The fifth edition of ART200, the international queer film festival, will take place between October 11 and October 20 in Bucharest. This year’s edition includes a variety of activities and a film program centered around the theme “Queer Cultures of Protest.” The festival also introduces a new feature: a retrospective dedicated to filmmaker João Pedro Rodrigues (b. 1966), one of the most important Portuguese directors, whose name is synonymous both with the New European Queer Wave and with a remarkable generation of filmmakers from his country. The retrospective is curated by Flavia Dima.

“There is a certain filmmaker without whom it is difficult to conceive of any broader discourse on modern queer cinema, whose work blends, with almost incredible ease, both humorous and serious tones, classic narratives, and distinctly contemporary themes (to the point where we can say that his films anticipated many of the predominant themes in contemporary queer discourse). Thus, no other artist seemed more fitting for the inaugural auteur retrospective at ART200: and that is João Pedro Rodrigues,” writes Flavia Dima in her curatorial statement.

During the festival, the filmmaker will hold a masterclass at the Czech Center, discussing the challenges and difficulties faced by a queer artist at the start of their career. Additionally, three of the films that brought him international recognition—O Fantasma (2000), Odete (2005), and Morrer Como Um Homem (2009)— will be screened. As a prelude to the festival, we are publishing three essays about these films, through which the filmmaker claims his place in queer cinema history while also exploring his own artistic voice. The texts, written by Flavia Dima and Bogdan Balla, will also be included in the festival catalog. Here you can find the full program.

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Self-Acceptance: O Fantasma / Phantom (2000)

Strangely enough, O Fantasma remains in the lexicon of my adolescence as one of my first masturbatory experiences. João Pedro Rodrigues’ feature debut was partially uploaded on a gay porn site, featuring in a playlist of movie sex scenes. João Pedro Rodrigues derives his obsession with the body and its performativity from a general lack in cinema of an approach to corporeality or explicit sex scenes up to that point. The director denounces the frigid allure of cinema in comparison to painting or sculpture, where the nude remains a classic subject. Indeed, O Fantasma is a film about pleasure, obsessions with pleasure, and their contact with immediate reality, set against the backdrop of a conservative Portuguese society.

Sérgio works as a trash collector and fluctuates between identities and obsessions. The parallel with Feuillade’s Les Vampires is hard to ignore: after developing a sexual obsession with a young man who is visibly uninterested in his advances, he engages in various stalking behaviours, culminating in a forced entry into his apartment. Rodrigues offers an interpretation of pleasure as a double-edged sword – while pleasure is a source of connection for Sérgio, it is also the driving force behind his loneliness and isolation. His quest for intimacy and love often leads him to the brink of deep loneliness. And it’s not just Sérgio – for example, Fatima, his co-worker, navigates her own obsessions with Sérgio in ways that challenge traditional notions of normativity, suggesting that identity is something flexible, constructed from a blend of reality and fantasy.

Rodrigues wraps the film in stereotypes of queer identity and culture, which are often understood as oppression: leather, motorcycles, outdoor sex, but especially the relationship with law enforcement, which in O Fantasma takes on a playful complicity. What the film truly does is offer the viewer a real motive to analyse and reconsider their own desires and identities, amidst the apparent solitude of the characters. It’s a form of self-acceptance. (Bogdan Balla)

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The Obsession with Motherhood: Odete / Two Drifters (2005)

Portuguese filmmaker João Pedro Rodrigues’ second film, an over-the-top melodrama, has arguably one of the most beautiful opening scenes in queer cinema history – lovers Rui and Pedro share a passionate kiss for 30 seconds as the camera slowly pulls back to reveal their faces. Commenting on this shot in an interview for Senses of Cinema, Rodrigues compares Two Drifters to the cinematography of a B movie: “I strongly believe in beginnings. […] It’s a bit like a B-movie where the beginning often draws you straight into the film, because the filmmakers knew it has to be attractive from the very first moment. They did not have big budgets and had to be precise.”

The couple’s trajectory is quickly upended by Pedro’s tragic death in a car accident. Rui is devastated by the loss of his partner and tries to grieve as gracefully as possible. The parallel story, that of cashier Odete and her desire to become a mother, is where the film gradually slides into obsession. After breaking up with her boyfriend, during intense emotional turmoil, she begins to claim a possible romance between her and Pedro, which would have resulted in a child she believes she is carrying. Rui, Pedro’s former lover, is drawn in by Odete’s fixation and audacity, and thus the two stories become intertwined.

Two Drifters is a love triangle that portrays grief as a deeply exasperating and maddening experience. Rodrigues uses a dreamlike and highly symbolic aesthetic to depict overwhelming emotions. Odete, in her own suffering and mental instability, creates a parallel reality where fantasy and emotional lability merge. Motherhood becomes the core theme of the film, symbolising both rebirth and the impossibility of leaving the past behind.

The characters in Two Drifters are caught in a chaotic and unstable dance, where love, loss, and the need for belonging become central but destructive forces. The film never pretends to offer clear answers, only haunting images, and in this atmosphere of magical realism, Rodrigues questions the fluidity of identity and the impossible boundaries between life and death, love and obsession. (Bogdan Balla)

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Tonia Smiles: Morrer como um homem / To Die Like a Man (2009)

In a way, the triad of films that opens João Pedro Rodrigues’ filmography, chronologically speaking, revolves around not only the queer experience and existence but also the notion of obsession – what other obsession can be more absolute than that with one’s own death, with the impermanence of the self and its existence (both as a body and an emotional being) in this world?

To say that To Die Like a Man is a modern classic, a masterpiece of contemporary queer cinema, already sounds like a truism – for the way Rodrigues’ magnum opus has influenced the generations of filmmakers that followed (in such a short time!) is truly immeasurable. Whether we’re talking about the magnetism (and at the same time, the tragedy) of a trans protagonist like Tonia (played by Fernando Santos, evoking Divine at the end of her career in an extraordinary performance), or how it explores the world of drag performers from within, equally focusing on the public performance and backstage dynamics, but especially the life lived outside the spotlight – the hardships, struggles, failures, ambiguities, and difficulties – while rejecting the miserabilism that many of the director’s contemporaries embraced uncritically and often exploitatively. Or especially the already-iconic dreamlike break in the second half of the film, leaving behind Douglas Sirk or John Waters and fully diving into R.W. Fassbinder’s territories. This shift in tone and realm has inspired numerous artists (mostly independent filmmakers) to turn away from the urban environment and explore all the queer potentialities of the natural setting, especially the forest.

But above all else, To Die Like a Man remains a landmark of trans representation in European cinema: a bittersweet film infused with nostalgia for a world that seems to be disappearing along with this trans woman seeking to finally settle her accounts (with life, with her own body, with gender trouble, with the people she knows she will leave behind), much like the pop or fado songs she hums throughout the film. Yet despite all the difficulties, Tonia smiles and moves on: and nothing could be more powerful than that. (Flavia Dima)

Redacție

An article written by the magazine's team