42 | Sight&Sound | April 2020
LEVAN AKIN AND THEN WE DANCEDlaws that prohibit discrimination against queer
people. Akin is sceptical: “It looks and reads very
well, but it’s not really properly implemented.” He was
partly inspired to make And Then We Danced when thou-
sands of Georgians protested against a 2013 Pride march
in Tbilisi, breaking through police barricades and beating
queer activists with stinging nettles. “There should be re-
percussions for the people organising these counter-dem-
onstrations and inciting this violence. And there aren’t.”
Akin had to be guarded in how he communicated the
film’s subject matter when it was in production. “We
contacted one of the national dance ensembles very
early on, naively thinking they might help us,” he says.
“We told them about the movie. They freaked and called
everybody and told them not to work with us. Far-right
people called our casting agent and threatened her; we
had bodyguards while we were shooting.” The extent of
the homophobia resulted in the loss of film locations at
extremely short notice, although ultimately the resis-
tance entrenched Akin’s determination to make the film.
“It was a very rough shoot, we had very little money but
we were also bolstered by all the pushback,” he recalls.
“That gave us energy to keep fighting.”
While some filmmakers in post-communist European
countries have started to engage with queer-positive sto-
rylines in their movies over the last decade, the approach
of many directors in post-Soviet states has been consider-
ably more cautious. Ironically, two of the USSR’s greatest
filmmakers are considered by many to have been queer.
Despite being married until his death in 1948, many be-
lieve Sergei Eisenstein was gay – an interpretation made
explicit in Peter Greenaway’s bawdy biopic Eisenstein in
Guanajuato (2015), a film that earned much opprobrium
in Russia. Sergei Parajanov, director of stunning works
such as Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1965) and The Colour
of Pomegranates (1968), was sentenced to prison in the late
1940s for homosexual acts with an officer of the MGB
(a forerunner of the KGB), a few years before he began
making films. His flamboyance and provocative nature
earned him the disapproval of the Soviet authorities, and
in the early 1970s he was sent to a maximum-security
gulag on a number of charges, a sentence that led to a large
group of artists and filmmakers worldwide petitioning for
his release. Unsurprisingly, none of the films of Eisenstein
or Parajanov feature explicitly gay characters, although
homoeroticism can be detected in the work of both.
While some critics have read queer subtexts into films
such as Hussein Erkenov’s 100 Days Before the Command
(1990), a dreamlike, erotically charged piece about young
soldiers in the Soviet army, it wasn’t until 2004, nearly
15 years after the dissolution of the USSR, that openly
queer characters began to appear. You I Love (2004), a
silly romantic comedy with very broad satirical swipes
at capitalism, is Russia’s first gay-positive film, even if
it ends on an ambiguous note for the two male lovers.
Felix Mikhailov’s Jolly Fellows (2009) explores the lives of
drag queens in Moscow, with many moments of misery
weaved in among the sparkles. The bleak but beautiful
Winter Journey (2013) follows the doomed affair between
a gay music student and a petty criminal. A controversial
Russian amendment, forbidding positive depictions of
homosexuality “for the Purpose of Protecting Children
from Information Advocating for a Denial of Traditional
Family Values”, was signed into law by Vladimir Putin
in 2013, with transgressors facing hefty fines. As a result
Kirill Serebrennikov, after struggling to find funding
amid the resultant homophobia in Russia, gave up his
ambition to make a film about the gay composer Pyotr
Tchaikovsky (Serebrennikov’s 2016 film The Student
does feature a prominent gay character who, inevitably,
ends up killed by the end credits). If representations of
gay characters are rare, portrayals of lesbian, bisexual
and trans characters in feature films from former Soviet
states are almost non-existent.
While homophobia may be prevalent in Georgia, the
tolerance of queer people is significantly greater than in
many other countries. Homosexuality is illegal in more
than 70 nations, and in 2019 Brunei briefly joined the
ranks of countries where gay sex is punishable by death.
Remarkably, films exploring queer lives are still made in
these countries. Wanuri Kahiu’s Rafiki (2018), the first
Kenyan film selected for the Cannes Film Festival, was
temporarily banned in its home country for “promoting
lesbianism”. Walking with Shadows (2019), a British-Nige-
rian co-production set in Lagos and based on a novel by
Jude Dibia, explores the fallout when the homosexuality
of a married man is discovered.
Although Rafiki and Walking with Shadows are com-
paratively mild in their depiction of queer love – the
former is a teen romance, the latter a soapy melodrama- the fact that they are from countries where gay people
are persecuted is a major step forward. Making these
kinds of films in countries with strong traditional values
is, unsurprisingly, very challenging. When shooting Re-
tablo (2017), a powerful Bafta-nominated drama set in a
Peruvian Andes village, in which a teenager discovers his
father has had affairs with men, director Alvaro Delgado
Aparicio had to sidestep some of the queer details of the
story when seeking permission to film in rural locations.
Akin faced similar issues when scouting locations for
And Then We Danced, occasionally needing to state that
the story was about a French tourist who falls in love
with Georgian culture, rather than a gay romance.
And Then We Danced is much more optimistic in its
outlook than these other films made in oppressive condi-
tions. Akin was determined, for example, not to show any
violence towards the gay characters. First-time viewers
may watch certain scenes on edge, waiting for a physical
attack that never comes. “I wanted the film to be hopeful.
I never wanted Levan Gelbakhiani’s character to be victi-
mised in any way and beaten up,” says Akin. “I just wanted
‘ I wanted the
film to be a
warm embrace
rather than a
punch in the
stomach. I
didn’t want it
to be an attack
on tradition and
culture, because
I love tradition
and culture’
THREE’S COMPANY
Levan Akin was determined
to give his lead character
Merab (centre) an optimistic
story arc in And Then We
Danced, despite the sense
of threat in certain scenes: ‘I
just wanted him to be in love
and happy,’ the director saysReviewed on
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