DANGEROUS LIVING and LOCK, CHAINS AND A CITY

These two films explore issues of Security and Diversity

DANGEROUS LIVING: COMING OUT IN THE DEVELOPING WORLD (7:30 PM)

Dangerous Living: Coming Out in the Developing World, is a feature-length documentary that explores the immense changes that occurred for gays, lesbians and transgender people living in the Global South. In the last decade of the 20th Century, a new heightened visibility began spreading throughout the developing world and the battles between families, fundamentalist religions, and governments around sexual and gender identity had begun. But in the West, few people knew about this historic social upheaval, until 52 men on Cairo’s Queen Boat discothèque were arrested for crimes of debauchery. That explosive story focused attention to the lives and trials of gay people coming out in the developing world and the film chronicles those events.

Dangerous Living opens with one of the Cairo 52 defendant’s, Ashraf Zanati, who was tortured, humiliated, beaten and forced to spend 13 months in prison. His simple, but powerful statement sets out the basic theme for the film: “My sexuality is my own sexuality. It doesn’t belong to anybody. Not to my government, not to my brother, my sister, my family. No.”

USA / 2003 / 60min

Credits

Directed and written by John Scagliotti
Produced by Janet Baus and Dan Hunt
Executive Producer: Reid Williams
Music: Don Dinicola
Produced by After Stonewall Inc
Major sponsor includes The H. van Ameringen Foundation

Official Site

LOCK, CHAINS AND A CITY (8:30 PM)

This one hour documentary is a creative and evocative look at the increasing security measures taken by the residents of San Jose, Costa Rica against a perceived rise in crime in the capital city. The film is a personal essay of the filmmaker's own experience at his parent's house, which - like many other middle to upper class homes in San Jose - begins to look like a barricaded fortress due to one break and entry where a carton of orange juice was stolen and left empty on the driveway.

Through the bundles of razor wire, titanium bars, and alarm systems, we see a society that is continually enclosing themselves in their own prisons in an effort to keep out thieves and other imagined riff raff.

Costa Rica / 2004 / 42min / Spanish with English subtitles

Directed, written and shot by Hernan Jimenez

The Guatemala Canada Solidarity Network