Full Speed - Arab Gay Movie

Synopsis:

This wonderful and ambitious film examines issues of race, art and romance both gay and straight in modern France through a quartet of very diverse young friends united by a common factor: their unrequited love for one another.

Independent Review:

“Love: Four Divertimenti”

Gaël Morel co-wrote (with Catherine Corsini) and directed this very French exploration of the manifestations of love in a style that feels more like eavesdropping on private encounters than on a linear drama. The plot is actually tightly woven around each of the four characters, at the same time giving the effect of four characters’ viewpoints on love.

Samir (Mezziane Bardadi) is a French Arab from Algeria who opens the film in a tender frolic with his ‘blood brother’ and quickly witnesses the accidental death of the man he loves. He travels to a small town in France, lonely, needy, feeling like an outsider (remember the history of the French Algerian conflict) and encounters a young novelist Quentin (Pascal Cervo) celebrating the publication of his first novel with his best friend Jimmy (Stéphane Rideau) and his girlfriend Julie (Élodie Bouchez) in a dance bar. Samir and Quentin make eye contact and soon a brief assignation outside the club leads to a kiss that the vulnerable Samir views as a sign of love but that Quentin views as strange but as possible content for his next novel.

hot-algerian-guys

sexy-algerian-boy

algerian-kissing-gay

Quentin loves Julie, Julie loves Quentin, but has an eye on Quentin’s best friend Jimmy, a lad faithful to his friendship with Quentin to the point of fending off Julie’s enamourment. But when Quentin and Samir begin spending extended periods of time together (Samir longing for a physical relationship, Quentin refusing but intent on gathering information for his novel), affinities are tested. Quentin departs for Paris to write, Jimmy and Julie begin a lusty affair, and Samir feels again deserted by a lover. Samir is attacked by gay bashers and defended by Quentin who in the course of the fight sustains a head injury, an injury at first easily resolved but one that later leads to tragedy. Quentin returns from Paris to discover Julie has found love with Jimmy and while Samir’s obsession with Quentin races at the new availability of Quentin as a partner, Quentin is disgusted and returns to his career as a writer in Paris and the story comes to a protracted ending with a series of sad incidents: Quentin, the core of each of the love stories remains aloof, dedicated to his growing fame as a writer and gleaning the events as fodder for his assent to literary fame.

The stories are bound with threads of same-gender love, homophobia, human frailty and need. The actors are all beautiful for the eye and render tender performances. The countryside of France is exquisitely captured by cinematographer Jeanne Lapoirie and director Gaël Morel manages to weave these little stories in a conversational, simple manner that appeal to the heart and the eye. For some the film may seem rambling and disconnected and unfairly compared to ‘The Wild Reeds’, but Morel has a sensitive, gentle manner in setting a mood that allows it to flow like a stroll through the flowering woods of young passions. Recommended.
~ Grady Harp (Los Angels, CA, United States)

Independent Review:

” Wild Reeds Reunited”

Full Speed [A toute vitesse] reunites three of the best young stars to come out of France in a long time: Stephane Rideau and Elodie Bouchez, directed by Wild Reeds co-star Gael Morel. The viewing experience of some films is enhanced by watching another one first. This is the case here. Before you watch this movie, watch The Wild Reeds [Les roseaux sauvages]. Full Speed is fine by itself, no question, but you’ll enjoy it a lot more if you watch The Wild Reeds first. It was made by André Téchiné two years before. For those who don’t know, André Téchiné is a wonderful French director who has a certain knack for beautifully-filmed movies. Even from watching one of his movies you can pick up on his techniques. Well, Gaël Morel, the director of this movie and one of the stars of Reeds picked up so much from Téchiné that he decided to make movies himself. After several shorts made-for-tv, some starring Rideau, this is his first major motion picture. Unless you knew for sure that Téchiné was not the director you’d swear he made Full Speed. All his little trademark techniques are there.

Morel starred in Reeds with Rideau and Bouchez, and one of the plot elements was the Algerian war in the 60’s. In Speed, Morel has Rideau and Bouchez together again, with the Algerian war as a plot element, retrospectively though, as At Full Speed is set in contemporary France.. Further, these actors, Rideau and Bouchez, both wonderfully talented in their own right, went on to star together in several other movies, and Morel directed them in a few of those. Kind of like a French brat pack. Stéphane Rideau is one of these French sex-symbols, and any film he’s in is worth watching. He’s been compared to a modern-day James Dean.

Set in a Paris suburb, in Full Speed we see Rideau (Jimmy) as a rebellious but sensitive young man dealing with his best friend Cervo’s sudden fame as a young author. Bouchez has the same trouble in her relationship with Cervo. The distance between them all increases when a young gay Algerian with a story to tell steps in. Rideau and Bouchez hook up, and Cervo doesn’t seem to care about them anymore: he has the young Algerian to write about. He wrote about Rideau, published his story, and now he’s moving on. This all goes on against a background of a modern French ethnic suburb. A variety of emotional set-tos take place amongst the four characters illustrating betrayal, isolation, loneliness, and introspective conflicts, all ending tragically.

Critics claimed that Full Speed was sometimes disjointed, with scenes that seem to have nothing to do with what’s going on, or an ending that makes no sense at all (as is sometimes the case in French movies, you’re left wondering what happened). But in this movie, while the continuity may not be as didactic as some mainstream blockbuster moviegoers might like, the connectivity is apparent if the viewer pays attention and listens to what’s going on, something sorely lacking in North American audiences. Whether this is possible by simply reading sub-titles is unclear, so try to follow the dialogue if you can understand French. This movie is a fine first major effort on the part of Morel, and most of the credit for its success goes to Rideau and Bouchez. And André Téchiné too for sure. And Morel knows it. A must-see for both Rideau fans and for fans of French dramas featuring attractive young men and women.

“Sadj” is the colloquial Arabic word for “gay” in most countries of the Middle East. While a more appropriate adjective “mithli” (“like me, similar, same-(sex)”) has found its way into the elite academic vernacular of contemporary Arab society, “sadj” is the term I heard most during my travels in the Middle East. Meaning, roughly, “peculiar” or “strange,” sadj is the easy way to classify a homosexual in the Arab world. The concept of homosexuality, of intimate and romantic same-sex relations, is still so taboo, that there is no need to delve farther than that one word. Forget butch or fem or any other adjectives you’ve come to appreciate as descriptive markers in Western gay society: sadj pretty much covers all the bases. More a result of culture than of religion (but now, unfortunately, reinforced by the three dominant monotheistic religions of the region), homosexuality in the Middle East nowadays is something people don’t particularly care to talk about. In some more progressive parts of the region, people understand and recognize that these “sadjeeyeen” exist, but there is no need to discuss them. Morocco is one of these places.

If you juxtapose Morocco (Maroc, in French) against many other countries in the Arab world, such as Sudan or Iraq, the sliver of North Africa looks likes a calm oasis for Middle Eastern gays and lesbians. While sporadic acts of violence against homosexuals is definitely a threat, they pale in comparison to the recent violence that has flared in post-invasion Iraq. And while many Moroccans are just as torn on the issue as most Arabs across the Middle East, Morocco tends to be a more lenient society overall than other North African countries. Morocco itself is a patchwork of cultures and languages, ranging from Berber to Spanish, Portuguese to Arab, and French to Senegalese and sub-saharan African. Most Moroccans are descendants of the Berbers, the original inhabitants of the the “maghreb” region of North Africa, including the current Moroccan ruler, King Mohammed VI. Throw in there a mix of all the ethnicities listed above and you have a country steeped in cultural diversity and plurality. In my opinion, this kind of melting pot of cultures, minorities, languages, and religions is the ideal environment for the acceptance of homosexuals. Look at the United States or Britain: two countries with relatively accepting social policies with historically large immigrant populations. Currently Morocco has the potential to reach the level of acceptance needed for an open society that embraces homosexuals, but with the rising threat of Islamic fundamentalism and extremism, as well as a cultural revival aiming to bring Morocco back to the seventh century and the time of the Prophet Muhammad, homosexuals (at least Moroccan homosexuals) continue to be looked at, thankfully in a mostly nonviolent manner, as taboo: as “sadj.”

This doesn’t mean that Morocco is anti-gay. On the contrary, the country has come a long way under the auspices of the current royal regime. In 2005, King Muhammad VI endorsed a grand, sweeping reform of the mudawana, or Moroccan family code, that extended much needed basic human rights to Morocco’s women and children, much to the chagrin of many fundamentalists. In addition to the family law reforms, King Muhammad VI has expanded (if only by a small measure) the power of Morocco’s parliament and has endorsed the idea of more powerful multiparty political system. While Morocco’s monarchy is not going anywhere anytime soon (the king is considered a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad), many in Morocco are becoming more and more impatient with the royal house. And while most homes and shops are equipped with portraits of their youthful king, it is common to find many Moroccans who would rather see the throne abolished, to be replaced by a more democratic system or an Islamist-led regime. New rumors about the king emerge everyday and can result in a strict response from the Moroccan government if leaked to the press or published online. The most entertaining, and personally interesting, rumor I stumbled across during my time in Morocco is that the king himself may be homosexual. Young, in his forties, and an avid water sportsman, many street vendors sell smiling photos of the king on vacation jet skiing in the south of France. Very rarely do you see pictures of the Moroccan ruler with his young wife or child. One of the juiciest rumors came this past summer, when it became known that the Moroccan king had decided to take a vacation to a private chateau outside of Paris, sans his wife or child, and, presumably, in the company of men. Could the Moroccan king be gay? For most traditional Moroccans, this would result in a blasphemy so intense it could threaten the throne itself. The idea of a gay member of the Prophet Mohammad’s lineage would be disastrous for the royal family and Morocco’s system of constitutional monarchy. Unfortunately, we may never know. Any questioning the king’s sexuality would almost certainly result in a swift backlash by the royal house and the Moroccan authorities. It is important to note that this type of response by the Moroccan government is not reserved for questioning their ruler’s personal life alone, almost any publicized opinion of the king can result in imprisonment or trial.

The king aside, Moroccan society, especially urban communities, are becoming slightly more open to homosexuals in their presence, if not the accepting of the actual concept itself. Marrakech, for example, is the largest city in southern Morocco and the tourist hub of the country. Known for its pink hued buildings, winding “souks” (markets) and djemma el-fnaa, or Square of the Dead, once used to display the executions of prisoners but now used for outdoor food stalls and entertainment, Marrakech is the Morocco many think of when considering the country for a vacation. With the desert to one side and the looming High Atlas mountains to the other, Marrakech is truly a magical city. This is made more so by its recent transition into a more decadent venue. Bars and clubs are springing up across the new city, inviting Moroccans to sit back, sip a beer (another taboo across much of the Middle East) and socialize with singles outside of the home and immediate community. Across town, in the old city, gay Europeans are coming in droves to buy up expensive real estate to renovate traditional Moroccan riads, or courtyard homes, into summer homes. Many rural Moroccan gays are leaving their villages and farms to settle into apartments and homes in Morocco’s new flashy vacation city. Walking through the djemma el-fnaa one evening, I met several gay Moroccan men, all out enjoying themselves and their new found urban freedom. This new liberalism has even resulted in the publication of a “Hedonists Guide to Marrakech”, part of a series of tour books usually reserved for larger, more European destinations. Agadir, Casablanca, and Fez, three other Moroccan cities, are also working to catch up with Marrakech’s success, expanding their new cities and allowing the construction of discotheques, bars, and other places that encourage mingling amongst the Moroccan youth.

In short, Morocco is no France or Spain. To be openly homosexual is still dangerous, if more to one’s reputation and family honor than to one’s physical safety as in other Middle Eastern countries. While the king still calls all the shots and the press is heavily censured, the diverse history of the Moroccan people is creating a moderate atmosphere in a conservative neighborhood of the world. More and more Moroccan gays are finding it easier to meet each other and live their lives, especially in cities such as Marrakech. Gay travelers are finding an option in the Middle East to experience Arab culture and not fear for their safety, although modesty is absolutely required when in public. And while the Moroccan dialect still uses words such as “sadj” to describe homosexuals, many are finding themselves apathetic and, in some rare cases, open to same-sex relations. After returning home from living in Morocco, I called my host brother to tell him that I am gay. I was almost more nervous than when I came out to my parents. I expected immediate rejection from my host family, a crumbling of cross cultural relations I had nurtured over the past year. To my surprise my host brother and other Moroccan friends completely embraced my sexuality. “Who cares?” my host brother exclaimed, “You are my brother, and I love you for who you are.”

I only hope that this feeling of acceptance and openness will become more and more widespread in Morocco in the years to come.

A crackdown in Egypt destroyed a vibrant gay community and sparked a worldwide protest.

For “security reasons,” New York police ordered the crowd of 30 or so demonstrators to move away from the steps in front of the gray, concrete building where the Egyptian consulate is housed. On that early May weekend the New York demonstrators in Washington, London, Toronto, Montreal, Paris, and Berlin were marching in front of Egyptian consulates and embassies. The protests, organized by Amnesty International and Al Fatiha, a gay and lesbian Muslim organization, marked the second anniversary of an Egyptian police raid on a floating disco on the Nile, the Queen Boat, frequented by gay men. The May 11, 2001 early morning raid resulted in the arrest and subsequent trial of 52 men suspected of being gay.

The Queen Boat incident won international attention, thanks to outside pressure, including that of Amnesty International activists. Even Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak took note.

Less well known, however, is that ever since the Queen Boat affair, Egyptian authorities have mounted a sustained attack against gay men and what was once an emerging gay community. “The raid marked the beginning of a two-year public campaign of harassment, intimidation, and detention of those perceived to be gay,” said Michael Heflin, director of AIUSA’s OUTfront Program. “Beyond those originally arrested, scores have faced police surveillance, entrapment, drawn out trials, and long periods of detention. Some were rejected by their friends and family, lost their jobs, or were tortured. All were subjected to profound public humiliation, often in the Egyptian media.”

Just back from Egypt, where he spent three months documenting the abuse of gay men, Scott Long of Human Rights Watch took the megaphone and told a chilling story of how the police tortured and killed one young gay man and then, in a transparent attempt to make the death look like a suicide, threw his body off a building.

There are no hard figures, but Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch estimate that in the past two years, police have arrested up to 200 men for “debauchery,” the official codeword for homosexuality. Not all meet such a horrible ending as torture and death, but it is fair to say that most of their lives are shredded by the stigma of being gay in Egypt.

At the rally, I picked up a sign in red, hand-drawn letters, saying “Stop Torture.” The group walked in a circle as a woman with a pink triangle on her black T-shirt led us in chants she shouted through a megaphone. I used both hands to direct my sign toward the men in suits and women in head scarves who peered from the consulate offices on the second and third floors of the consulate.

As I walked, I thought of “Ahmad,” one of many young gay Egyptian men I met while on assignment in Egypt for three weeks last December.

Ahmad worked at his family business on the outskirts of Cairo, hauling and selling coal. He came from a very conservative family. His mother and three sisters cover their heads with the traditional Muslim scarves. His brother studied at Cairo’s premier Muslim university. Ahmad himself prays five times a day.

And yet he was not torn between his religion and his sexuality. He had found a way, as many spiritual people of any faith do, to bridge the gap between the teachings of his religion and his sexual identity. What Ahmad struggled with was not religion, but loneliness and fear.

There was a time, he told me, when he had been able to escape the strict bounds of his family life and go into Cairo to be in the company of men like himself. He recalled visiting the Queen Boat, before it was raided. It was “incredible” he said, as was the sense of community. There were private parties so large “you would have thought all of Cairo was gay.”

These were havens for Ahmad not because, as Egyptian authorities have said, they featured public sex and devil-worshiping. These were havens because gay men could come together and meet and socialize and even talk about building their own movement, making their own place in Egyptian society—something that the government might well have found more threatening than devil-worship.

But in the past two years, all of that has essentially vanished.

Today, Ahmad lives in near-isolation from other gay men, fearing that if he is found out, he will be arrested, his family shamed, and his life ruined. He is lonely enough that he risks the occasional walk along segments of the Nile where gay men still dare to venture in hope of finding one another.

But, he told me, he feels gay life is over in Egypt. He has no hopes of ever finding anyone to love. He dreams of leaving the country, but cannot afford it. And so he is stuck in Egypt and trapped by fear and loneliness.

That is why I went to the New York rally, and that is why it is so important that we tell the Egyptian government that what it is doing is intolerable. It is especially important for Americans to speak out because Cairo receives Washington’s second largest foreign aid package. We need to tell our own representatives that it is unacceptable to continue to support a government that practices such blatant human rights violations against gay men. But there is more we as Americans, and as gay people, can and must do. Many of my fellow gay Arabs come to this country specifically for the freedom to be gay, something they would never have at home. Yet I know that many of my fellow gay Arabs have been made unwelcome by gay Americans since September 11 cast suspicion on all Arabs. That must stop.

I know also that this is a difficult time for every Arab in the United States. We’ve all lived in fear and under suspicion since Sept. 11. But my fellow Arabs must stop trying to tell gay and lesbian members of our community that this is not the time for gay issues. Now more than ever is the time for fair-minded Arabs in America to embrace their gay and lesbian members and to stop forcing us into a lie of invisibility.

And we in America who are gay and who are Arab have a responsibility to speak up and to counter the worst of all lies spread by our enemies both here and abroad: that we as gay Arabs do not exist.

This romantic-kitsch story goes from Paris to Marseille, from Amsterdam to Morocco via Jean Genet’s grave in Larache, and on to Tangiers. The movie tells the story of an Algerian-French heterosexual young man beginning a sociology study of gay islamic homosexualities and discovering gay love with a young French steward.

User Reviews:

I saw this film last night as part of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Film Festival 2004. It is an extraordinary thesis on islamic homosexuality and a love story. The story concerns a heterosexual french algerian muslim student, Karim, who after seeing a story on television about gay men in Egypt decides to do a video thesis on homosexuality and islam. In the process he discovers his sexuality and falls in love with a gay arab man (Farid) that is one of his interviewees. The movie is about an issue rarely explored in any great detail in cinema and the movie covers and explores many sensitive topics with such skill.It is also a movie full of sensuality and tenderness. When Karim goes to Morocco with Farid we see a part of the country and culture rarely seen. And through Karim, Farid and all his interviewees in ‘Tarik El Hob’, a sensitive and powerful masculinity and culture rarely explored in cinema. For this avid moviegoer this film was groundbreaking. A must see.

ROAD TO LOVE is an obviously very low budget independent French film that introduces the audience to the theme of homosexuality as it is manifested among Islamic/Arab men. Writers Rémi Lange and Antoine Parlebas have created a script so natural, so sensitively real that at moments the film feels like a documentary (each of the young actors in the story bear their own names, the technique of storytelling is basically video interviews), but the impact of the move is quietly profound, without a trace of the saccharine or the gush of Hollywood films dealing with gay subject matter.

French Algerian Karim (Karim Tarek) is a student in Paris and spends his time with his girlfriend Sihem (Sihem Benamoune). He happens to view a television program about the gay life in Egypt in the 20th century, a life that allowed gay relationships and even marriages so along as the men gave up the lifestyle when they eventually married women. His interest in the subject results in a sociology project of interviewing gay Arab men to explore contemporary gay lifestyles. After a few aborted attempts (Karim is not sufficiently comfortable with the subject matter to gain the trust of his interviewees) Karim encounters Farid (Farid Tali), a gay, well-adjusted, quietly seductive handsome Algerian lad who not only agrees to be interviewed, but also finds ways to assist Karim with his project. Chemistry develops and the two depart Paris to visit Marseilles and Morocco and Karim discovers why the subject of choice fascinates him so! The beauty of this film lies in the honesty in which it is written, directed, acted, and edited. Not only are we allowed to explore a subject matter few of us knew (Islamic homosexuality history and social mores), we are also presented with one of the more tender love stories on film – tender because it is not overt but rather because it is so naturally evolved. The actors are excellent and though they feel as though they are first time, off the street recruits, they find the core of the script and make the story beautiful. In French and Arabic with English subtitles.

beautiful, rich, you really laugh and have tears well up and so forth. heartbreakingly sweet acting. saw it a couple of days ago and am still processing it lots to think about. really interesting in it’s relation to genet and how fictional the film is, very I think… I mean the whole story is I think related to that “you look like your sister in this light boy I could go for your sister right now” thing. only reappropriated by romance lol romantic beyond all possibility. I felt so sad after I saw it but then I met a guy at a gas station breaking several months of being fed up with the menfolk. a weird coincidence anyway this is really a magical movie. and I met the director too and he’s really sweet. I want to buy the DVD and read the screenplay.

oh maybe I should mention the actors are all so hot without looking plastic in the least. Je fais le freak out par que ce film est si formidable.

it occurs to me this could be the most deliriously romantic movie I’ve ever seen. meaning like more potent, worse, if you will, than any hollywood movie. and you can’t do anything but just lap it up…

I liked this movie, if for no other reason than its pure exoticism. The story of a Algerian student making a documentary as a University sociology class assignment frames the familiar story of a young male discovering his attraction to men. It’s a slender premise, but adequate for the story to be told.

It was interesting to me that the student, Karim, sees homosexuality as a kind of surrender. There is a lot of anxiety about who is active and who is passive, as if there is no middle ground, or as if gay men sodomize and exclude all other sex acts. I suppose this is because Karim’s interest is piqued when he learns of the pre-1940 same sex marriages in his culture. He seems only to be able to accept his gayness in this context of faux heterosexuality.

I liked the video-cinema-verite style–it added to the immediacy of the story. I liked watching the relationship develop between Karim and his admirer. And I liked the introduction to Algerian culture. As another reviewer mentions, the actors are attractive and real: there are no bronzed pecs and abs here. That alone makes this gay-themed film exotic . . . .

Moroccan Slave

He monopolizes me.

I gave him control of my daily life. We live in monotony. The monotony of love. The monotony
of him and me at his place: a Parisian apartment.

I am with him, I love him, I have no choice. I exist in France only because of him, only because
he cares for me. I am his boy, his love, his lover. He is my master.

I adore his name: Marlon! Like Marlon Brando. I love calling out: “Marlon, Marlon, Marlon,
come to me… Marlon Marlon Marlon take me with you… in you…”

He is American. From New York.

I am Moroccan, from Rabat, the capital. I don’t speak English very well, I make mistakes all the
time. In my country I have learnt French as a foreign language. I came to Paris to finish my
Doctorat in French literature at the Sorbonne. But then I met Marlon. Everything changed. I am
not me.

Now I learn English, alone, everyday. I want to tell Marlon everything about me, my feelings, my
country, my home town, my body, my skin… I want to be capable to understand all his words. He
is from another world- a world far away. I was prepared to live only in the Arab and French
worlds. I have never dreamt of myself in America. America came to me, two weeks before I left
Morocco.

I was at the Oudaya Castle in Rabat. Alone. Sad. I was drinking tea with mint at the famous Café
Maure. I was thinking of my mother M’Barka: she didn’t want me to leave Morocco. She had her
plans about my future life, about my job, my house, and even about my wife and my children. I
love M’Barka. I read somewhere that to be an adult one must be far as possible from one’s
mother. I always thought of myself as a child. Somebody else’s child. First M’Barka’s. And now
Marlon’s.

I am Marlon’s child. I like to repeat this to convince myself that it’s true. The repetition keeps me
feeling secure. Marlon loves me and protects me. He swore that he would never leave me. He
took the first step in my direction. He simply asked me: “At what time will the café Maure
close?” I looked at him: a man, a real man, big, so big, giant, white, bleu eyes, black hair, no
moustache. I looked at him for a long moment. He asked me again: “At what time will this café
close? Do you speak English?” I understood the second part of his question. I had the answer, a
little one. “No!”

“Et le francais? Tu parles le francais?”

Thank God! He could speak French, not fluently but with a charming and virile accent.

“I am American. I have lived in Paris since last year. It’s my first time in Morocco, in Rabat. I
like this town. Can I join you?”

Little sentences told with a big and warm voice. I was completely fascinated with him. He spoke
to me naturally. He expressed what he wanted easily. He liked me, but he didn’t say it with
words. His eyes, his hands, his head approaching mine did.

“ – Yes, you can join me… with pleasure!
- Are you from Rabat?
- Yes, I am… Do you want mint tea like me?
- Yes. Why don’t you speak English?
- Oh! I have learnt it at the Lycee, but I have forgotten everything… everything. Now I am
concentrating my whole energy only on French… because I am going to Paris.
- Good! In Paris you should start learning English again… seriously… you’ll need it, I’m
sure!
- With who?
- With me… only with me!”

He seemed serious. Somehow I was already in love with him.

He liked the Moroccan tea.

“ – You know, I suppose, how to prepare this kind of tea?
- No.
- You should ask your mother how to make it, because I really like it and I want you to
prepare it for me… in Paris.
- I will ask her before my coming to Paris… I promise…
- Good boy! A great future is waiting for you in Paris.
- With you?
- Yes, with me! Only…
- … with you!”

Two years later, here I am in Paris, la Ville des Lumieres. The apartment of Marlon is typically
bourgeois-parisien. It is at Saint-Germain, near a lot of well-known publishing houses, le Seuil,
Actes Sud, Stock… Every time he enters this apartment, he finds me waiting for him, my heart
and my head pounding as the first time I saw him. I run to him, saying always, like Nina
Simone, the same phrase: “ Hi you! I’m here for you… I’m completely yours!’

I do all I have to do before his return at 7:00 pm. I prepare his favorite tagines and arrange
everything in the apartment. Everything clean, in its place. He is happier that way. So we can
eat Moroccan food, drink mint tea and make love for a long time in peace. No clouds on the
horizon. I don’t like him angry: I’m scared when he gives me a bad look sometimes, I don’t
know what to do, what to say, I forget even the few English words I could use to defend myself.
But I won’t. I want him happy, satisfied, in love with me all the time.

Yes, Nina Simone, I am completely his thing. You are the only person with whom I can speak
clearly about my love, without shame, without regrets. I am his slave in the name of love. Your
songs, Nina, talk about this, you understand me, that’s why I love you. One day, when I can
read English easily, I will buy your autobiography, I PUT A SPELL ON YOU. I don’t want to
read it n French. I prefer to meet your life with your own words, own rhythm, inspiration and
voice. Marlon offered me your records soon after I moved in. He said, I still remember his
words exactly: “This Grande Dame is for you, one day you’ll understand why…” He was right.
He gave me his love and a confident, you, in the same time. Very generous, wasn’t it? “Tell me
more, and more and then some” was the first song of yours we heard together, in the bedroom,
our bodies joined, inseparable, after lovemaking.

“ – Tell me… you… your life in America!
- Me?
- Yes, you, like Nina Simone singing her days, her story, her History.
- It will take much more time than you think…
- I have all my life just to hear you, to discover your American Life.”

It’s always like this: romantic! I want it to stay romantic. No war between us, no disagreements,
just love. Just him and me in Paris.

He told me about his life. It was brief. I didn’t understand all his words.

Born in Boston. A Political Science Major from NYU. Job in The United Nations, in NYC too.
No brothers, no sisters. Mother and father dead. Alone in the world, as he says when he is sad.
One big love affair with… a woman: he was 26 years old, they have lived together for 10 years.
Now he is 40 and I am his first gay love. He has always liked sport, jazz and cinema. He didn’t
have a lot of friends in New York (same situation in Paris!). He could live anywhere, no
problem for him, even, one day, in Morocco. He is not gay. He is in love with a boy. There is a
difference, of course.

That’s all I know about Marlon. He is very mysterious. Maybe he is a spy, a dangerous double
agent. He laughed at me when I told him about these bad ideas. He laughed from the bottom of
his heart. He is irresistible… Big… So present in my eyes… He filled a void inside me. I met
him in Rabat. In my mind we are still there drinking our first Moroccan tea, discovering each
other and looking for a cheap hotel in the old city, the Medina, where we could make love
intensely, a place where to offer myself to him, my body, my soul and to go completely naked
inside him.

Yesterday he surprised me again.

“I want you to teach me Arabic… I want to hear your voice in Arabic…”

A great proof of his love! I accepted, I will be his professor.

We start today September 11. The first lesson.

ABDELLAH TAIA

Hey friends,

I teach International Politics at a university in Istanbul. Just to make it clear: the Turkish government is the most secular one in the middle east. It is true that the recent one, namely AKP party is somehow conservative in terms of its focus on keeping Turkish traditions alive and keeping good reliations with the rest of Islamic World.

However naming them as a fundemantalist or an Islamist party would be too unfair when you look at their strong efforts to unify Turkey with EU, liberal management of internal affairs – alcohol is totally free, night clubs are full of young people, there is no intervention to gay life, women and men are free to walk together, kiss each other on the streets etc.

Modern life in big cities like Istanbul, Ankara or Izmir is not less liberal than London or Paris: women wear short skirts, go swimming with bikinis etc. Some women wear scarves but this shows the other way of being tolerant and liberal, am I wrong?

In the rural areas though, people are more traditional and you can see more women covering their heads but that is perfectly understandable: When you go to the country sides in all Europe, people become more traditional too.

The gay community in Istanbul will surprise you there. Being a gay is completely legal in Turkey. There are 4 gay organizations working actively on gay rights. There are many local gay social web sites too.

Because of the traditions, gays do not want to show their gay sides openly in the public but Turkish men like very much having sex with gays. Having sex with same sex is not perceived by them as being gay if it is kept intimate. One of my Turkish friend had told me that having same sex relation has been very wide spread for hundreds of years in this society.

You can meet so many very attractive men there but they wouldn’t do it for money. They simply liked being with men. You can meet many gay people over there too, they can easily flirt with so many nice men whenever they want. For example go to a 4 stores gay club, packed with hundreds of gays and good looking men, everything is so free: people kissing, licking and believe me even having sex on the sofas. Those horny men try to romance with you. In Istanbul, there are at least 20 gay night clubs where you can find anything for your taste and all of them are full of young horny men aging between 18-28.

I am not sure whether Istanbul is the gay capital in 2010 but there are many very nice stuff to discover if you go there with no prejudice of course.

Take care…

Original thread here

Hey friends,

I teach International Politics at a university in Britain. Just to make it clear: the Turkish government is the most secular one in the middle east. It is true that the recent one, namely AKP party is somehow conservative in terms of its focus on keeping Turkish traditions alive and keeping good reliations with the rest of Islamic World.

However naming them as a fundemantalist or an Islamist party would be too unfair when you look at their strong efforts to unify Turkey with EU, liberal management of internal affairs – alcohol is totally free, night clubs are full of young people, there is no intervention to gay life, women and men are free to walk together, kiss each other on the streets etc.

I have been to Turkey several times and modern life in big cities like Istanbul, Ankara or Izmir is not less liberal than London or Paris: women wear short skirts, go swimming with bikinis etc. Some women wear scarves but this shows the other way of being tolerant and liberal, am I wrong?

In the rural areas though, people are more traditional and you can see more women covering their heads but that is perfectly understandable: When you go to the country sides in Britain, people become more traditional too.

I was suprised by the gay community there. Being a gay is completely legal in Turkey. There are 4 gay organizations working actively on gay rights. There are many local gay social web sites too.

Because of the traditions, gays do not want to show their gay sides openly in the public but Turkish men like very much having sex with gays. Having sex with same sex is not perceived by them as being gay if it is kept intimate. One of my Turkish friend had told me that having same sex relation has been very wide spread for hundreds of years in this society.

My experience over there supports this too: I met so many very attractive men there (believe me if they came to Blackpool, they could earn several hundred pounds every night) but they wouldn’t do it for money. They simply
liked being with men. I met some gay people over there too and I am jealous of them because they can easily flirt with so many nice men whenever they want. I went to a 4 stores gay club for instance, packed with hundreds of gays and good looking men, everything was so free: people kissing, licking and believe me even having sex on the sofas. Those horny men were trying to romance with me and at the end of the night I found myself sleeping with four of them in one gay friend’s apartment. In Istanbul, there are at least 20 gay night clubs where you can find anything for your taste and all of them are full of young horny men aging between 18-28.

There are many very nice stuff to discover if you go there with no prejudice of course.

Take care…

http://gayspeak.com/forum/chit-chat/4678-when-i-istanbul.html

A Muslim football team who initially refused to play against a gay team and then appeared to back down have been kicked out of their league.

Bebel, a team from the Parisian suburb of Creteil, were excluded from the Leisure Football Commission for making discriminatory comments and refusing a match, the commission’s website said today.

After calling off a match the night before it was due to be played, the Muslim side was accused of homophobia by gay team Paris Foot Gay (PFG). Bebel then said there had been a misunderstanding.

Bebel director Zahir Belgharbi told AFP at the weekend: “We had rejected playing this match not on the grounds of homophobia, as we have been accused of doing, but simply because the name of the club did not seem to us to reflect our vision of sport.”

The club has now apparently refused to play against the gay team again.

According to PFG president Pascal Brethes, the original email from Bebel said the match was “against their principles”.

Brethes said the email added: “Sorry, but because of the name of your team and in keeping with the principles of the team, which is a team of practising Muslims, we cannot play against you.

“Our convictions are stronger than a game of football. Sorry to have informed you so late.”

PFG said the communication was homophobic and that they were considering pressing charges.

Tahar Rahim, its talented star, describes how he turned a murderous gangster into a positive role model for French Arabs

It’s that one unforgettable and deeply disquieting moment, early in the movie, where the award-winning prison drama A Prophet suddenly shows its teeth. Here, an impressionable Arab convict called Malik, played by the 28-year-old French actor Tahar Rahim, is forced to commit murder. Thrust into the cell of a gay Arab informant called Reyeb (Hichem Yacoubi) and armed only with a razorblade nestled treacherously along his gumline, Malik must cut the throat of the only man to have shown him a hint of kindness. If he doesn’t, he will face certain death at the hands of the Corsican mobsters who run the prison from the inside.

The ensuing to and fro between Malik and Reyeb, at first conversational and then terrifyingly physical, is a squirm-inducing opening climax that lets you know that A Prophet is going to be more than a powerful arthouse prison movie — it is, in fact, going to be one of the greatest movies of the year.

“That scene was harder for me to do than any of the others,” Rahim says. A relative newcomer to the world of acting, he can nonetheless boast a Best Actor trophy from the recent European Film Awards and was announced as a Rising Star nominee for this year’s Baftas. Plus he is currently bathing in A Prophet’s inevitable pre-Oscar glow (it is hotly tipped to return from the ceremony in March with at least one gold statuette).

In person, he has the fine-boned androgynous beauty of a style mag cover boy. When not apologising profusely for the blue haze of French cigarette smoke that hangs in the air of his London hotel room, he will jitter busily from leg to leg, from cushion to cushion, tackling all answers with a fevered intensity.

Of seeing the film for the first time, for instance, he coos: “I saw it two weeks before Cannes in an editing suite. I was shaking after it, it was so good.” Concerning his newfound ‘It’ boy status, he says: “It’s crazy that I’m recognised on the street. But it also means that now I can read scripts and people listen to me.”

For now, though, he remembers the razor scene. It was filmed by the director Jacques Audiard (Read My Lips) during the first two weeks of the movie’s 79-day shoot in late summer 2008, on the outskirts of Paris and in a purpose-built prison set. “All the tension in that scene is in Malik’s head,” Rahim continues. “He definitely doesn’t want to kill, but if he doesn’t kill he dies. So before we do the scene I’m thinking and thinking. I’m smoking. I’m listening to music. I’m walking. Walking and smoking and thinking. And then, boom! I’m in the moment!”

The moment, for Malik, takes him slowly through the prison ranks in a genuinely epic Godfather-style saga of slow-burning criminal endeavour. Under the protection of the Corsican mob boss Cesar (Niels Arestrup), Malik absorbs the rules of life on the inside while eventually, through occasional day releases, establishing his own Arab-run fraternity of drug-dealers and gangsters on the outside. And yet all the while Malik remains an intensely sympathetic character. He has little dialogue, expressing everything through busy eyes that are either quietly observing, deflecting pain or controlling rage — and sometimes all three at once. “It’s hard when you don’t have the words to cling to,” Rahim admits. “But it’s also exciting. When you get it right without words, it feels so good inside.”

His performance, which anchors the entire film, has been relentlessly validated by awestruck festival juries (A Prophet won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes last year) and industry heavyweights alike. Last month at the European Film Awards, held in Bochum in Germany, Rahim was approached over the course of the evening by Ken Loach, Danny Boyle and Wim Wenders and congratulated for his pivotal part in the movie’s success. “Can you imagine that?” Rahim says, opening out his hands, palms forward, as if to say, “Why me?”

And what did Rahim say in return? “I said, ‘Thank you,’” he says, shrugging. Not “Give us a job”? “Oh, no!” he says, aghast. “You never say that.”

His performance is noteworthy for other, more subtle, reasons. As a French Arab of Algerian descent he has created in Malik a truly modern movie hero that inverts completely the stereotypical image of screen Arabs. Audiard claims that this inversion was deliberate. “In French cinema you see Arabs in one of two contexts,” the director says. “Either naturalistically, in a social realist context, or in a genre fiction playing a terrorist. We didn’t want that. We wanted our Arabs to be heroes.”

Rahim, who grew up in the small north eastern town of Belfort, admits that the positive portrayal of Malik is encouraging. “I think the French-Arab communities have been touched by the fact that you can now see a lead character, a hero, from this minority in the cinema.”

But he is keener still to move the entire discussion onwards, to a post-racial debate. “This movie is not talking about changing the way we see the Arabs,” he says, shifting in his seat, visibly agitated. “It’s about taking a man who is homeless, who has no origin, and showing you that he is just a person first, before being Arab, or Corsican, or whatever. This man just wants to eat, sleep and drink. He is writing his own life. So the movie doesn’t have to change the way we see Arabs because here, in this film, it’s already happened. It’s already changed.”

His own life, he says, with a perplexed shake of the head, has little in common with that of Malik. His childhood was marked, not by racial tension, but by boredom. As the youngest son in a selfdescribed “working-class family” (his father worked in a factory), he says that he found refuge from the boredom of Belfort in cinema. “I was watching three or four movies a week, every week,” he says. “And after a while I was unselfconscious enough and pretentious enough to think that, yes, I could be up there on the screen too. That could be me.”

He studied cinema at Montpellier University and moved to Paris, where he worked in a nightclub on weekends and in a factory during the week (“I was just arms and a body on a construction line, putting information booklets together”). These were tough times, he says, and the only acting work he secured was a two-line part as a luckless policeman in the gory Béatrice Dalle horror film Inside.

At that time, however, he noticed a short précis of Audiard’s future project, A Prophet, in a movie magazine. “I read it and joked to my friend: ‘Hey, that could me! I could do that role.’”

The very next part he snagged was that of an ambitious young Arab living in the troubled banlieues of Paris in the French TV mini series La Commune, which was written by Abdel Raouf Dafri, one of the original screenwriters of A Prophet.

“Everything moved very fast after that,” Rahim says. He met Audiard through Dafri, but had to fight through three months and eight auditions before the director finally gave him the part. He spent four months of pre-production deep in research, studying prison documentaries and meeting ex-convicts before he realised that he was wasting his own time. “I was trying to do heavy research, because I wanted to be all Method about it, but I eventually realised that all I was doing was building a mishmash of different parts that already existed,” he explains. “That was wrong, because Malik is new to the prison system, so that’s what I had to be. In the end I didn’t even visit the set, or look at pictures of it, until the first day of shooting.”

He says that life since A Prophet has changed completely. In his next movie, The Eagle of the Ninth, a Roman-era blockbuster directed by Kevin Macdonald (State of Play), he will play a warrior prince, a role for which he didn’t even audition. “Kevin saw the trailer for A Prophet, called me the next day and said: ‘Right, let’s work together,’” Rahim says, half-laughing with incredulity. He adds, though, “He finally saw the full film a few days ago, and texted me his congratulations.”

His private life, too, is getting a revamp, and he plans to spend much of early 2010 moving, with his girlfriend (“She’s not an actress, she’s my girlfriend”), from Paris’s pretty but tourist plagued 18th arrondissement to the more cosmopolitan 19th or 20th, “where I can get to live in a very quiet place, away from it all”.

Of the Oscars, he says that he’d like to go to the awards ceremony, if only for the experience — A Prophet is France’s official entry in the Best Foreign Language Film category, but many pundits are predicting that the movie, like La Vie En Rose before it, will break out also into the “mainstream” categories (Best Actor, Best Director etc). “Awards are nice. They make you happy because it means that people loved your movie,” Rahim says. “But we won’t know anything until the beginning of February, when the nominations are announced.”

Until then, he says that he wants people to refocus attention away from him and his career and back on to the film itself, to acknowledge how extraordinary it is in its entirety. “What we’re talking about is a great director, a great script, great characters and a great production team. Everybody involved in this film was the best at what they did. When you live in a Utopia for four months, people feel the results. And the results here are perfection.”

François Sagat

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

François Sagat
Folsom Fair 2006 – François Sagat.jpg
Birthdate: June 5, 1979 (1979-06-05) (age 30)
Birth location: Cognac, Charente
Measurements: 7+ inches; uncut
Height: 5′ 9″
Weight: 182 lbs.
Eye color: Brown
Hair color: Dark hair/scalp tattoo
Ethnicity: Middle Eastern
Stage name(s): Azzedine, Manu
Official website
François Sagat at IMDb
François Sagat at IAFD
François Sagat at AFDB

François Sagat (born June 5, 1979) is a French-Arab model and male pornographic actor who has appeared in gay and bisexual pornographic movies. He is best known for his rugged muscularity, exotic looks, and scalp tattoo.[1][2]
Contents

* 1 Life and career
* 2 Selected videography
* 3 See also
* 4 References
* 5 External links

Life and career

Sagat was born to Middle Eastern parents in Cognac, in the south-west of France. Sagat moved to Paris at the age of eighteen, hoping to work in the fashion industry.[1] Since childhood, Sagat had been fascinated by fashion and passionate about drawing. After studying fashion for two years in Paris and working briefly as, what he called a “slave assistant” in various fashion houses, Sagat left the profession. He felt that he had not been given the opportunities he deserved, and has claimed that it actually cost him money to work in the fashion industry, since he was often not paid for his work.[3]

Around age twenty-one, Sagat looked to working in the adult film industry. He did photographic work for several French companies, but felt he was poorly treated and put his career in front of the camera on hold.[1] At the age of twenty-five, he was contacted by a French pornographic studio called Citebeur while chatting on a gay chat line. He accepted their offer and, a few weeks later, performed in his first movie.[1] It became an instant success, and Sagat decided to seek a full time job in the porn industry. Six months later, he was invited to move to the USA and, there, shot his first scene for the porn film Arabesque.[1]

In the United States, Sagat quickly found a niche in the muscle genre where he became known for his distinctive scalp tattoo.[4] In a recent interview he explained that his hair began to thin out a few years ago and since he felt that his head was too long and disproportionated. In order to make it more symmetrical, he decided to get a tattoo that gave the illusion of hairy scalp. He also added perpendicular lines in appreciation of Hip hop.[4][2] He has another, equally distinctive tattoo: a combination of a sickle moon and star reminiscent of the Turkish and Tunisian flags. He explained that he loves Arabic men and that the tattoo is his tribute to those people and cultures he admires and respects.[4]

As a pornographic actor, he was both top and bottom and also performed BDSM. Although known primarily for his gay movies, he appeared in his first bisexual scene, in 2007, in the film Gay Arab Club. In that same year, Sagat was nominated for six GayVN Awards, and won the award for best newcomer.

Sagat is openly gay.[5] He was in a relationship with well-known European porn star Francesco D’Macho.[6] The two have since separated. Sagat was a Titan exclusive, but briefly retired from the industry. He staged his comeback in late 2008. Recently, he appeared in the TitanMen video, Full Access, in a scene with fellow fan favourite, Matthew Rush.

In a January 2009 interview, Sagat revealed that he had been living in Toronto for the past six months while shooting scenes for the movie Saw VI.[7]

Selected videography

* Dark Alley Media
o L.A. Zombie (TBA)
* Titan Media
o Full Access (2009)
o Overdrive(2009)
o Funhouse (2008)
o Stretch (2007)
o Folsom Leather (2007)
o Shacked Up (2007)
o H2O (2007)
o SPY Quest 3 (2007)
o Breathless (2007)
o Folsom Filth (2007)
o Breakers (2007)

* Raging Stallion
o Bedroom Eyes (2006)
o Manhattan (2006)
o Fistpack 7: Twist My Arm (2006)
o Centurion Muscle II – Alpha (2006)
o Escape From San Francisco (2006)
o Tough As Nails (2006)
o Arabesque (2006)
o MANIFESTO (2005)
o Hard As Wood (2005)
o Knight After Night (2005)
o Hole Sweet Hole (2005)

* Citebeur
o Wesh Cousin 7 – C’est d’la balle (2006)
o Wesh Cousin 6 – Cho bouillants (2005)
o Wesh Cousin 5 – Relax man (2005)
o Univers Black – Matos de blackoss (2005)

* Diapopic
o François Sagat : Le DVD (2005)
o Pompiers mis à nu (2005)
o Pompiers mis à nu 2 (2005)

* Documental
o La nudité toute nue (2007)

* Non-Porn movies
o Saw VI