Our film, Ang Lihim ni Antonio (Antonio's Secret) has been invited to the Torino Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in Italy this April 26 to 30, 2008.
Among the previous Filpino films invited in this festival was "Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros (The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros) and "Masahista" (The Masseur).
Here's a historical background of the festival from their website:
In 1981 Ottavio Mai and Giovanni Minerba decided to "resist" a kind of cinema that used the homosexual "character" for secondary and/or offensive roles, making their first film on video Dalla vita di Piero. Acclaimed at the Turin Film Festival, the film was invited to many international film festivals.
And the idea of the Turin International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival “From Sodom to Hollywood” was born: Mai and Minerba attended many festivals to follow their work and realized that a great amount of important gay films never came out in Italy. They started studying an idea of a festival to be presented to the official institutions of Region, Province and the city of Turin: but they were not given an answer for three years. In 1985 the “enlightened” Marziano Marzano was elected in the city council as councillor responsible for Culture and, among many controversies, some of them still existing, the festival came to life in 1986, with the financial support from Turin Province and Piedmont Region, besides the artistic and cultural support of many important national and international institutions like Museo Nazionale del Cinema, British Council, Goethe Institut, Colegio de Salamanca, B.F.I., Canadian Embassy, Spanish Culture Office, Centre Culturel Français.
In the beginning it was only a film show, but in 1989 it became a real festival, and in 1990 it obtained an official recognition from the Ministry of Tourism and Show.
Among its goals, this Festival has always had not only the need to show new films, but to keep a particularly aware Italian “eye” on the artistic and internationally acclaimed cinema that otherwise would never have a go in our country. A kind of cinema that has always had many difficulties to find a distribution in Italy. Think about the difficult distribution of videos, artistic documentaries and short films..
Attended by “professionals” (film critics and journalists), students and passionate film experts, this Festival has always kept a strong bond with the common filmgoer, offering spectacular moments taken from international realities and giving the new generation the opportunity to discover, through many retrospectives, the fundamental characters of gay films and culture. This is the peculiarity of this Festival: in fact, comparing it with other international gay film festivals, you will notice that the Turin Gay and Lesbian Film Festival is one of a few in the world to receive a general recognition from the public and the press, newspapers and TV, following the event with increasing interest and support.
Antonio's Seccret is helmed by Joselito Altarejos
