Cut Sleeve Boys
w.bangkokfilm.org/en/festival/welcome.aspx

I had no idea that this had grown to it's present size with dozens of films. Looks very interesting:

UK, 2006, 86 min
Directed by Ray Yeung
Cast: Chowee Leow, Steven Lim, Gareth Rhys Davies, Neil Collie, Mark Hampton, John Ebb-on-Knee Campbell
Color: Color
Section: Special Presentation

Mel and Ash are two British Chinese gay men who studied and drink lychee martinis together. After attending the funeral of Gavin, a closet case from their university days, they start examining the crow's feet on their faces and questioning the meaning of the labels in their wardrobes. Mel, an aging scene queen with the ego of Norma Desmond, believes life is a beauty pageant with him always the winner. He rejects the love of Todd, a provincial boy from the Welsh valleys who moves to London to be with him, in favour of quick-fix Botox sex to fight his insecurities. But how long can he sashay down the catwalk when his eye bags are bigger than his Gucci bags? And who is going to be waiting at the end of the rainbow when there is no place like home? Ash is tired of the jaded gay scene where steroid bodies and the Atkin's diet are the only offerings on the menu and all the macho posing only reveals a Farrah Fawcett in the bedroom. He meets Diane (a.k.a. Dan) a transsexual from their college days with a butch, sexy and straight-looking ex-army boyfriend, Ross. Ash decides the only way for him to find a real man is to click on those Jimmy Choo's. Will his foray into the wonderland of tranny burrows and tranny chasers bring him his dream man? Not to be upstaged, the dead but not forgotten Gavin has a posthumous secret up his leg of mutton sleeves waiting to explode! With witty one-liners, underground drag club, sex in public toilet, and an all male production of the Miss Pacific Rim Beauty Pageant, Cut Sleeve Boys is a quirky stir-fried journey of self-discovery and, ultimately, a makeover of the British-Chinese gay experience.

The Masseur (Masahista)
Philippines, 2005, 80 min
Directed by Brillante Mendoza
Cast: Jaclyn Jose, Alan Paule, Coco Martin
Genre: Drama
Format: 35mm, Color: Color, Aspect Ratio: 1.85, Sound: Mono
Section: ASEAN Competition

Iliac is a twenty-year-old masseur in a massage parlor that caters to a gay clientele. There, sex is an immediate consequence of massage. It is the night of December 14, and Iliac's first customer for the day is a homosexual romance novel writer. Outside the parlor, his current girlfriend, a bar girl who works in Japan, asserts her sexual dominion over him. Back home, his estranged father dies, and as he makes the trip to the province he is faced with the reality of decay, love, life and survival all within the context of the performance of duty. Mendoza crafted The Masseur as a carefully chosen serious of dots from the lives of real-life masseurs -- connecting and combining them together. From this palette of life, integrated of their own accord, emerges a new meaning, a kaleidoscope of hues and a gamut of emotion and nuances.

Transamerica
USA, 2005, 103 min
Directed by Duncan Tucker
Cast: Felicity Huffman, Kevin Zegers, Fionnula Flanagan, Graham Greene, Elizabeth Pe├▒a
Genre: Drama
Section: International Competition

Bree is a highly educated, conservative, transsexual woman, living in a poor section of Los Angeles and working two jobs to save money for her final sexual reassignment surgery. When she receives a phone call from Toby, a jailed teenage runaway looking for his father, she's shocked to discover he is her son. Bree wants no part of Toby, but her therapist insists and withholds legal permission for Bree's final operation until she has met the boy. Bree grudgingly flies to New York to bail Toby out of jail. Released to her without explanation, Toby assumes that Bree is a Christian missionary who rescues street people. Not ready for parenthood, Bree encourages Toby's misconception. When she learns that Toby intends to skip bail and hitchhike to L.A. to break into X-rated videos and to search for his real father, Bree panics. Not wanting him to interfere with her plans for her new life, she offers him a ride cross-country, secretly plotting to abandon him with the stepfather he ran away from. As each lies and manipulates the other, Bree and Toby find themselves on an unexpected and transformative journey.

and Thai

The Stories from the North
Thailand, 2005, 88 min
Directed by Uruphong Raksasad
Genre: Documentary
Format: DV Cam, Color: Color
Section: International Documentaries

The Stories From The North evolved into its current form from a series of short documentaries made by director Uruphong Raksasad over a number of years. Now re-edited into an expansive feature, the footage forms a cinematic collage of life in the northern village in which he grew up. The film details everyday situations from the most fundamental and commonplace - the annual harvest, the absence of the younger generation who have left the village to work or study in the city - to more intriguing and the bicycle club formed by the village elders. Uruphong's roots in the village allow him to achieve a rare intimacy with his neighbors: while some footage is contemplative and observational, at other times his camera gets both literally and emotionally as close to his subject as could be.

Similar Threads: