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By Lucas Gutiérrez

Today marks the start of the fifth edition of the Asterisco International LGBTIQ Film Festival in Buenos Aires , running until November 6th and offering a catalog of films that are not only queer, diverse, and dissident, but also glam, monstrous, documentaries, and more. We spoke with its director, journalist and film critic Diego Trerotola, about it all.

“This space originally emerged in the National Secretariat of Human Rights five years ago, but after five editions we decided to leave the Secretariat and now it is an independent festival,” he explains.

“Diversity and independence go hand in hand quite well and are a way of challenging much of what is reactionary and LGBTQphobic in the present. We are a festival of resistance,” Trerotola adds.

“This year we decided to be a bit more punk, it’s something that has a lot to do with self-management,” he adds. But also glam: “Because it’s about adding sparkle to our rebellion, using that trench of independence to be even more queer.” And it is in that vein that at 11 p.m. the classic by British director Todd Haynes, “Velvet Goldmine” (1998), will be screened.

From within

The director explains that in previous editions, the national production was somewhat mechanical in its approach to diversity. Today, however, it draws on new and varied perspectives.

For example, 'Mocha', the documentary about Mocha Celis, the trans community high school. “It's made from within; the screenwriters are people from Mocha, a punk project of self-management and of thinking about cinema outside of the robotic professionalism of how sexual diversity is represented,” says Trerotola.

Other titles include "Loneliness is a Falling Body," where director Agustina Comedi, in her debut film, speaks of her father through images recorded with a home camera during her childhood, the very few words shared, interviews with those who knew him, and questions about Jaime's homosexuality.

Another film entering the competition is 'Yasireé Trans', "a hybrid-trans-rural documentary that leaves Buenos Aires and thinks about other territories, which decenters things a bit," says Trerotola.

The Paraguayan jewel

A must-see at this Asterisk is the screening of the Paraguayan film "The Heiresses." Directed by Marcelo Martinessi, it won awards at the San Sebastián and Berlin film festivals and caused quite a stir in its country of origin, where LGBTQ+ rights are a priority.

“It breaks with the betrayal of criminalizing lesbians in prison films, showing another form of confinement and of lesbians deprived of their freedom. There is a very wise eroticism between older adults,” says Trerotola.

Deconstructing Potemkin

The program also aims to revisit the past, bringing to the present the pioneering cinema that deserves a re-examination. That's why the Festival will close with Sergei Eisenstein's "Battleship Potemkin," accompanied by live music. "This film was historically revolutionary for cinephiles, but that revolution was always conceived from an aesthetic and political perspective, from a rather macho standpoint, obscuring its queer side," explains Trerotola.

Because in the end that's what Asterisk is: "it's like shifting our gaze, running our mascara, putting everything inside our eye, it's painting our gaze," says Trerotola while putting together a catalog that would delight even John Waters himself.

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Where and when: from 30/10 at 19 hours at Hasta Trilce (Maza 177. City of Buenos Aires).