LGBT

The Celluloid Closet

(15) 101min There’s a thorny dichotomy that’s been around almost as long as cinema itself: is it enough simply to see minorities on the silver screen, even if portrayed in an unflattering or offensive light? Or should Hollywood be quietly written…

sh[OUT]: Contemporary Art and Human Rights

PREVIEW EXHIBITION Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex life is placed centre stage this summer as part of GoMA’s biennial social justice programme, which explores human rights through the lens of contemporary art. While there are few…

LGBT Arts Festival Weekend

CREATIVE FESTIVAL LGBT Centre for Health and Wellbeing, Edinburgh, Fri 20–Sun 22 Mar Scotland’s capital can lay proud boast to being the only city in the UK to have its own dedicated health and wellbeing centre for LGBT folks, which runs…

LGBT Speed Dating - Pink Links

SPEED DATING Valentine’s Day may have departed for another year on a bin lorry piled high with trampled roses and dog-eared cards, but for many the search for love goes on. As luck would have it, Edinburgh’s busy LGBT scene just got a little more…

Scottish comedian feels the wrath of students

A TOP Scottish comedian has been branded a bully and banned from performing at Stirling University after jeering a transvestite in the audience of a recent gig. The Reverend Obadiah Steppenwolfe III, who is known for his politically incorrect humour…

LGBT interest DVDs

ROUND-UP The re-release on DVD of Wong Kar Wai’s Happy Together (Artificial Eye) ●●●● is cause for celebration. The award-winning film follows the fortunes of a gay couple from Hong Kong, who part company shortly after arriving in Argentina, leaving…

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo

COMIC BALLET A company’s name usually offers pertinent information about who they are and what they do. Aside from the word ‘ballet’, however, Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo tells you very little about the delights in store. For one thing…

Out at the Movies

With Gus Van Sant’s Milk generating significant Oscar buzz and the latest big budget gay-themed movie I Love You Phillip Morris about to hit the silver screen, Steven Paul Davies history of gay cinema is timely. Working chronologically from the 1920s…

Milk

BIOPIC Gus Van Sant’s fairly conventional biopic of the first openly gay elected politician in the United States succeeds in overcoming genre limitations to create a powerful, compassionate film that’s up there with the director’s best work. We…

The Hot 100 2008

It’s been a helluva year. 2008 has been a time of significant global change, socially, politically and culturally, with Scotland no exception. So here, for your delectation, is The List’s pick of the 100 people, places and things that rocked our world…

LGBT Christmas Clubbing

XMAS ROUND-UP For those of an LGBT persuasion who would rather burn up the dancefloor than roast their chestnuts on an open fire, the Central Belt plays host to a wheen of special club nights to take you right through the Christmas…

Hate and Pride in Riga

PHOTOGRAPHY Presented by Amnesty International, this display of work by photographer Reuben Steains documents the 2008 Pride march in Riga, capital of Latvia. In scene-setting texts, stories about the previous two years’ marches being marred by…

Will Young

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, Thu 20 & Fri 21 Nov It’s hard to believe that it’s nearly seven years since Will Young shot to fame as the first winner of ratings-grabbing TV talent search Pop Idol. What’s perhaps more surprising is that he still enjoys…

Suddenly Last Summer

Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly Last Summer is the theatrical equivalent of a shot in the arm from a hypodermic needle, a visceral cocktail of madness, repressed sexuality and cannibalism all played out against the sweltering New Orleans heat. It’s also…

Civil

MULTI-MEDIA THEATRE For many people growing up gay in the 1970s, Quentin Crisp provided the only tangible image of what it meant to be queer to infiltrate the mainstream. The witty author and raconteur who worked as a prostitute and artist’s model…

Blue

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE While its existence in any sort of visual medium is an artistic victory, the ambition of Derek Jarman’s Blue becomes most apparent when you discover that he drummed up money for the film by staging it as a series of live…

A Slow Dissolve

NEW WORK Last year, Barry Henderson’s first play, the Edward Hopper-inspired A Pleasant Kind of Loneliness, impressed critics when it premiered at the Arches. A Slow Dissolve, his new commission from Glasgay!, could well be the sleeper star of…

4 Boutique Shows

1 To Kill A Kelpie In Matthew Smith’s eerie family drama, two grown brothers relive the sexual abuse they suffered at the hands of their uncle, talking to the children they once were about the climate of fear they endured at their abuser’s tales of a…

Suddenly Last Summer

Andy Arnold directs this revival of Tennessee Williams’ shocking one-act play about the terrifying Violet Venable’s attempts to have her niece lobotomised in order to prevent her revealing the truth about her son Sebastian’s sexual proclivities. The…

Glasgay! Film Strand

From heart-warming and cheering to heart wrenching and chilling, the film strand at this year’s Glasgay! could be seen as a nod to the glory of diversity. Featuring only five feature films (three of them accompanied by shorts) it’s a small collection of…

Cryptic Productions

Cathie Boyd takes her research seriously. She wasn’t comfortable directing a modern opera set in the Caribbean without getting a proper sense of the place. So, at the start of this year, she took a trip to Haiti. ‘I wanted to know what Haiti looks and…

Gregor Laird: Plastic Pastorals

ART GALLERY SHOW ‘Living in Edinburgh,’ says artist Gregor Laird, ‘I’m kind of surrounded by the romantic ideal of Scotland on a daily basis, all the picture postcards with this beautiful scenery on them.’ Sending up these chocolate box images…

Profile - Paul Sinha

1 The doctor is out He is indeed. Sinha might not be the UK’s only gay GP, but he is the world’s only gay Bengali GP who moonlights as a stand-up comic. This situation, as you might imagine, gives him plenty of material to go on. 2 He’s a Fringe…

Glasgay! - Tennessee Williams

Some years ago, I attended a conference where a debate about the work of Tennessee Williams came very nearly to blows. The bone of contention involved Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, in which the character Brick confesses an attraction to a friend that surpasses…