Ma saison super 8

This is one of the most honest and truthful LGBT films I have seen in a long time. It is a pity it has such few reviews. I have never quite seen a film on the subject of 1968 quite like this, dealing as it does with the giddy heights and ultimate disillusionment of LGBT activism during and after that year. I was there in Paris and know that it is truthful. It is well made cutting between home made movie to conventional film. It is not rough and it was made on a budget, but not for a moment did I think that showed any more than many other excellent films made on a small budget. It begins with the student riots of '68 when homosexuality was a dirty word to those very people who were in revolt. Their accusation that being Gay or Lesbian was essentially bourgeois rings out clearly to me as if it was yesterday. Time passes and our leading character Marc decides to take action to fight for Gay and Lesbian rights. For a while it lasts, and I will not spoil more for the viewers but make a more generalised observation. In that movement their were quite a few who ' experimented ' with same-sex relationships, and two of such relationships are presented in the film, one Lesbian the other Gay. The terrible truth is that conventional and safe heterosexuality draws them back into the fold, and there is one tragic scene where you see two men longing for each other sexually, enjoying it and then parting at dawn. One gets married, the other goes away with ' his ' woman. Every scene rings with truth and the ultimate outcome is the consumerist society of sex in the middle to late '70's. It was like looking into a mirror of the past and seeing the quiet darkening of the oppressive world of disco and the nightmare of the '80's. The cast absolutely excellent even down to those in the background. Totally authentic of the times, and I have no idea if this film was successful in France in 2005. It should have been. Many so-called ' Out ' film directors with much higher budgets and pandering to bourgeois audiences should have learnt from this film, and to be honest a few have but not the top names. For those who are interested in LGBT history the film is essential, and I do not want to knock the overlong ' Born in '68 ' but it is in my opinion inferior to ' Ma Saison Super 8 '. It is also explicit sexually, and I loved the tender love scene when Marc does a travelling shot of his lover's body with a Super 8 camera. A beautiful, sensual and wise reflection on a time of high ideals followed by a crushing weight of conformity. It is partly dedicated to Guy Hocguenghem and I would like to lay a bet that something of Marc's dedication to the cause of homosexuality is based on this now sadly dead, but great writer and activist. A deserved 10.

Worth noting this film, evocative of 'Born in 68' predates it by 3 years.

Similar to the above mentioned but more modest in it's attempt to appraise the revolutionary epoch 68-74. The film takes it's perspective via the rise of gay liberation-ism, interestingly in a scene near the opening, suggesting that gay liberation was potentially seen as bourgeois and therefore not a subject for revolution and this exclusion drives the protagonist into a movement which politicises sexuality.

There are a lot of 68 clichés here, running like a call list of icons that must appear. However the gay imagery prevails in the overtly Goddard / nouveau vague cinematic stylisation and in some sense it successfully stakes out a gay vision of what was previously heterosexual imagery. The french are of course strong on producing a steady stream of low budget films which dutifully explore life's issues. That sense of cinematic duty pervades this film also.

The run of recent films which revisit this period share many similar characteristics. Ange Lee's Taking Woodstock, Born in 68 and this particular film have all notably interjected gay protagonists where they did exist but were historically excluded from visual representation at the time.

It is usual for the 68 epoch to carry an enormous weight of promise & possibility and there is a sense in these reassessment movies that they seek to unlock something of that energy yet ultimately they find nothing left but echoes, ghosts and spectres. The cultural anticlimax of the early 70s has become an awkward presence in these cinematic narratives and it induces uncertainty about how to draw conclusions. The personal value it holds for the protagonist at the end and the suggestion of hope for a return to such times in the future may or may not come to pass. However, in retrospect, one wonders if the desire to revisit this period is also concerned with a collective desire to be set free of it.