Mixed company at the Out In Africa Festival

Continuing the French theme is the documentary Louis(e) de Ville, Portrait Of A Bad Girl.

De Ville, a guest of the festival courtesy of the French Embassy and the Institut Francais SA, will attend all screenings, and perform her inimitable style of live burlesque in both cities.

Intelligent, articulate and political, she performs in burlesque shows throughout Europe.

Portrait screens as a double bill with In Their Room: London directed by Travis Mathews, who often collaborates with James Franco. In Their Room showcases a cross-section of gay men who share what’s on their minds. Intelligent and insightful, compulsive and compelling, voyeuristic and sometimes just plain crazy, the film is also surprisingly tender.

German director Patrick Schuckmann will present his film Lose Your Head, a tense and sexy psychological thriller based on the true story.

Luis, a young Spaniard, comes to summery Berlin to party and meets the intriguing Viktor. It all becomes scary when a Greek woman mistakes Luis for her brother who has disappeared.

Another German offering is the award-winning Free Fall (Freier Fall) directed by Stephan Lacant. Set far from the gay world, it is a gritty, intense study of a riot squad policeman whose life comes apart when he falls for a colleague.

Director Rodney Evans, a guest of the 2005 festival with Brother To Brother, has delivered a well-scripted, often pin-sharp delving into the new rules of engagement as permanence makes way for pleasure in The Happy Sad.

Here two couples, one (nearly) straight, one gay, find themselves exploring alternatives to the usual till-death-do-us-part monogamy roundabout, with intriguing consequences and twists.