & shaping my homosexuality. I was 13 years old when I was sent to Frankfurt Am Main, and the family that welcomed me were nudists. When Rolf, the 6-foot 14-year-old blond karate kid who I was paired with, showed me his parents naked in the family album, my blood started to flow like a river covered in rose petals and my heart danced to Nena’s 99 Luft Balloons that summer. I was born to be me. Well sort of…
The film 'Summer Storm' unfolds at a rowing championship in a German campground, and there are a
great moments showing the awkwardness of youthful sexual awakening.
Tobi the main character, is a smart boy who is in love with his best friend, Achim, who is attracted to a girl. How cliché?!
Yes, it’s wonderfully cliché but it always seemed to happen that way for me too. Like Tobi, I would charm all the girls, in order to keep Rolf closer to me. And Rolf was Achim when he came to stay with me in France – he fell in love with all my female classmates.
The beautiful, shadowy underwater photography in 'Summer Storm' evokes that place of hiding & shame when you first come out. A Canadian writer once said that gay boys learn to lie before learning to love. 'Summer Storm' is all about that first moment of confronting the truth about yourself. 30 years passed: an underground life, a late coming out, few boyfriends, lots of fuck buddies, immigration and a real lover, a gay marriage, a house, an adoption process. So a good life and
many LGBT movies later, I watched 'Summer Storm' when it came out ten years ago. Rolf’s memory reappeared like a sweet stellar constellation, because it’s German, because it’s beautiful, because it makes you feel. The film talks about the difficulty of adolescence and reminded me of Hettie MacDonald’s 1996 film 'Beautiful Thing'. As a gay teen, learning that all other men are likely not gay is a rite of passage, an experience of its own, as in the 1985 film 'Escalier C' by Jean Charles Tacchela. Looking back, 'Escalier C' had priceless impact on the teenager that I was. 'Summer Storm' reminds me of the beauty of youthful sensuality, a feeling that I had also found in 'Wild Reeds' by André Téchiné.
I watch gay movies and I love them. I see myself, personal memories; the catharsis works its magic. My body recognizes and approves. There are as many gay stories to tell as the straight world dictates to me everyday.
Pride is about remembrance, and movies are my memories - collections of stories that may or may not have happened. But when told on the big screen, they become the truth. You will enjoy 'Summer Storm', I know. It’s a good memory for me."
Maxime Desmons is a French filmmaker living in Canada. His shorts have traveled the LGBT film festivals worldwide and are distributed by CFMDC. His first feature film will be released early 2015.
The Goethe-Institut presents:
June 20, 2014, 7.30pm
"Summer Storm" (Germany, 2004, 94 min) by Marco Kreuzpaintner, starring Robert Stadlober, Kostja Ullman and others
DVD with English subtitles
Goethe-Institut Toronto
free admission, limited seating, first come first served, open to audiences 19+
Join us for “Summer Storm,” the German coming-of-age film which premiered at TIFF exactly 10 years ago, and the opening of our poster art show “Are you man enough to be a woman!”, which spans three decades of LGBTQ exhibitions at Schwules Museum* Berlin.
Along with the film and exhibition opening, we will have a cash bar and snacks, with all proceeds going to The 519, a non-profit supporting our lesbian, gay, bi, trans and queer (LGBTQ) communities in Toronto.
