Queer Lisboa - International Queer Film Festival returns to Cinema São Jorge and Cinemateca Portuguesa for its 29th edition, from 19 to 27 September. With around a hundred films already confirmed, the festival unveils the first titles in its programme. From 20 September, at the Cinemateca Portuguesa, the festival pays tribute to the French filmmaker Lionel Soukaz, an activist and a central and pioneering figure in the LGBTQIA+ movement in France.

Born in 1953 and deceased last February in Marseille - to where he had moved several years earlier after a life spent almost entirely in Paris - Lionel Soukaz was one of the pioneers of French queer cinema, with a strong affiliation to the activists and intellectuals of the FHAR (Homosexual Front for Revolutionary Action) and the magazine Gai Pied, such as Guy Hocquenghem or Copi. Strongly influenced by the avant-garde and experimental cinema movements of the 1970s, he was also responsible for organising the first gay and lesbian film festival in Paris, Écrans roses et nuits bleues, in 1978. His films, which were rescued from oblivion in 2004, thanks above all to the claim of French cultural critic Nicole Brenez, reveal an uncompromising commitment to autobiographical narration and the expression of desire, and embody his unlimited desire for freedom, which led to the censorship of some of his works. Censorship that Soukaz incorporates and ironises in his works such as Ixe, from 1980, as an explicit shock-response to the censorious outcry surrounding The Homosexual Century, released the previous year, today an unavoidable classic of French cinema, choreographed and co-written with Hocquenghem, a film directly influenced by Foucault that traces the history of modern homosexuality throughout the 20th century, from the beginnings of sexology and the nudes of Baron von Gloeden, to gay activism and cruising the streets of Paris.

The retrospective, made up of his work in the short and medium-length format, is organised around a set of aesthetic, thematic and narrative lines, but above all autobiographical, a central and structuring element of Soukaz's work. This is reflected, for example, in RV, mon ami, from 1994, an emotional visual poem dedicated to his partner of 12 years, Hervé Couergou, who died that same year of complications from HIV/AIDS, and with which this retrospective opens, along with the celebrated Artistes en Zone Troublés, from 2023, which delves into the tapes, letters and diaries exchanged between the two of them to construct an ode to love in times of epidemic. It is also on the basis of his Journal Annales, representing more than 2,000 hours of images collected over the years, that Soukaz builds En corps +, from 2021, a manifesto of the lives and bodies, activists and artists, that have shaped his life and work. These last two works were codirected with French filmmaker Stéphane Gérard, who will be in Lisbon to accompany the retrospective and participate in a talk with the public at the Cinemateca Portuguesa.

And because Soukaz's life and work intersect with French and international queer history and the history of cinema, a work that embodies and observes its time, in this programme one can find Jean Genet (La loi X - La nuit en permanence, 2001), where Soukaz returns to the topic of censorship; Pasolini (Les Corps d’amour de Pasolini, 2005), about texts by French philosopher René Schérer, another regular in his films; Michel Journiac, a pioneer of body art in France (150 poèmes mis en sang, 1993); and even Jean-Luc Godard, in a speech about Palestine (Carottage, 2009), or Allen Ginsberg marching in Washington, in La Marche gaie, from 1980. The retrospective inevitably also explores the first two decades of his work, marked by an experimental, more contemplative visual language, as seen in Ballade pour un homme seul, from 1969, or Lolo Mégalo blessé en son honneur, from 1974, as well as his important and innovative foray into explicit cinema, with Le Sexe des anges, from 1977.

RETROSPECTIVE: Lionel Soukaz

150 poèmes mis en sang, Lionel Soukaz, Michel Journiac (France, 1993, 13’)
Artistes en Zone Troublés, Lionel Soukaz, Stéphane Gérard (France, 2023, 39’)
L’année des treize lunes, Lionel Soukaz, Tony Tonnerre (France, 2001, 18’)
Autoportrait, Lionel Soukaz (France, 2002, 8’)
Ballade pour un homme seul, Lionel Soukaz (France, 1969, 18’)
Carottage, Lionel Soukaz, Powers, Stéphane Gérard (France, 2009, 47’)
Les Corps d’amour de Pasolini, Kami Kaz, Lionel Soukaz, Olivier Hérkaz (France, 2005, 34’)
En corps +, Lionel Soukaz, Stéphane Gérard (France, 2021, 65’)
Ixe, Lionel Soukaz (France, 1980, 44’)
La loi X - La nuit en permanence, Lionel Soukaz (France, 2001, 9’)
La Marche gaie, Lionel Soukaz (France, 1980, 12’)
Lolo Mégalo blessé en son honneur, Lionel Soukaz (France, 1974, 17’)
Maman que man, Lionel Soukaz (France, 1982, 49’)
Nu lacté, Lionel Soukaz, Othello Vilgard, Xavier Baert (France, 2002, 6’)
Race d’Ep / The Homosexual Century, Guy Hocquenghem, Lionel Soukaz (France, 1979, 83’)
RV, mon ami, Lionel Soukaz (France, 1994, 28’)
Le Sexe des anges, Lionel Soukaz (France, 1977, 45’)