Strange Fruit (2004)

William Boyals (Kent Faulcon) is a successful New York lawyer and gay African-American who returns to the life he escaped from to investigate the murder of his gay childhood friend, Kelvin Ayers (Ron Allen). He was lynched in the parking lot outside of a gay night club in rural Louisiana. Boyals is forced to wade through a bog of conspiracy involving a network of local law and a dangerously entrenched subculture. Deputy Mathers (Christopher May) warns him, “Just remember, things ain’t always what they seem.” At the same time, he finds himself having to confront the reasons he left in the first place. He must fight the racism of the local police force and endure the homophobia of his own mother Martha (Cecile M. Johnson).The harder he looks, the deeper he gets, until the veil is pulled back to reveal a quagmire of racism and homophobia that threatens his life. Sheriff Jensey (Sam Jones), who allows his deputies to watch porn videos in the police station, is as homophobic and racist as they come. He is such a despicable villain that seeing Boyals put him in his place during their first meeting at the police station is one of the most enjoyable scenes in the film. Patrons of the Gator, the local gay bar where Kelvin was murdered, refuse to talk, wary of destroying their only safe place to gather. But with the assistance of Kelvin’s brother, Duane (David Raibon), Boyals soon focuses on a likely suspect: Jordan Walker (Shane Woodson), Sheriff Jensey’s redneck nephew. Then the truth is revealed so quickly at the conclusion that you’ll miss some of it if you blink.

Written, directed, and produced by openly bisexual Kyle Schickner, "Strange Fruit" is an entertaining, suspenseful thriller. Some of the scenes are a bit heavy-handed in their melodrama--particularly the opening scene in which Kelvin is murdered. But the film makes up for it with sympathetic characters. Kent Faulcon is solid in the lead role, and David Raibon steals every scene he appears in playing the comic-relief sidekick. The film's title comes from the Billie Holiday song of the same name, derived from the 1937 poem by Abel Meeropol inspired by a photo of the lynching of a black man.

Westler (1985)

In 1985, before the re-unification of Germany, Felix (Sigurd Rachman) a queen in West Berlin is in a happy relationship with an American from Los Angeles. While showing his American lover around East Berlin, Felix spots cute Thomas (Rainer Strecker). After a few lustful stares Felix introduces himself. The two become lovers in a passionate relationship. Their only problem is they live on opposite sides of the Berlin wall. The relationship with the American ends, and from then on Felix travels back and forth to East Berlin as often as he can because the curfew forces him to return every evening. Felix and Thomas have only one day per week and four to five hours to be together. When the East German authorities become suspicious, Felix is pulled over and that's when the troubles begin. Thomas decides to flee to the West. They go to Prague and from there Thomas is told that he will be smuggled to Hungary from where he must make his own way to Yugoslavia. The movie ends without telling us what happens next, which is quite disappointing considering it's not a cliff-hanger serial.

Don’t expect too much from this film. After Germany's re-unification, it has historical value but has lost its relevance since the fall of the Berlin Wall. It does tell us to never allow walls to be built between us again. In its time it was a fringe indie film that justified itself on its political predicaments, but there’s little else in terms of character development, plot, or any emotional stimuli that keeps it relevant. Despite its political baggage the film seems shallow, never showing us the atrocities that happened in East Germany. Instead we see an awkward strip search and a few moody faces at the border. The film looks dated, the sound is in mono, and the faded footage looks almost like a home movie. At one point we lose the sound for a 20-minute montage. Partly filmed incognito and illegally in East Germany, there are sections where, due to the lack of a microphone, the actors are moving their mouths but we cannot hear them. This was caused by the East German government not allowing sound to be recorded outside. The 1980's synthesizer soundtrack is something you'll enjoy or hate. "Westler" is a conventional film in German with English sub-titles. Engelbert Rehm composed the original music, Egbert Hörmann and Wieland Speck wrote the screenplay, and Wieland Speck directed. The English title is "East of the Wall" or "Westler: East of the Wall".