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There is a bit of a she said / he said situation happening between reps at a film festival in Spain and the Spanish based company responsible for distributing the Eva Longoria starrer Without Men over whether or not the distribution company scrubbed the film of its lesbian scenes.
The director of the Barcelona International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Xavier Daniel, says, "We received a statement from the distributor in Spain saying that when the film premieres it will have the lesbian scenes removed.” Subsequently the film festival dropped the film from its roster rather than run a censored version, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
"We are very angry that a distributor can modify the content of a film," Daniel told THR. "The audience will not understand the film, because all the lesbian scenes are cut out… It is unbelievable in the year 2011."
The film, costarring Christian Slater and Kate del Castillo and directed by Gabriela Tagliavini, is based on the novel by James Canon about life in a Latin American village once communist guerilla fighters recruit the town’s men to leave and fight.
While film festival reps claims the film was censored, spokespeople for Tayrona Entertainment, the film’s distribution company in Spain, begged to differ asserting that the film was “re-edited” for a mainstream audience.
Tayrona Entertainment’s President James Ordonez wrote the following in a statement to THR:
Without Men was never conceived as a Lesbian story but as a comedy about situations that happen to a town when all men are sent to war. Those situations included lesbianism among many other ones.
It's not accurate to say either that the festival canceled the screening of the film as Tayrona actually rejected the participation of the film in a Gay and Lesbian Film festival when the film is not a Lesbian story and it's not about lesbianism. It's a mainstream comedy that includes lesbian scenes as part of the main story and to participate in a festival of this nature is against the business itself of the film as will confuse target audiences.
Read the statement in full here.
Tracy E. Gilchrist is the VP, Executive Producer of Entertainment for the Advocate Channel. A media veteran, she writes about the intersections of LGBTQ+ equality and pop culture. Previously, she was the editor-in-chief of The Advocate and the first feminism editor for the 55-year-old brand. In 2017, she launched the company's first podcast, The Advocates. She is an experienced broadcast interviewer, panel moderator, and public speaker who has delivered her talk, "Pandora's Box to Pose: Game-changing Visibility in Film and TV," at universities throughout the country.
Tracy E. Gilchrist is the VP, Executive Producer of Entertainment for the Advocate Channel. A media veteran, she writes about the intersections of LGBTQ+ equality and pop culture. Previously, she was the editor-in-chief of The Advocate and the first feminism editor for the 55-year-old brand. In 2017, she launched the company's first podcast, The Advocates. She is an experienced broadcast interviewer, panel moderator, and public speaker who has delivered her talk, "Pandora's Box to Pose: Game-changing Visibility in Film and TV," at universities throughout the country.
