This blog will present news items about the motion picture business, with emphasis on lower budget, independent film in most cases. Some reviews or commentaries on specific films, with emphasis on significance (artistic or political) or comparison, are presented. Note: No one pays me for these reviews; they are not "endorsements"! Starting in May 2016, many of the reviews for new feature films have been done on a hosted Wordpress site, and this blog now mostly does shorts and older films.
Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
My legal name is "John William Boushka" or "John W. Boushka"; my parents gave me the nickname of "Bill" based on my middle name, and this is how I am generally greeted. This is also the name for my book authorship. On the Web, you can find me as both "Bill Boushka" and "John W. Boushka"; this has been the case since the late 1990s. Sometimes I can be located as "John Boushka" without the "W." That's the identity my parents dealt me in 1943!
"House of Boys": European drama showing the early days of the AIDS epidemic, and street life of less fortunate gay men
The film “House of Boys” (2009), by Jean-Claude Schlim, from
Luxembourg but in English, is one of the most graphic dramatic films about the
early days of the AIDS epidemic made, perhaps eclipsed by only a few like “Angels
in America” and “The Normal Heart”.
The story is told from the viewpoint of his lover, Frank
(Layke Anderson), who leaves a home of disapproving parents in early 1984, and
winds up in Amsterdam. After bouncing
out of a bar, he stumbles on a safehouse or bartenders and dancers supporting
another club, run by a middle aged man. The
place is rather a live-in, intentional community. His attractive roommate Jake
(Benn Northovera) claims to be straight, but gradually they fall in love, while
Frank becomes known as a dancer.
A romantic encounter between the men occurs at the midpoint
of the film. Soon Jake has a little
accident, and doctors find his T-helper counts low. Then they find a blue lesion.
In the last forty minutes of the two-hour film, Jake
deteriorates rapidly, becoming covered with Kaposi’s Sarcoma lesions. The house owner throws him out, since he
doesn’t want this “problem”. The film
suggests that Europeans were not as aware of AIDS then as was the US, but we
know some of the biggest early drug trials occurred in France, at the Pasteur
Institute.
The look of the sets, inside the house, is garish, with brilliant technicolor. The director says he wanted to create a story to educate the public on the personal aspect of history that is already forgotten.
In the meantime, the film shows TV clips of Ronald Reagan,
increasing spending on defense but cutting back on domestic programs at it is “morning”
across the Atlantic in America.
Stephen Fry ("Copenhagen") plays Dr. Marsh, who discovers Jake's disease and relates it to the earky epidemic in the US, before HTLV-III (aka HIV) has even been identified. Udo Kier and Steven Webb also star.
The film takes a full fifteen minutes to present all of the opening credits!
The film has an intriguing epilogue set in Morocco in 1986
as Frank moves on (with Jake's previous girl friend). Both leads play their parts with a great deal of charisma.
The German site for the film is here. The DVD now comes from Breaking Glass.
The film says that after 25 years, the death toll from AIDS
is 25 million.
Amsterdam photo by Michielverbeek, attribution link, under
Creative Commons 3.0 Share Alike license. My two visits occurred in 1991 and 2001.
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