GAZE: Ungentle (+ Pre-Feature Shorts)

CLUB 18+80 min

FEATURE:

Ungentle Dirs Huw Lemmey & Onyeka Igwe UK, 2023, 37m

Huw Lemmey – writer, artist, critic and co-founder of the magnificent ‘Bad Gays’ podcast – joins us in person to discuss his co-directorial debut with acclaimed moving image artist Onyeka Igwe. Scripted by Lemmey and narrated by Ben Whishaw, Ungentle is a major new film commission exploring the knotty and intriguing relationship between the history of British espionage and male homosexuality, juxtaposing anonymous memoir with carefully crafted imagery hinting at symbolic attachments and a lost past. Ungentle’s unseen protagonist recalls his young life and subsequent recruitment into the world of intelligence agencies, relating experiences of subterfuge, community, sexual and state secrecy between gay men and spies. Ungentle draws on the life stories of infamous Cambridge Five “traitors” Anthony Blunt and Guy Burgess, and civil servant John Vassall. These Cold War-era scandals featuring gay men linked homosexuality with betrayal in popular imagination. What emerges is a portrait of the often contradictory self–perceptions which marked

‘Englishness’, sexuality, and class in the mid–twentieth century.

Followed by an in-conversation with writer and director Huw Lemmey.

PRE-FEATURE SHORTS:

New Threads Dir. Elspeth Vischer / Ireland / 2023 / 6m

Imaginative and informative, New Threads combines archival and contemporary footage of Belfast with firsthand accounts of lesbian lives in the Troubles to imagine invisible queer women in the light of day.

Two stories of Dublin, queer Dir. Alan Power / Ireland / 2023 / 6m

Two individuals share their personal stories of queer Dublin through a series of voice messages and photographs, capturing the essence and experience of the city, its people and their stories.