The Male Gaze: Shadows on Skin is available to rent, buy or stream.
With its first Male Gaze entry of the year, NQV’s new short selection sizzles with four films exploring male sex and desire. These short films aren’t your traditional tales of love, belonging or sexual awakening; they are bold, sultry, artistic journeys into pleasure, passion and carnal desire. Here the Shadows on Skin are the people who leave a lasting impression on our sexual appetites, needs and interactions with others. Through four films that take us from Brazil to Germany and Argentina, we explore a sexual metamorphosis, a threesome with unexpected results, a series of aggressive hookups and the gulf between our online and offline worlds.
Opening the collection is Offline (Desconexo), directed by Lui Avallos. Avallos’ film is an intelligent exploration of online and offline worlds and the different confidence levels in each. Here we meet two young men who live in the same residential block but have never physically met. The connection between both men is purely digital until a presidential decree shuts off the city’s internet connection for a day, leading to a physical meeting where boundaries are explored and reality dissected. Offline asks us to question the sexual worlds we create online and the importance of physical meetings and touch in maintaining our human experience of sexuality and connection.
Our second film, Hedon, directed by Julian Dieterich, delves into the uneasy and often confusing relationship between sex and emotion. For Fynn, sexual encounters lack feeling; they are purely about physical pleasure, strength and control. Searching for that elusive ‘feeling’ of connection, Fynn embarks on a night with multiple sexual partners. But it’s not until he meets young Tom that Fynn realises his quest may have gone too far, and he may have lost himself in the process. In exploring emotion and pleasure, Dieterich asks whether the two are intrinsically linked or can be separated in the human mind, and if they can, what damage that separation may do to our sense of desire and control.
Our third film Adan and Esteban (Adan y Esteban), directed by Nicolás Alan Medina and Lucía Rivera López, explores the relationship between two friends and the unspoken love and attraction that has haunted their friendship for years. After a night of heavy drinking, Adan and Esteban find their friendship morphing into something new, something neither can explain nor deny. As the sun rises, their old teenage selves and adolescent insecurities are discarded, but is this new sexual confidence the beginning of love or just the fulfilment of a long-suppressed desire? Medina and López ultimately question whether it matters as two young men explore each other free from outside forces or labels.
Our fourth and final film, Private Photos (Fotos Privadas), directed by Marcelo Grabowsky, asks a simple question many couples face at one point or another. How do we spice up our sex life? Rafa (Lucas Galvino) and Matheus (Vinicius Neri) have been together for a long time, but like many couples, their sex life has recently struggled to offer them anything new. Matheus suggests inviting a third man to join them as a potential solution, and while Rafa’s not sure, he is willing to try it for the sake of their relationship. Enter Felipe (Antonio Miano), who has a thing for couples, but never sleeps with the same couple twice. However, as things heat up, it’s Rafa, not Matheus, who enjoys the new company, leading to resentment and doubt from Matheus. Director Marcelo Grabowsky’s exploration of a relationship on the rocks and the role of sex in its survival or instant demise will ring true for many couples.
THE AUSSIE BOYS
-
The Male Gaze: Shadows on Skin
NQV MEDIA | 1HR 26MIN | 2023
Through four films that take us from Brazil to Germany and Argentina, we explore a sexual metamorphosis, a threesome with unexpected results, a series of aggressive hookups and the gulf between our online and offline worlds.
