Tekst: AnneSophie Hardinger
Kunstneren, filmmageren og fotografen Bruce LaBruce var en af de helt store trækplastre på den nyligt afsluttet Gay & Lesbian Film Festival i København. Hans film bliver både tilbedt som kultklassikere og lagt for had på grund af deres provokerende og eksplicitte pornografiske indhold. Selv er han ikke synderligt interesseret i porno, men ser pornografiens univers, som en af de få rum der er tilbage, hvor der er plads til at eksperimentere og udfordre.
Bruce LaBruce
Wonderland mødte Bruce, den sidste aften på film festivalen, op til fremvisningen af ”Skin Flick” og trods den nydelige skjorte og funklende vielsesring aner man stadig en revolutionært punk hjerte der brænder for retten til at være kontroversiel og politisk.
You are invited to this film festival as a jury member, what did you think about the films?
The programming was pretty substantial. I have been at a lot of festivals, and often they can be pretty disappointing, because the focus is not on good cinema but more on ideology. The documentaries were very strong. And the music video program was great.
So have you found some inspiration in some of the work you’ve seen here?
Yeah definitely, there was a fantastic documentary about Jack Smith, the great avant-garde American gay filmmaker from the fifties and sixties, that was totally inspirational. It really captured the essence of his work and himself. He is a huge inspiration for me in terms of his politics and just the way he led his life. He was known to have a huge influence on Andy Warhol. Warhol basically stole a lot of his ideas. And he was a Marxist – a broke Marxist, and he had a broke sensibility. He lived his life almost in poverty, so he made these elaborate costumes and sets out of almost nothing, with no money at all. Very interesting
Paper Dolls was quite amazing too. It’s about Filipino transsexuals living in Israel and taking care of elderly fundamentalist Jewish men. The premise is great.
At night they are this transsexual performance group called Paper Dolls. But beyond that, it’s a very strong documentary. It addresses a lot of issues, like racism within subcultures, gender issues and political issues.
Scene from Skin Flick
You are known for, in your work, using very explicit porn and violence. Why is this interesting for you as a theme?
I started making sexually explicit films, but I didn’t regard them as porn at all and I didn’t even consider them as art. When I started making my short experimental films I just regarded them as provocations.
So it started out as provocations?
Yes, my friends and I in Toronto were disillusioned with the gay culture and community in the 80’s. We thought it was really mainstream and boring as well. So we were attracted to the punk scene because it was more political, more energetic and stylistically interesting. But then when we started making our fanzines and making our films and showing them in that context we discovered that there was a lot of homophobia in the punk scene as well, and it really made us angry because we though this was supposed to be a space for radical energy and pushing the boundaries.
So this forced us in a way to make these very in-your-face explicit homo films. We also started appropriating a lot of imagery from pornography. So for me it was like a political motivation, that’s how I look at it. Then I made three features that were very sexually explicit art films, and because they were so explicit I gained a reputation as a pornographer and I started meeting a lot of people in the porn industry. Then my producer ended up starting a porn company, primarily because he started out producing my films. Then I started directing a couple of movies including the one we’ll see tonight – Skin Flick - for his porn company, so it ended up as some weird self-fulfilling prophesy that I ended up making porn.
Scene from upcoming zombie movie “Otto; or, Up with dead people”
So you have no problem about people viewing them strictly as porn?
For the films Skin Flick and The Raspberry Reich we made two versions. We made a more narrative version, like an art film, and then we made hardcore versions with a lot of the narrative material replaced with long sex scenes and they were marketed under different titles and different packaging and even different distributors. And I think that works very well. I make the films for two different sensibilities, but for me it’s never have been so much about the porn, because really I’m not that interested in porn, but I do think it’s one of those last remaining spaces for radical expression in gay terms, because I think gay culture has become quite conservative. In order to assimilate into the larger culture the gay communities distance themselves from the more extreme elements.
Porn is still a space that is open; you can do pretty much what you want. You can do really politically incorrect stuff, like in Skin Flick there is this really heavy rape scene. Porn is a place where you can explore the really dark sexually fantasies. So that’s what interests me about it.
So would you say that your films are more a subcultural statement rather than just a gay thing?
Sure, my last tree films are about subcultures where the characters don’t necessarily identify as gay – they are hustlers, skinheads and these leftwing radicals and in each case, some of them don’t identify as gay at all, but they still have homosexual sex with each other. It makes you think about identity politics and how sexual identities are a false construct in a way…that it’s created. If you are gay there are certain patterns you are expected to conform to, but they are not essential or inherited, they are just socially constructed.
Your upcoming movie is a zombie movie, what can we expect?
It’s made with the same producer I worked with on the earlier films and it does contain some sexually explicit scenes, but it s a bigger budget than I’ m used to working with. Better lightning and better camera. It seems like a much more normal narrative story…I don’t know if you’d call it mainstream (a mainstream zombie sex film… laughs). I’m not even sure if we will release a hardcore version, we might just have some DVD extras.
Artwork - Bruce LaBruce
You are also active on the art scene. You have just made a project at Peres Projects in Berlin. Do you think you can be more free there (on the art scene) as an artist?
Yes, the film world is a very difficult place to do extremely edgy work that is non-commercial, because its such a expensive media. The producers want a product they can sell. When working on small budget projects, I don’t have to worry about them selling, I can do pretty much what I want. With bigger budgets there’s more at stake and that means there are limits on what producers want to finance. The art scene is more open-minded; people don’t have the same expectations. With art there are no expectations, you can do it in a gallery or you can do it anywhere and you can explore the boundaries.
You have been working with artist Terence Koh, how did that start?
I got to know Terence through his website called Asianpunkboy.com. Then I introduced him to Javier Peres (famous gallery owner who runs Peres Projects)
in the first place, because I had a show at Javier’s gallery – I have been with him since 2000 and I did one of his first shows when he was still based in San Francisco.
Terence and I are both gay and we are both Canadian so we both deal with these weird Canadian identity issues. Canadians are known for having this inferior complex because of being so close to America, so we feel like a little mouse beside a big elephant, and Americans blame Canada for everything.
Can we expect to see more art projects and exhibitions?
Yes, I have been doing photography since 2000. I do installations with photography and aspects of performance. It might seem that it’s something I’m doing on the side, like a hobby almost, but I’ m planning to do a show with Dash Snow, for example, next year at Peres Projects. He’s an old friend of mine.
Some people think that punk culture is having a renaissance. Do you see this, is punk coming back?
Punk is over. It’s been made into fashion and the subversive energy has been removed and corrupted, but then again, Punk has always been more like an attitude….
PHOTO - Courtesy Bruce LaBruce
