my book, between those covers, will be out in 2 weeks.

I really love the illustration.

I have a colleague here in Melbourne and each time we finish work, we go to the opposite sides of the train station, waiting for the ride home. And each time one of us sees the other driving away, waving from the windows. Even though I have never had camera with me to catch those good-byes, I once managed to capture Marie leaving me to wait for the next train. Somehow there’s something sad in this pic, even though we were in a very happy mood after an afternoon of nude posing.

And if you have the chance, go and see Norvalls “Shower”, it’s a short but strong flap straight in your face.

The 23rd MQFF took place in March and exhibited some of the finest queer cinema from Australia and across the world. From the selection of films, documentaries, panels and special presentations, Berit Renser followed two sets of queer shorts.

What would you do if someone was wanking himself off at a public bathroom and reveling in it audibly? If you took a step closer, as a character from the Norvalls-directed Shower (pictured) did, to express your resentment, it would make a good story for a Hollywood movie. But it takes a gay short fiction for the annoyed man to start tossing his washroom neighbour’s dick and an art house material for him to beat the partner to death from shame when witnessed by a straight observer.

That’s exactly how the sequence Sex Drives and Videotapes appears – artistic intentions competing with lust. In many cases the latter outshines the first and forms a rhapsody of sex drive. Regardless of how the narrative takes off – and in this case it resembles porn – it habitually ends with exposed copulation.  Amsallem’s People in Front of the Cameramixes is an over-saturated video art combined with home-made porn tape where a child-like circle game connects participants not by uniting hands but by stroking dicks. Equally, in Antonia da Silva’s Mates a five-minute fuck is erected from the intercourse of a sequence of lovers. Bardo’s Chaser makes a mildly disturbing remark “No condoms – it’s rude” at a public sex party. And finally a transvestite doctor from Rinot’s Backside Approach rescues a couple by pulling out a condom from one’s asshole and treats it as a new-born baby. Right there in your face, lick it and dick it gay porn in an artistic humorous sauce with no conservative waving his fingers around.

The audience is pleased. Certainly there is a sense of community there – an outburst of laughter hits the cinema hall crammed with male couples when I least expect it and this gives me a double introspection to the gay way of life making the whole sequence of Sex Drives and Video Tapes even more fascinating.

Not feeling so misplaced at the feminine Boobtube likely affects my perception. Nothing strikes me like lightning. Creations for the lesbians seem to be softened up and polished with a fairly pink magic powder of emotions and tenderness like in Galibert’sBouddhi Bouddha where the visual takes us through a spiritual love-making. Even the obviously most rebellious intentions – like tough rock band girls in Giorgi and Tivrier’s Polaroid Song among others – climax with tuning down the arousing music to a melancholic ballad and culminate with women waking up in PJs after wild sex. Really?

As another bait to the stereotypes, the female sequences excel in drama, mind games and relationship muddles rather than physical action. Scheermann’s Fresh Air Therapy 2shows a troubled hallucinating lesbian couple who, in fact, doesn’t have sex at all. Serbu’s Sugar Cookie brings a freaky stalker to the couple’s house to boost the sex drive of a self-indulgent girlfriend. And a nun from Lariviere’s Mary Mae enters a confessional after having merely kissed a girl at a discotheque. Even though I am well entertained by several from the selection, the gay men make even the most untamed lesbian stories look like small cute fluffy rabbits.

Pigeon-holing the gay community was the least of my intentions before writing, but these juxtapositions I came in contact with, intentionally or unintentionally framed the two sequences. And maybe it’s not that bad after all. By roughly categorizing the themes I can now proudly suggest the Queer Festival to a heterosexual audience. Check out some lesbian movies if you’re into romance or family drama and some artistic homoerotica to spice up your sex life. And as the nun so wisely concluded, “God will understand”.

The Melbourne Queer Film Festival is an annual event. More information can be obtained from the website. 

****

Tuesday, 26 October. Pak Sugeng’s birthday, announces an old notebook with yellowed corners, left on a fragile wooden desk. But no birth day ever followed. Instead, a melted wall clock shows frozen time. It is dusk, it says, for ever.

The dinner table has stayed static for weeks. A mincer tethered to the table edge chopped its last fesh and the broth from the bowl evaporated long past, leaving behind some solitary crumpled peas. A distorted spoon still waits to be picked up by the family child and the dust to be swiped of from his favourite cup. In the midst of the derelict dinner scene, the Holy Bible is calling for the closing prayer.

But there is no family and no food. There is no movement and no prayers. There is just ash. The bowls without the broth, the deformed spoon, the seized meat grinder, the dried out peas, the cupboard for dishes and the sink in the corner, the chairs and the pillows on couches, the crystal vase and the dead fowers inside it, the lamps and the radio, the grandmother’s hanging dress and the kid’s teddy bear – it is all covered by a layer of grey ruthless ash that has muted the vibrant animated house into a lifeless monument to nature. Cold. Still. And numb. To remind us his lordship.

Someone used to call it a home. A collapsed grid of an old gable roof and dropping concrete from the only upright wall was once a solid house that served to protect a family from its surroundings. It was the sphere of the private, the intimate, the unseen for the foreign eye that now undresses itself so disgracefully and melts into one with the cruel outer world.

No more boarders. The dead foliage of trees allows the sight to travel for miles. Sad emptiness looms around the dining room and uncovers a post-apocalyptic moonscape where there once used to be a lush forest. A disrobed village now opens its intimate side for observers and looks vulnerable without its everyday masks.

Merely one green child of a leaf sprouts out from the river of cinders and paints the sole colour to this desaturated picture. A wind whirls up to cut the still silence and the clouds move apart until the god shows its visage. An old volcano looks upon the village that now stands naked in front of it. It is only him, who decides the boarders of birth and demise.

A lovely forest walk…

..on a spooky autumn day.

The way of editing photos really depends on the mood. And the way of reading and enjoying them later also has a lot to do with the state of mind.

So how are you feeling today?

Marie found a lamp from the streets

Finally in Melbourne!

Now that I’m a diligent student, you will soon get a flood of homework on these walls (starting from HDR, I’ll try not to do something horrific with this technique).

Until then a shot of a happy immigrant dumpster diving in the back streets of oh-so-fine Melbourne.

I’ve been offline for such a long time I even got reluctant to visit my own page.

But I’m currently working on my book (my other me is a writer) which will be published in Indonesia in March-Aprl and I’ve got only a few days left to hand it in as a ready product.

As I’m not a patient person, I needed some side-activities to keep me fresh. It turned out  my friend was house-sitting his friends’ place with a photo studio which he kindly let me use for a day. And as also Marie decided to shave her hair, we had some fun with the new looks in a new atmosphere.

No one really knew how to fix the lights, the massive flash only made things worse and I didn’t exactly have a right lens for it, but I’m pretty happy with my first-ever studio shoot. I might consider having the equipment once I get rich.

Marie enjoying some bred in Paris

Finally a picture of Marie with her clothes on!

After spending two years in Indonesia, nothing could have made us happier than getting a real baguette from a real boulangerie, eating it with real cheese and flushing it down with real wine. The best moment in Paris.

Still waiting for feedback to make things as good-looking and well-sounding as possible.

Venice, Italy

Here’s a new photo-story. How does this work for you? Go on, spit it out..

I personally feel some parts of the text are not strong enough yet, especially the link between boxes number 4 and 5. The original story came from my other blog, which I had to shrink so much that it became hard to understand in the end if the meaning got through on the shorter version.

Also the font might be too thin for printing, isn’t it?

And all those guys who are professionals, I need some very practical advice. And forgive me my stupid questions now..

If I put together different photos which I have edited in the past in Lightroom and exported them all with a different resolution (e.g 72 for screen and some bigger ones for print). If I now want to mix them with each other in Photoshop to print it out as a postcard, is it a problem that everything had a different resolution or it’s something you can fix while saving it in PS later? And what should be the right resolution for something of a size of a normal postcard? (1/4th of A4).

Good news is I’m gonna study in Melbourne next semester and I just signed myself to a course “from Pixel to Print”. I’m very excited about my very first class in a photo department!