2014 ‘Der Kreis’ Directed by Stefan Haupt
A young teacher in Zurich in the 1950s falls in love with a transvestite star but is torn between his bourgeois existence and his commitment to homosexuality. He joins a gay organization that is eventually seen as the pioneer of gay emancipation in Europe.
El circulo, El cercle, Kruh, El círculo, Le Cercle, ザ・サークル, O Círculo, Круг
Switzerland
Germany12
Denmark
France
France
France
France
Denmark
France
Germany
Switzerland
Few memories stick with the petrified young gay man inside me like the first time I bought a queer magazine. Outrage, May 1996 for the record. I can’t remember the other magazine I bought to place over the top of it while I placed it, trembling, on the counter, but there was one. It was scary as fuck. That one purchase was the very first time that I outed myself to anyone. I'm not sure the news agency owner in Broome cared anywhere near as much about that fact as I did. I took the magazine back to my hotel room and read it cover to cover. Even in a time when images and erotic stories were available online (if…
The story of the Zürich gay community in the 1950s, told through the relationship of two of its members, now in their 80s and still a couple. Apparently Zürich was a gay mecca back then because homosexuality wasn't illegal as in so many other countries - for some reason Harry Lime didn't mention this in his 'cuckoo clock' speech - before an inevitable police crackdown drove gay life underground. You know, because it would be silly to have everybody happy, right?
The film flips constantly between period dramatisation and contemporary interviews with the central couple, Ernst and Röbi, and others from the time of The Circle. Here I think the director made a poor decision. The period scenes are blandly…
Part of the 2017 Queer Films Challenge
Week 3: A Teddy Award Winner.
As a derived Swiss citizen who has yet to actually visit Switzerland, I'm always curious to learn more about the country a good portion of my family comes from. I get a lot of this information from my family, but when it comes to the history of LGBT rights in Switzerland this film educated me in a massive way. Consistent with its legacy of neutrality, it seems that the social climate for gay men in post WWII Switzerland consisted of a lack of legal opposition but plenty of social pressure, negative stereotypes, and behind-closed-doors harassment. This film does an excellent job of highlighting, in both its narrative…
After all, we are not criminals. We are not criminals.
Rarely, if ever, does a line stick with me any second post-movie, but those. Those will.
Today, I started a new class in school. It's called "Movies show the world". Our first movie was The Circle (because we're Swiss and all that).
The Circle is the story of two gay men, who later became the first two men to live commit to a registered partnership, and the first gay underground organisation in Switzerland and all of Europe.
For a Swiss movie this is a little masterpiece, our film industry isn't really something to behold. What it really shows well is the constant fear of Ernst, the main character. The fear of people finding out who he really is and who he really loves. There's just some special kind of tension in the scenes where his cover…
hard to review this movie objectively because it‘s just so so cool to see gay swiss history on the screen. i feel like so much of what i know about lgbt history is through an american or anglophone lens and it feels incredible to see the city i live in- my friends and i have even been to queer balls in the very same place as the people in this movie, over 50 years later. just makes my heart go ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
a lovely film that suffers because of its form – it oscillates between documentary and dramatization, and where it could have been an extremely compelling documentary OR drama, when both are combined it felt lost and out-of-step with itself. however, each part, taken separately, is thrilling and compelling. i simply wish it was less hampered by its form.
Normalerweise könnte man ja skeptisch sein. Dokumentarfilme mit nachgestellten Einspielern sind ja meist eher so naja. Nur ist das hier wohl eher ein Film mit Dokumentareinspielern? Oder einfach ein verwobenes, gleichberechtigtes Nebenher von beiden Genres? Kein gewöhnlicher, kein einfacher Ansatz aber großartig umgesetzt! Ein ganz ganz wundervoller Film. <3
(und das hat jetzt nichts mit dem Film selbst zu tun aber! Es gibt wirklich wenige Momente, in denen ich so sehr an der deutschen Synchronisationskultur verzweifle als wenn ich mir einen schweizer Film anschauen möchte (auch ein schönes, regelmäßiges Beispiel: der schweizer Tatort...). Schon klar, ich kann Schweizerdeutsch auch nicht ohne Untertitel verstehen – aber liegt in der Erkenntnis nicht schon die Antwort auf diese Problematik? Untertitel? Schonmal gehört @Deutschland?…
I feel like they should have either done a movie or a documentary and not both because the documentary parts pulled me out of the movie even though they were interesting I just don't feel like it integrated well. Anyways, this was still good and Robi was beautiful.
Hmmm. It's a very interesting film in the sense that it is one half biopic and one half documentary, which I had no idea and I was so confused when the real people started talking. It's a film focused around a small gay male community and their magazine, The Circle in the forties and fifties in Germany.
It's a very interesting subject matter, and I really liked the different ways in which the documentary is presented. We're always looking for ways different from talking heads and I really liked that.
The only thing I think I didn't like was the way the biopic parts were filmed. It kinda just felt boring and done? Like it seemed like an excuse to show more nudity for shock value and I was just.. eh? It didn't add to anything really.
