Genre: Drama
Writer/Director: Kareem Mortimer
Stars: Johnny Ferro, Stephen Tyrone Williams and Sylvia Adams
Released: Bahamas (2010)
Runtime: 104 min
Against the backdrop of homophobia in the Bahamas, Kareem J. Mortimer has fashioned out a sympathetic commentary on homosexuality.
In 2004, a Rosie O’Donnell cruise for gay families in the Bahamas was greeted with religious protests. In 2005, a Bahamian beauty queen was denied her crown when it came out that she was lesbian. Between 2007 and 2008, at least four gay men were murdered in the capital, Nassau. And in 2009, a man was acquitted for murdering an HIV-positive gay man because, he said, the victim came on to him.
Hence, director Kareem’s effort is commendable and the seriousness and care with which he tackles this unchartered ocean of sexuality in the Bahamian culture cannot be overemphasized.
Developed from his acclaimed 2007 Work Float, Kareem J. Mortimer expanded his short film into this feature, Children of God. The title, vis-Ã -vis the vehement religious bigotry, strikes a contrast between religion and sexuality – both an oxymoron and an anachronism – mocking the very establishment that persecutes homosexuals and perpetuates violence.
That’s the kind of world that I live in, says gay film director Kareem Mortimer. It’s a completely different world in the Caribbean in terms of being open and honest about your sexuality.
I will do this story a great disservice if I were to look at it from the Hollywood perspective. That will be narrow-minded. Nonetheless, I will not deny that I am partly influenced by that gaze.
The structure of the story in Children of God is no different from Crash, 2004, except Crash is much better, and understandably so. However, what I admire about this young director is his willingness to admire a story-structure like Crash, which explores race relations in America, and confidently tell his own story with it.
Children of God tells two interlocking stories of a young gay white man, a young gay black man who is finding it difficult to come out, his blustery mother, a married Christian woman whose husband is gay but hates himself for it, and a Christian priest who begins to question the foundations of his beliefs. These are people who are defined in one way or another by homosexuality (and sometimes race). All are victims of it, and all are guilty of it.
But Children of God is unable to show us – as Crash was able to show with racism – that the characters are able to rise above the prejudice against homosexuality. I needed Children of God to pluck the impulses associated with homosexuality and show that these whims and caprices may have been instinctive and the positive impulses may have been equally dangerous.
Nevertheless, like Crash it tries to connect stories based on coincidence, serendipity, and luck, as the lives of the characters crash against one another like pinballs. However, unlike Crash it only has two interlocking storylines. And that drastically reduces the domino effect expected from a story structure like Crash’s. Besides, it also presumes that most people feel prejudice and resentment against homosexuals in the Bahamas.
But the effort is truly commendable and the film itself is shot in some bright fantastic colors by director of photography, Ian Bloom. In the movie:
Jonny (Johnny Ferro), an awkward painting student is ostracized by his instructor to the remote island of Eleuthera in a bid to force/help him re-focus on his work and rediscover his passion and voice in painting. It is here that he finds Romeo (Stephen Tyrone Williams), a confident young man who shows Jonny all the picturesque spots on the island and a bit more. But Romeo’s got a girlfriend impressed on him by his blustery mother. Meanwhile, Leslie, a tired mother and wife of a preacher who spouts high-and-mighty anti-gay rhetoric at rallies – while refusing to own up to the cruelty and contradictions in his private life – has also made her way to Eleuthera to contemplate her future.
I recommend it.
Is there an American black film that is the equivalent to this? I can’t think of one, at least not with gay men as the focus.
There are some I hear of. ‘Blueprint’, ‘Finding Me’, ‘The Closet’. I’ll not recommend ‘Tongues United’ – I mean, I don’t know but telling from the title, it works my imagination a little bit to much.
I haven’t seen any of these myself though. Will I try? I couldn’t really answer that right now. But if a Spike Lee, Tyler Perry (I doubt he would make a gay movie), or Lee Daniels etc. can put something out there, I will grab me some popcorn.
There isn’t much on the subject and judging from the general homophobia in black communities, I am not surprised that the subject has not been explored at a higher technique of filmmaking as much as it has been discussed in white films.
Many books have been written about black men on the DL but it will be nice to see a movie on it. Don’t you think?
America is homophobic in general, because America is puritanical. I remember in college in about 97 I had a roommate from Thailand. We were watching one of her Thai soap operas and there were lots of gay characters and they weren’t gay characters, they were just people who happened to be gay. She had lots of open gay friends and she wasn’t liberal either. She was very the opposite of liberal. Gay and lesbian wasn’t part of the left, it was just what some people were. You know how in the US people are like “Oh my gosh how can you be a gay or lesbian and be a Republican or racist?” In many places were lgbt is accepted that wouldn’t be weird.
Your sexual orientation isn’t viewed as some kind of political stance, which makes sense, because it’s not something you choose.
I think people need to just start making movies where there is a diverse group of characters, so it looks more like how American actually looks. Race and sexual orientation segregation in scripts is just ridiculous and limits stories. I would like to see Lee Daniels do something or maybe Julie Dash or Kasi Lemmons, but someone would have to write it.
I’ll write a script for them 🙂
Oh that will be nice 🙂 I’d like to read the first draft!
You right though, sometimes when it comes to movies, I even tend to think about the subject in separate terms – there’s movies and there’s gay movies – you know? Maybe I’ve also been made to think this way about the movies I see. But certainly, there should be no reason why movies cannot have gay characters like they have the so-called ‘normal’ folk – Thailand is a beacon of hope.
Perhaps, I suspect that when you have a movie industry so bent on making $$$ and $$$ alone, it’s hard for filmmakers to bring some form of enlightenment to the puritanical society. It’s definitely not just a black thing, it’s an American thing.
In Ghana for example, there’s a huge debate going on about gay marriage and I am quite impressed about how they are handling the issue. Ghanaian law in fact does not bar gay marriage, mainly because the society was not gendered before colonialism. And if I may add, the traditional Ghanaian society itself did not foresee the complications thereof in this day, especially now that they have colonial gendered constitutional laws impressed on them. So the debate is torn between the traditional state that recognizes all marriages, irrespective of gender (so long us the two are Homo sapien), in stack contrast with a constitutional law (the democratic government) that only upholds the contract between male and female, right? Now they are faced with this dilemma. How would you like a movie based on a couple torn between the traditional law and the state? Watch out!
So in addition to making movies that are representative of our society as it is today, with straights and gays all represented. I think It’ll be fascinating to explore some of the experiences elsewhere b’cos they are so different from what we are used to here. This is what ‘Children of God’ attempted and as you have indicated, Thailand is also another example we can learn from. I would like to see some movies from there.
We really need scripts here. Good scripts at that. I believe when people can understand and have a general feel for all the perspectives on this issue scripts will even be more appealing.
“Ghanaian law in fact does not bar gay marriage, mainly because the society was not gendered before colonialism.” <<—-so important that message gets out., the gender thing is very Christian and very western. I think we all need to stop writing movies to make people comfortable or that we think will be the easiest to get funded and start filming and writing the truth.
Art isn't just about the now, it's about the future. Art to me is history, if all of your history is one sided and one story 100 years from now the perception of who you were as a people will be warped.