Follow CHE on TwitterThe Derek Oyston CHE Film Award
CHE, in association with the London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, has now presented the Derek Oyston CHE Film Award for four years running. The award is for the film screened in the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival which most reflects the aims and objectives of CHE.
2012: two prizes awarded
First prize: 365 Without 377, directed by Adele Tulli
In
1860, under British colonial rule, Section 377 of the Indian
Penal Code criminalised, among other things, homosexuality. In July
2009 the Delhi High Court repealed the clause in a landmark decision.
Tulli, who graduated in South Asian Studies and has worked on several
activist projects in India and Europe, follows three defiant Indian
activists as they head to the first anniversary celebrations of the
scrapping of 377 and share their personal stories, experiences of
fighting the clause, and consider what a year of legalised
homosexuality has brought.
Second prize: This is What Love in Action Looks Like, directed by Morgan Jon Fox
In the summer of
2005, parents of gay teenager Zach Stark packed their son off to Love
In Action, an ex-gay ministry purporting to cure gay youths of their
homosexual desires. Documenting the ordeal on his Myspace blog, word of
Zach’s situation spread rapidly throughout the community, and as a
small group of protesters began to grow outside the organisation, it
was not long before the mainstream media showed an interest in Zach’s
story and began to question the damaging nature of fundamentalist
ex-gay programmes. Six years in the making, Morgan Jon Fox’s passionate
documentary chronicles one of the most controversial cases in recent
gay history, featuring interviews with the former director of Love In
Action, several ex-clients and Zach himself. Whilst undoubtedly a sad
and often shocking tale, this is ultimately a film about hope,
celebrating the power of the community to rally together and incite
political change.
For more about why these films were chosen, see our Press Release dated 2 April 2012.
2011 winning film: Mutantes (Punk Porn Feminism)
On 1st April 2011, CHE
announced the winner of this year's Derek Oyston Film Award as Mutantes
(Punk Porn Feminism). Ian Stewart, one of CHE's team of judges,
presented the cerfificate and the cheque for £2,000 to Nazmia Jamal, to
be passed on to the director, Virginie Despentes.
Mutantes assembles a stunning array of personal archives and constructed footage, presenting punk interventions from leading players at the very forefront of the pro-sex movement, and closing with an experimental montage.
The 90-minute documentary airs the insights of expressive women in
the sex industry – many now important feminist cultural figures – with
recent work by performance and lens-based artists 
in
America and Europe, bundled amidst the observations of eminent scholars
of international reputation.
This year CHE also nominated a runner-up. On the 3rd of
April, Nettie Pollard, another of 
the judges,
announced that the runner-up is We Were Here, directed by
David Weissman, a heart-warming account of the San Francisco gay
community’s early mobilisation around the AIDS epidemic, at a time when
treatments were unknown.
For more details see our press releases: (23 March (longlist), 30 March (shortlist) and 3 April (final results).
2010 winning film: The Kuchus of Uganda
Following the showing of the film on 21st
March 2010, the certificate, and a cheque for £2,000 was presented by
Griffith Vaughan Williams, Secretary of CHE, to Nazmia Jamal, a
programmer for the Film Festival, to be passed on to the film's
director, Mathilda Piehl.
Particularly inspiring in light of changes in the law that happened after this film was made, this is a documentary about SMUG (Sexual Minorities Uganda), a group of radical LGBT activists who risk their lives in order to push for queer rights.
See also our press release.
2009 winner: Darling!: the Pieter-Dirk Uys Story
The award of £2,000 was presented to the film's director, Julian Shaw, at at the main screening of the film in the LLGFF by CHE's Vice-President, the Broadcaster, Television Reporter and Gay Rights Campaigner Ray Gosling.
The other nominated films were:
A Place to Live: The Story of Triangle Square Dir Carolyn Coal
Dreams Deferred: The Sakia Gunn Project Dir Charles B Brack
Fig Trees Dir John Greyson and David Wall
In This Our Lives: The Reunion Dir Topher Campbell
One Summer in New Paltz, a Cautionary Tale Dir Nancy Nicol
Out Late Dir Beatrice Alda and Jennifer Brooke
Sex Positive Dir Daryl Wein
Travel Queeries Dir Elliat Graney-Saucke
The Jury
The CHE Film Award jury members in this inaugural year are:
- Griff Vaughan Williams, Media Officer of CHE
- Emma Smart, LLGFF Programmer
- Nettie Pollard, a founding member of Feminists Against Censorship and CHE Executive Committee member.