This was the first big Brazilian drama that HBO worked on, and it’s a five-episode miniseries that lasts almost five hours in total. It’s a really emotional and political story set in Rio de Janeiro during the late 1980s, and it does a great job of showing what that era felt like while the country was dealing with the HIV/AIDS crisis. Since the world feels so divided today, the show is a beautiful reminder of how queer people can find power by standing together when things are hard. The story is actually based on real things that happened, specifically about flight attendants who smuggled AIDS medicine from the US into Brazil in the 80s. It works as both a history drama and a strong political message. The show is mostly about three people: Nando, his best friend Lea (they both work as flight attendants for Fly Brasil), and Raul, who is a performer and an activist. A lot of the story happens at a club called Paradise, which was one of the few open gay clubs back in the 80s. Nando is a h...
College Boys Live gives many of its subscribers and performers a chance to experience a truly gay community. The site according to its owner, Zac, is not just about sex and sex chat. He states its main aim is self-empowerment: both for the boys and for the site’s members. Three new members join this house where they have to live minimum of 6 months. Zac likes to give the impression he is doing this for philanthropic reasons, and perhaps he is, we wont know. But the boys, all young and skinny and just coming out, have to be under camera scrutiny 24/7 with only obligation being they have to chat live for at least 2 hours a day, of which at least for 30 minutes they have to be naked. So we follow lives of three young boys aged 18, 21, 22 who are just going Zac and his boyfriend in the house and we witness their journey. Not only do we see the journey of these teenagers, the film makers also show tearful family reunions, interviews with parents and siblings. The documentary ends with the shot of the house and what's going on 6 years after the footage was shot but in the year that this documentary was made in 2009.
I have mixed feelings about this documentary. Despite me being very engaged and wanting to know more on what happened, it also felt so disconnected from today's time but yet still relevant. Back in the day people used paid subscription websites (which were probably very few) to satisfy their urges and things haven't changed all that much even now. The documentary was a bit lengthy, given the subject matter and I would have liked it to be a lot more sharper and crispier. Somehow the makers all the relevant material but they could have done a better job of bringing it all together. There’s no conclusion drawn about the central figure of Zac, whether he is naive or an exploiter. There’s also little in the way of context surrounding where this site sits in the online gay community and also in relation to other adult sites. Despite my personal issues, the film is still an interesting expose on this world. The story is often a lot more complicated than just those young guys in their little boxes typing all over the internet, but how complicated it really is, would only be known to people who are in it. (5/10)
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