Movie festivals

The importance of film festivals

The importance of film festivals cannot be overstated for any nation or organization. It would be inconceivable to conceive the global cinema industry without film festivals. Making movies would not be possible without the inevitable changes that time brings due to the beneficial inviolability of the worldwide festival movement’s core values and their global universality. This essay tries to create a justification and a strategy for a University of Phoenix student-run LGBT society film festival. The purpose of conducting this festival is additional informing children about people of both orientations, provision of the views of famous movie directors in order to help children make their own attitude towards people of LGBT society.

Challenges faced by LGBT people

We live in the modern world, however, even nowadays LGBT people are accepted not everywhere. Millions of people live in countries where same-sex love is forbidden by law and homosexual relationships are punished. In five countries and provinces of the two other countries, homosexuality is punishable by death, while in others, non-traditional sexual orientation faces a fine or prison. The US is loyal to LGBT people, nonetheless, in some states such people can feel more comfortable and in some of them they feel limited. In many countries where homosexuality is permitted by law, same-sex couples are treated differently. In fact, people’s outlook forms in childhood and develops during adulthood; they form their opinions and convictions due to personal experience.

Imparting tolerance and acceptance through film festivals

Acceptance of alternate opinions is not imposing. The issue of acceptance of LGBT people is still the problem for many people. Film festival is able to let students see all alternate opinions concerning why people behave some certain way and they can be through. This is a very useful approach.

Movie selection for the festival

Three movies were chosen for this festival. The first one is “Brokeback Mountain” (2015). This name might be the very first thing than come to one’s mind when there is the talk about homosexual relationships. This is the story of the uneasy relationship of two cowboys. Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist were able to carry their love through life, harnessing themselves with hope and the illusion of an imminent possibility of happiness. Even knowing each other since childhood, when hiring for a ranch, cowboys never forgot about one another. The wedding and the birth of children also did not cool their feelings.

The homosexual communication among cowboys was severely punished in the place where they lived, so the men could not tell anyone about their feelings. For the same reason, they could not live together. The unexpected death of Jack was a blow to Ennis. Afterward that Ennis’ life before that death became just a memory. In this movie both men were not responsible for falling in love. Both of them were confident that their love was something prohibited and wrong. They had to meet secretly, otherwise anyone would see them. In the episode in the tent, when both men were about to spend a night, they could not resist it and indulged in passion.

None of them could go home, because they would be judged. Not even judged, they both mentioned that they would be killed for it. All attributes of a ”standard” life we present for both men: they were married and had kids. Nonetheless, they had to pretend who they are not. That is why, they were unhappy. This movie is very intense and emotional, but it reveals the sad truth about the non-acceptance of homosexual people.

The second movie is ”Blue Is the Warmest Colour” (2013). This is the story about a school girl Adele, who begins exploring herself as a woman and understands that men do not attract her at all. She meets a young and spirit-free artist named Emma, and over time their relationship becomes something more. Together they start exploring public acceptance of their sexuality and the emotional spectrum of their relationship. Just like in the previous movie, homosexual orientation is something bad and prohibited for French society. For this reason, when Adele starts meeting Emma very often, her girlfriends start suspecting something and condemn the girl very much.

The presence of Emma near their mate caused a flurry of emotions from classmates. At the next meeting, Adele’s friends behave aggressively and a huge quarrel arose. Just like in the first movie, both girls had to hide their real relationships from others. They had to date boys, not to look ”too different” from other schoolgirls. This movie is intense: any teenager or student would feel bad for the main characters and would wish them to be accepted and finally left by the society. One more time the fact that living one’s life for other people, in order to ”please” them, is a bad strategy and it would never end up with anything good.

The third movie from the list for the festival is ”Carol” (2015). ”Carol” is an intimate story. Social roles are important in it no less than gender, but both are just entourage for views. Therese wants to break off relations with her boyfriend Richard, and Carol is about to deal with the situation with her husband. It seems that the girls have very little in common, but only at first glance. The girls get acquainted in a large supermarket. Therese works in the toy department, wearing the Santa Claus hat. Carol is looking for a gift from her daughter, wearing a rich fur coat. The girls notice each other through the pre-holiday crowd and their romance starts. Carol was going through a difficult time for herself. She was worried that she would not see her little daughter again. For this reason, she tried to save the marriage as much as she could. Nevertheless, she felt depressed all the time. Therese got trough a similar situation. Disassembly and clarification of the relationship with her boyfriend exhausted her. These girls are different in social status, but at the same time, so similar in life situations. In my opinion, in this movie, in contrast to two other ones, society is not against lesbian love much. Rather Carol’s husband was. She had to make her decision between her husband and Therese.

Conclusion

Summing up the plots of these three movies, it can be concluded that homosexual love and LGBT people themselves are not fully accepted by society so far. Such people are often unpleasant from the purely aesthetic point of view. Additionally, in all three movies tolerance is limited much. In the first movie the viewers will see two adult men, who are confused with their destinies. In the second movie there are two teenagers, who recently started exploring their bodies and figuring out what they want from life and how want to spend it. In the third case women from the two social strata converged because of the similarity of their life situations.

People all over the world can have their own reasons for accepting and non-accepting of homosexuality and LGBT people. Some of them do it because of their beliefs. Christians can be called ”homophobes”. For instance, in the Hindu scriptures, homosexuality is spoken of as a disgusting feature inherent in the representatives of demons, as well as a deeply perverted person: If considering the issue of the relationship to homosexuality in Buddhism, due to its exceptional peace and tolerance, this religion tries to avoid strict prohibitions on certain manifestations of human debauchery. In Judaism, for example, homosexual sexual relations that do not lead to a giving birth to new people are strictly forbidden.

In highly developed countries discrimination on the basis of race or nationality is prohibited and the same laws prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. On the other hand, people should learn to distinguish between imposing of something and making own choices and decisions. Nowadays in the vast majority of countries in the world, young people are more tolerant to homosexuality than the older generation. It is caused by the fact that their upbringing was much stricter and they were limited in the sources of information.

Students of University of Phoenix need to have this festival for the reason that it will make their outlooks wider, not limiting themselves with thoughts and judgments, the way it was done to their ancestors before. Objectivity can be formed only in a case or providing correct movies and the right way of explanation of the issue of homosexuality to children. In the movies, each of the directors was able to reveal and explain their own vision of same-sex love and the lack of such relationships. None of them showed the millet of people who are embracing or kissing for the sake of joking or just like that. These people are madly in love and every story can bring tears to any viewer. It is important, because only when seeing real emotions and feelings, students would believe those stories and understand the characters, their intentions and main goals.

Summing up everything said above, it should be concluded that conducting of such a film festival is incredibly necessary for students. There will be an opportunity to make their outlooks wider and she the ”secret” thoughts of those people, who are afraid to be judged or caught by someone because of their sexual orientation. Tolerance and acceptance of others the way they are - are the solution for constant conflicts between people. Understanding is what one needs for having peaceful relationships with the whole world. Without understanding people will always be in confrontation.