“I'm breakin' all the rules I didn't make,” Madonna sang in 1994’s Human Nature. Twenty-two years later we seem to be going backwards, not forwards. Curzon Soho’s World Pride Amsterdam trilogy on 16 July 16 is definitely 18 rated, but then it’s out to make the point on our terms.
Premiering is main feature Bob: Man of The Angels, exploring the fightback for LGBTQ+ freedom by Dutch activists after the darkness of Nazi Occupation - more than 20 years before Stonewall.
Dutch trans photographer and filmmaker Prins de Vos arrives on a UK screen for the first time in Je Weet Wie Je Bent (You Know Who You Are) and de Vos’ own unapologetically explicit Beds 2: Levon.
Prins, with a considerable Netherlands fanbase already, is known for beautifully personal photo studies of trans lives, in still photography and Prins’ own films like On Hold. There’s very little held back. Modest and unassuming, Prins doesn’t claim to be a ‘spokesperson’ for the trans community, though the exquisitely written An Island of One’s Own is very much Prin’s own story of childhood and transition.
But if you thought the Netherlands would be way ahead of us in quality of life for trans people: “On Hold is about the long waiting times in gender-affirming care that are hugely problematic and absolutely need to be seen and heard,” explains Prins. “They're truly personal, in that place with the camera. Very natural.” Like trans twins Moos and Pel, or one of the film’s older voices with a shocking realisation to live as your true self are before time runs out.
Is there even one of your trans friends whose personal story and experiences were not unique to them? And there the critical peril of sweeping blanket statements wilfully flung out into the world, like the UK Supreme Court… it’s not even so much about the initial catastrophe of the tsunami, but what comes in its wake…
Prins’ work also looks at queer sexualities in their unpredictable diversity. Not least the BEDS film trilogy - close-up intimate, radiating simple humanity in all its flaws and contradictions, witty - and very hot. Showing on 16 July at the World Pride programme is Beds 2: Levon. Looking for all the world like a young Leo Di Caprio, Levon has absolutely no physical inhibitions in front of Prins’ camera, but draws us in with alluring ambiguity about the reason for getting it on for the audience.
“I think I am not that interested in my personal eroticism,” says Levon. Er, we’ve got this feeling the audience very definitely will be, Levon… Naked, with a hypnotic beauty, want to take a guess what happens next? But this is no five-a-dime OnlyFans ‘sinfluencer’ reel, it’s a short but exquisitely made work of art about our unpredictable sexualities. There’s nothing but truth and absolute reality in this lens.
Je Weet Wie Je Bent and Beds 2: Levon screen with Bob: Man of The Angels at Curzon Soho, 99 Shaftesbury Avenue W1D 5DY on Thursday, 16 July at 6.20pm, 18+. Music by Tall Houses and Freddie Lewis. Live Q&A with Peter Tatchell, Sue Sanders and cast. Book HERE
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