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While the 13th Slovak Queer Film Festival includes in its line up a later Solito’s queer jewel, let’s have a look at the director’s feature debut “The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros”. The film won over the children juries at the 56th Berlinale and left with the Special Mention from the Generation Kplus Children’s Jury, Grand Prix from the International Jury Kinderfilmfest, and also with the Teddy Award. By the way, that was the year when Sir Ian McKellen received the Honorary Golden Bear.

The international attention that the coming of age story of a “fairy” gay Maxi (Nathan Lopez) has received is, I dare to say, well deserved. “The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros” portrays the world of its main protagonist with a great sense for details, leaving his queerness as a mere one of them. Quite unlike what we could have seen in western films, being gay is a character trait,...

Busong (Palawan Fate) is the summation of Auraeus Solito's artistic life, so far. Its devotion to folklore and its insistence on it being told through the usage of practical effects as opposed to sleeker and more popular digital effects is owed to the dazzling stop animation that was the source of absolute wonder in Ang Maikling Buhay ng Apoy, Act 2 Scene 2, Suring at ang Kuk-ok (The Brief Lifespan of Fire, Act 2 Scene 2, Suring and the Kuk-ok, 1995). Its reliance on romanticizing the struggle of the marginalized and the underrepresented is owed to the famous love story of the young gay boy and a police officer in Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros (The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros, 2005) and the struggles...

NEW YORK -- The Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art's New Directors/New Films series will celebrate its 35th anniversary with an international collection of projects, a roundtable of featured helmers and a documentary retrospective. Twenty-five features and 17 shorts will appear at the fest, which opens Mar. 22 with two Sundance Film Festival hits and directorial debuts: Ryan Fleck's Half Nelson, a drama about a drug-addicted junior high school teacher, and Auraeus Solito's gay-themed coming-of-age tale The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros. All films will be shown through April 2 at the Walter Reade Theater in Lincoln Center and at the Titus Theater at MoMA. Fleck will appear with his Half Nelson co-writer Anna Boden, Man Push Cart director Ramin Bahrani and Look Both Ways helmer Sarah Watt at "From Script to Screen," a directors' roundtable presented by HBO Films on March 26 at the Walter Reade Theater.