Queer+ Movies & Books

Here are movies to catch that speak to the power of love

LIAM KARABO JOYCE liam.joyce@inl.co.za

AS WE celebrate love with this edition, here are movies to catch that speak to the power of love.

MOFFIE Showmax

Currently on the longlist for the Golden Globe’s Foreign Film category, Moffie won the Film Critics Special Jury Prize at the 2020 Dublin International Film Festival and has a 100% critics rating from Rotten Tomatoes, with Variety raving: “South African auteur Oliver Hermanus makes his masterpiece with this brutal but radiant story of young gay desire on the Angolan war front ... establishing him quite plainly as South Africa’s most vital contemporary film-maker … “Both a shiver-delicate exploration of unspoken desire and scarily brilliant anatomy of white South African masculinity. It takes your breath away.”

KAI Luke Brummer in Moffie.

Adapted from an autobiographical 2006 novel by André Carl van der Merwe, Moffie is set in South Africa in 1981, with the white minority government embroiled in a conflict on the southern Angolan border. Like all white boys over the age of 16, Nicholas van der Swart (Kai Luke Brummer) must complete two years of compulsory military service to defend the apartheid regime. The threat of communism and “die swart gevaar” is at an all-time high. But that’s not the only danger Nicholas faces. He must survive the brutality of the army – something that becomes even more difficult when a connection is sparked between him and a fellow recruit.

The Half Of It Netflix

The Half Of It

Nancy Drew’s Leah Lewis stars as Ellie Chu, a shy and introverted Asian-American schoolgirl who agrees to help the school jock (Daniel Diemer) woo his crush. Plot twist alert: Ellie likes her too. Netflix’s official synopsis states: “In the process, each teaches the other about the nature of love as they find a connection in the most unlikely of places.” The Half Of It received highly positive reviews upon release and won the Founders Award for Best Narrative Feature at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival.

Dear Ex Netflix

Dear Ex

Dear Ex is a 2018 Taiwanese comedy-drama film co-directed by Mag Hsu and Hsu Chih-yen. It stars Roy Chiu, Hsieh Yingxuan, Spark Chen and Joseph Huang. The film received generally positive reviews from critics and was selected as the Taiwanese entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 92nd Academy Awards, but it was not nominated. A teenager, Song Cheng-xi (Huang), becomes trapped in the middle of a bitter feud between his mother (Hsieh) and a free-spirited man (Chiu), who is both the lover and insurance beneficiary of Song’s recently deceased father (Chen).

Queer+ Books

Here is our list of books you should check out

LIAM KARABO JOYCE liam.joyce@inl.co.za

PROFESSIONAL athlete Jason Collins said in 2014: “Openness may not completely disarm prejudice, but it’s a good place to start.” He made history that year when he became the first male professional athlete to publicly identify himself as gay. After his announcement, a flood of other queer athletes began declaring their sexuality, revealing to the world that some of our greatest sports figures are members of the queer community.

The openness to accept one another does not only apply in this context. In life, we are often told to be open to new experiences and adventures. And while you might think going on a road trip through Africa is an adventure, starting a new book can be just as adventurous, or opening yourself up to romantic love.

Here are three books you should check out.

The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson

The Argonauts has been described as a genre-bending memoir, a work of autotheory that offers a fresh, fierce, and timely thinking about desire, identity and the limitations and possibilities of love and language. At its centre is a romance: the author’s relationship with the artist Harry Dodge. This story, which includes Nelson’s account of falling in love with Dodge, who is gender fluid, and her journey to and through pregnancy, offers a first-hand account of the complexities and joys of (queer) family-making.

Nelson ties her personal experience to an exploration of what iconic theorists have said about sexuality, gender and the institutions of marriage and child-rearing. Her insistence on radical individual freedom and the value of caretaking becomes the rallying cry of this thoughtful, unabashed, uncompromising book.

Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman

By now you have probably seen Call Me By Your Name, the movie. If you haven’t, no one is judging you; this is a safe space. If you have not read the book the movie is based on, you’re missing out. The novel tracks the love story of Oliver and Elio, but where the movie offers a third-person look at both characters as they navigate their burgeoning romance, the novel places you solely in Elio’s mind as his feelings develop from mild crush to complete obsession.

Under the Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparanta

Inspired by Nigeria’s folktales and its war, Under the Udala Trees is a searching and powerful debut about the dangers of living and loving openly.

Ijeoma comes of age as her nation does; born before independence, she is 11 when civil war breaks out in the young republic of Nigeria. Sent away to safety, she meets another displaced child and they fall in love. They are from different ethnic communities. They are both girls. When their love is discovered, Ijeoma learns that she will have to hide this part of herself. But there is a cost to living a lie.