EGLSF at Turin LGBT film festival

A message from our friends from the European Gay and Lesbian Sports Federation:

We are very pleased to inform you that EGLSF was one of the guests of the latest edition of the Turin Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, the oldest such festival in Europe and one of the most important events in the world on this topic. The reason for our presence was the inclusion for the first time of a section about sports and homosexuality. “The last taboo: our Olympics “ was an idea suggested by Paolo Colombo, a famous Italian sports journalist, himself openly gay and the director of “V-ictory”, one of the documentaries presented at the festival. His film concerns gay people in sports, in Italy and beyond, since we can see some images of Eurogames Barcelona 2008 and other international events.

The EGLSF is fortunate in having a board member who lives in Turin. Jon Landa was able to view all the films and documents in the sport section. These included: the pilot episode of “Heet gras”, a Dutch tv series aimed at young people featuring a sixteen-year-old lesbianl who above all loves playing football, or “Renée”, about Renee Richards, the first transgender tennis player in the US Open . Older films such as the commercially successful German “Sommersturm” (about a queer rowing club), the Icelandic “Strákarnir okkar” (‘Eleven men out’, a football star who comes out and joins an LGBT team after being abandoned by his own team and fans), or “Mi último round”, romantic movie from Chile who tells the story of a boxer and his lover-coach.

We especially appreciated the US documentary “Training Rules”, about a popular basketball coach from the famed Penn State University team who pushed real or suspected lesbian players to quit her team, since being homosexual or having lesbian friends (among others, since her slogan is “No alcohol, no drugs, no lesbians”) is forbidden if you want to play on her team.

EGSLF had the opportunity to speak about homosexuality and sports with some of the public present at the cinema: it is a huge taboo everywhere, but it is even more in Italy, a country where there is no protection for LGBT people and no laws against homophobic behavior.