Mideast Piece

Beirut, Lebanon - once dubbed the Paris of the Middle East - is currently home to a groundbreaking exhibition called “Erotika” depicting female sexuality.

Vivid colors are used to show images of fetishism, homosexuality and even masturbation in a show artists hope will help break taboos in the region (samples below). “We do not want to shock people,” said co-creator Nayla Karam. “We allow our inspiration to guide us. One of our greatest pleasures is to see the different reactions of people, depending on their own fantasies.”

Click here to learn more.

Last night television viewers in much of the non-US world were glued to their screens for the annual Eurovision Song Contest, held in Helsinki, Finland this year. Dubbed by some “the gayest pop show on Earth, the Eurovision launched the careers of “gay” artisits including ABBA, Celine Dion and Julio Iglesias.

Israeli transsexual singer Dana International (who won the competition in 1998) summed up the gay interest by saying, “It’s like pageantry, and gay men love pageantry and being outrageous.” In fact, for some Europeans, identifying yourself as a Eurovision fan is a tacit way of coming out of the closet, and the show is often most closely identified with housewives and gay men.

We at Mideast Piece also love the Eurovision because it is a venue where a country like Serbia, the big winner last night, can make international headlines for something positive and trump the French to boot. Goooooooooooo Serbs!!

The 2006 contest was the gayest to date by all accounts. Out and flamboyant Bulgarian singer Azis (pictured below) sang backup for that year’s Bulgarian entrant, Mariana Popova, clad in what appeared to be a floor-length skirt and high heels. Openly gay Swedish singer Andreas Lundstedt (formerly of Alcazar) formed part of the Swiss entry Six4One, and Moldovan entrant Arsenium was outed as a bisexual slave after an ad on a S/M site surfaced.

To learn more about the gayest pop show ever, click here.

Few mainstream films have been made about homosexuality in the Muslim/Arab world, and one of the more noteworthy has been “The Road to Love,” a 2004 independent French film (mainstream?). Here’s a segment from Grady Harp’s review:

French Algerian Karim (Karim Tarek) is a student in Paris and spends his time with his girlfriend Sihem (Sihem Benamoune). He happens to view a television program about the gay life in Egypt in the 20th century, a life that allowed gay relationships and even marriages so along as the men gave up the lifestyle when they eventually married women. His interest in the subject results in a sociology project of interviewing gay Arab men to explore contemporary gay lifestyles.

After a few aborted attempts (Karim is not sufficiently comfortable with the subject matter to gain the trust of his interviewees) Karim encounters Farid (Farid Tali), a gay, well-adjusted, quietly seductive handsome Algerian lad who not only agrees to be interviewed, but also finds ways to assist Karim with his project. Chemistry develops and the two depart Paris to visit Marseilles and Morocco and Karim discovers why the subject of choice fascinates him so.

The beauty of this film lies in the honesty in which it is written, directed, acted, and edited. Not only are we allowed to explore a subject matter few of us knew (Islamic homosexuality history and social mores), we are also presented with one of the more tender love stories on film - tender because it is not overt but rather because it is so naturally evolved. The actors are excellent and though they feel as though they are first time, off the street recruits, they find the core of the script and make the story beautiful.

Learn more or order a copy of “The Road to Love” here.

Here’s a little ditty by Yuri Hospodar, a gay poet whose first collection was called “To You in Your Closets.”

Bad Gay Poem

here we lay not a gym card between us
not a six-pack to be seen, but some empties nearby

a misfit fit jigsaws briefly into place

In case you’re wondering where you could buy one, Shirat HaSirena over at Zabaj has the inside scoop on hot, fresh HOMOS! This sign was spotted in Jerusalem. I assume the sign used to read “humus“.

I know that it’s a little late but I have been very busy having a little spring fling! (And no, you are not going to hear all about it here!) Anyway, even though I don’t consider myself “Christian” anymore - now I’m “spiritual” - I still celebrate to some degree the big Christian holidays that I grew up with. Easter for me means getting together with family and eating ham. That’s a challenge here since my family all lives in the US and both religious Jews and Muslims consider pork unclean to eat. You can find find ham in the Middle East, but it’s not the same as what we have in the Southern US.

So, instead of eating ham this Easter, my friend G and I dyed Easter eggs. We had loads of fun! My aunt sent me dye packets last year that I managed to keep until this Easter. I got the dyes all ready to go. G and I took off our shirts (hot!) and got to work coloring our eggs. We were so cute sitting on my balcony coloring our eggs!

The picture above features yours truly and a few of our more artistic creations. Happy Spring, everybody!

Over at Jewlicious, Phoebe shares about how she got all tongue tied during a recent Q and A session with Eytan Fox. Phoebe was thrilled to spend an evening her favorite film director and the man behind Yossi and Jagger, Walk on Water, and the new film, The Bubble, premiering April 30 at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Phoebe says that Eytan

went on to study film at Tel Aviv University, to produce a romantic comedy (”Song of the Siren”) deemed frivolous by an American Hadassah audience, to direct an Israeli TV series called “Florentine” which included gay sex before, he told us, American TV made such a leap, and, most importantly as far as I’m concerned, to make the most amazing movie ever, Yossi and Jagger.

Lots of folks have expressed interesting in seeing Fox’s latest The Bubble. There’s a whole post and comment thread about it over at Bedtime Stories. As you know, we’re on top of things here at MEP and brought you the news that The Bubble will be distributed in the US way back in February. Keep asking for it at your local video store or at your favorite retailer!

Billed as “co-existence” comedy, Dean Obeidallah (an Arab) and Max Brooks (a Jew) have joined forces to bring some levity to a post-9/11 America where fear of “the other” is at a fever pitch. Brooks is the son of Mel Brooks, so he knows a thing or two about ethic humor and making persecution, um, funny.

The two men’s efforts have grown into “The Watch List,” comedy performed by Arab and Persian American comedians. For example: comedian Nasry Malik’s divulged his family’s plan for seeming more patriotic post-9/11. “We want to be more patriotic, more American than Americans,” Malik declares. “So my family and I have been discussing it and we’re actually thinking about turning in my father. It’s not because he did anything wrong; it would just make us look so patriotic.”

It’s interesting to see Arab/Persian Americans take a page from the Jewish playbook about coping with prejudice and making ‘em laugh to disarm them. “I’m not inventing the use of comedy to try to effect social change,” said Obeidallah. Whether it’s laughs or hot men, we at Mideast Piece stand in favor of anything that gets people laughing instead of killing each other.

To view some of “The Watch List,” click here.

Meet Oren Turgeman, our Mideast Piece of the Week. I know he dresses a bit like Cher in concert, but try to focus on just his body, thanks.

Jerusalem sits on the seam of the Mideast conflict in many ways. Divided into Jewish and Arab halves, the city is a flashpoint for religious fervor and political battles. Running down the center of the city is Road 1, which until 1967’s Six Day War divided the city between Israeli and Jordanian control.

A unique museum sits on this road today, the Museum on the Seam. Calling itself a “socio-political contemporary art museum,” the organization attempts to respond to complex and tension-filled daily realities of the region, including violence and discrimination. Housed in a building scarred by bullet marks from the war, the Museum on the Seam attempts to bridge the gap between the Holy City’s many divides: Jewish-Arab, secular-religious, East-West, etc.

As far as I know the museum has never done an exhibition on GLBT life in the region. In a “holy city” supposed to speak for humanity’s best values, gays have faced increased persecution in recent years as the community attempts to organize. Gay Jews, Muslims and Christians face the exact same religious-based intolerance, making homophobia one of the few issues the faiths can agree upon.