a&e features
Witness to the horrors in Chechnya
New documentary reveals life-or-death struggle to escape ‘gay genocide’
In an era when documentaries often seem geared more toward a slick and buzzy “docu-tainment” style than to the unfiltered presentation of real-world facts and experiences, “Welcome to Chechnya” blasts you in the face like a gust of icy wind.
A harrowing look at the “underground railroad” that sprung up within Russia to help the victims of the notorious “gay genocide” being perpetrated under Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, it’s a film that makes you want to look away but doesn’t let you do it. It conveys the unthinkable trauma of living in a constant state of terror while making a desperate, clandestine run for your very life; more than that, it permits us to put a human face – albeit a digitally altered one – on the crisis.
Part of the film’s impact undoubtedly stems from its subject matter, but it’s at least equally due to the artistry of its director, David France. It’s not the first time he’s been behind a heavyweight LGBTQ documentary. The longtime journalist made his directing debut with “How to Survive a Plague” in 2012, documenting the early years of the AIDS epidemic with an activist’s passion in a film that won him a host of awards and nominations for several more, including an Oscar.
Now, “Chechnya,” which premiered at last year’s Sundance Festival and was released by HBO last summer, has made the shortlist for this year’s Academy Awards, raising the possibility for a second chance at taking home the coveted statue. Yet Oscar gold was not what France had on his mind when he had a conversation with the Blade about the film earlier this week. Rather, he wanted to discuss the people in the film.
France, like everyone else, had been appalled by the tales coming out of Chechnya in 2017. “We all read the stories,” he tells us now, “but it wasn’t until I read Masha Gessen’s New Yorker piece about the work that ordinary Russians were having to take upon themselves that I became really fascinated.”
He is referring to the network of LGBTQ activists that mobilized in the absence of outside help to extract refugees in daring escapes, hide them in safe houses across Russia, and work with groups around the world to get them out of the country. In “Welcome to Chechnya,” he follows a handful of these accidental heroes, as well as several of the survivors they protect, as they orchestrate and enact spycraft that would be right at home in an episode of “The Americans.” In the process, he shines a light on more than just the atrocities being committed against queer people in Chechnya. He also illuminates a level of courage that most of us have never had to muster.
“That’s what drew me in,” France says. “The fact that ordinary citizens took it upon themselves to intervene, to try and save lives, while the rest of the world was doing so little about it.”
“It’s not like they had been already doing this work,” he explains. “Olga [Baranova, one of the activists who appears in the film] was running a community center that had an annual arts fair – that’s the extent of her training for the kind of cape-wearing heroics that you see her carrying out.”
With his cameraman and producer Askold Kurov, France spent months in the underground, chronicling the efforts of the activists and the stories of the survivors under their care, and getting plenty of first-hand experience with the kind of fear under which they had willingly chosen to live, day after day. After all, getting out of Chechnya wasn’t enough to make anyone safe; Chechen authorities were willing to stop at nothing to make sure nobody had a chance to expose what was going on, up to and including tracking down, recapturing, and maybe even killing any potential witnesses – and anyone who stood in the way was putting themselves in peril, too.
“I remember going on one of the extractions,” he relates. “We were getting ready to make a run with a couple whose location had been found out. We had only a few hours to get them to the airport, and then we got word of a rumor that a group of assassins had been dispatched to prevent them from leaving the country. We had one bodyguard, with one sidearm, with us.
“That kind of unbelievable peril is what hung over, and what still hangs over, every aspect of the work these ordinary Russian activists have taken on for themselves.”
It’s also what made it a challenge to film the refugees, for whom anonymity was a matter of life or death.
“I wanted to show what they looked like,” he tells us. “The pain that they wore on their faces, the hope – and certainly the fear. And most of them wanted the world to know what had happened to them, to expose these crimes – but they also understood what it would mean for them and their families if they stood up publicly and revealed their truths. They were terrified, and here I was asking them to let me film them anyway and then figure out how to solve this problem later.”
There is still a touch of awe in his voice as he says, “Remarkably, a couple of dozen people agreed to let me do that.”
He continues, “There were people, of course, who couldn’t take that leap with me. There was one person who was nervous even about me filming other people in the shelter. These were people who had just escaped the most horrific abuse and torture, and violation from their own families. They were hiding from their brothers and their uncles, from their own fathers. That dislocation of familial love was so traumatic to everybody there that some of them were just on a very sharp edge – unable to reckon with the past, unable to find security in the present or see hope in the future. You see that in the film with one of them, who even attempts suicide. For those people, it was a difficult arrangement to have me shooting even on the other side of the shelter house. I understood that and I tried to be very respectful.”
The challenge of maintaining privacy would eventually be surmounted by new, state-of-the-art identity protection software, a high-tech touch that France – savvy storyteller that he is – was able to parlay into one of the film’s most dramatic and unexpected moments. A considerable amount of screen time in “Welcome to Chechnya” is devoted to an anonymous refugee who has escaped from his tormentors into the network, where he is reunited with his family and his boyfriend of 10 years; a turning point comes when, despite being poised for removal to another country, he chooses to go public with his story and make an official complaint to the Russian government. As he makes that decision, the false features realistically rendered over his real ones melt away before our eyes, revealing his unaltered face – and with it, his true identity. It’s a powerful effect, and it’s our official introduction to Maxim Lapunov, whose subsequent appearance before a Russian court to tell his story is captured in the movie. Unsurprisingly, his claims are dismissed, and the need to get him and his loved ones out of the country becomes even more imperative.
In talking about Lapunov, the awe returns to France’s voice. “Maxim’s moral courage is unmatched. It was really clear that his life was going to be fucked up for the foreseeable future, no matter what he did. The courage that he showed was the courage to throw his body in the way to make sure that other people don’t get treated the way that he was treated – to save people’s lives. He could have gone anywhere in the world, and just nursed his post-traumatic memories in safety, but instead he went back into the fire. That was remarkable. I watched him make those decisions, I watched him take on that risk, I watched him bring his family along on that journey and win their allegiance in these choices – these are human dramas like you see in Hollywood films that actually are taking place in the queer battle against the crimes in Russia.”
He segues into a similar expression of respect for David Isteev, another activist prominently featured in “Chechnya.”
“When you look at his face, you just get this incredible sense of high alert and of moral purpose. It makes me think of the stories we have heard from the Holocaust, of citizens who would otherwise have been untouched who reach into some deep reserve to do something. That’s him. And being in the presence of that was one of the most remarkable experiences of my life.”
If it sounds like he has bonded with his subjects, it’s because he has. Being embedded in the shelter network for such an extended period of time, he and Kurov became part of the underground themselves. “We were no longer visitors from outside,” he says. “We were experiencing what they were. I spent nights full of terror inside those safe houses, when rumors were flying about people who might have been seen, locations that might have been revealed, dangers that might have been heightened – I felt that with them. We huddled together, and, in a way, I became part of their journey.
“I do feel personally attached to those people having been through that with them. It’s something like the bond of warfare that you read about. I would do anything for David. I would do anything for Maxim and his family.”
The real emotion apparent in these professions of kinship is surely one of the reasons why the documentarian is still, more than six months after his film’s debut, eager to talk about it. The people with whom he developed these strong bonds are still very much at risk.
The biggest horrors in “Welcome to Chechnya” are only glimpsed briefly in dark and blurry videos intercepted from the web by the network, or described in the stories of torment, humiliation and brutality told by the survivors, but they cast a dark enough shadow over the imagination to make us want to believe they are safely in the past. Unfortunately, as France is quick to remind us, LGBTQ persecution in Chechnya is still very much “an ongoing humanitarian crisis.” Just last week, two refugees were kidnapped from the network by Russian authorities and returned to Chechnya, an incident that brought the situation there back into the headlines.
“These were two very young men, one of them 20, and the other 17 – not even a man,” relates France. “They had been abducted last summer in Chechnya and tortured, they barely got out alive. They were rescued and extracted by the network and were being held in a safe house while the work was being done with foreign partners to try and get them out. Now they are back in detention in Chechnya. It’s a very volatile situation.”
Yet it’s also a situation in which, perhaps ironically, he sees a hope that has been scarce for the past four years.
“The United States, in this new administration, has expressed great concern for those two kids and demanded information on their safety,” he points out. “The European Court for Human Rights has demanded access to them, and safe passage for them to get back to the safe house where they were being held.”
For him, it’s a call to action. “The Russian LGBT network is on the ground, still fighting this fight,” he says. “We can urgently throw our voices behind their efforts with regard to these two youngsters – we could save their lives. There are petitions, but that’s not enough. We know from watching these activists’ work that it’s essential, it’s extensive, and as you can imagine, it’s costly. They cannot raise money within Russia, so they’ve asked people who see the film to help them by donating. There’s a donation page on the movie site. We’ve just watched almost $200,000 move through there, in the six months since the film came out, and that money goes to the Moscow Community Center, Olga’s group that runs the shelter system, to the Russian LGBT Network that does the extractions and runs the global hotline for the crisis. And it also goes to Maxim and his legal case, which is still percolating through, and showing great progress in, the European courts.
“So, I think there’s hope, but we have to act urgently. I think what’s shocked us all, in the last few years, is how easily we can lose ground. All this progress that we’ve made over the last 30 or 40 years can be reversed in a heartbeat, and that’s what’s happened in Russia, and Russia has led the way in this dramatic reversal of queer progress, all across Europe. It’s going to take a lot of people coming together internationally to stop that, but it is possible.”
He’s a realist in his expectations, though. “We can’t hope for regime change in Chechnya or in Russia. Those are not practical, immediate goals. But we can force Ramzan Kadyrov in Chechnya to stop this. He is a puppet of Putin’s. If we make it politically untenable for Putin not to intervene there, then he will lift up the telephone and say to Kadyrov, ‘Stop it.’ That’s all that it takes. It’s that simple. We haven’t gotten there because we haven’t had the kind of global leadership that can bring collective pressure on Putin to do that. I think we’re in a place where we can now.
“Even just watching the film is an important step. The Russian government has said repeatedly that this is not happening, that there’s no evidence, even – ridiculously – that there are no queer Chechens. They say that no one has come forward, but Maxim did that, officially, and they rejected his claims. The people protected by the digital technology we deployed in the film have also spelled out their stories, so they are witnesses. And we’re all witnesses, now.”
The passion creeps back into France’s voice as he recalls, “That was my promise to the people in the network, when I said I wanted to film with them, that I was going to help make this so that everybody in the world knows what’s happening.
“Anybody who sees the film becomes a witness, and it becomes an act of resistance just to talk about what you see in it.”
a&e features
Author of new book empowers Black ‘fat’ femme voices
After suicidal thoughts, attacks from far right, a roadmap to happiness
In 2017, Jon Paul was suicidal. In nearly every place Paul encountered, there were signs that consistently reminded the transgender community that their presence in America by the far right is unwelcomed.
Former President Donald Trump’s anti-trans rhetoric is “partly” responsible for Paul’s suicidal contemplation.
“I’m driving out of work, and I’m seeing all of these Trump flags that are telling me that I could potentially lose my life over just being me and wanting to be who I am,” Paul said. “So, were they explicitly the issue? No, but did they add to it? I highly would say yes.”
During Trump’s time as president, he often disapproved of those who identified as transgender in America; the former president imposed a ban on transgender individuals who wanted to join the U.S. military.
“If the world keeps telling me that I don’t have a reason for me to be here and the world is going to keep shaming me for being here. Then why live?” Paul added.
The rhetoric hasn’t slowed and has been a messaging tool Trump uses to galvanize his base by saying that Democrats like Vice President Kamala Harris “want to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison.” Trump made that claim at the presidential debate against Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
Not only do Trump’s actions hurt Paul, but they also affect 17-year-old Jacie Michelleé, a transgender person at Friendly Senior High School.
“When former President Donald J. Trump speaks on transgender [individuals] in a negative light, it saddens my heart and makes me wonder what he thinks his personal gain is from making these comments will be,” Michelleé said.
“When these comments are made toward trans immigrants or the transgender community, it baffles me because it shows me that the times are changing and not for the better,” Michelleé added.
The Congressional Black Caucus Foundation responded to Trump’s rhetoric that opposes the transgender community and how it affects democracy through programming at its Annual Legislative Conference in Washington.
“Our agendas are not set by what other groups are saying we should or shouldn’t do. It is set by our communities and what we know the needs and the most pressing needs are for the Black community, and we know that our global LGBTQAI+ communities have needs; they are a part of our community,” said Nicole Austin-Hillery, president and CEO of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation.
One pressing need is suicide prevention, which the National Institute of Health deems necessary, as 82% of transgender individuals have reported having suicidal thoughts, while 40% have attempted suicide. This research applies to individuals like Paul, who reported contemplating suicide.
But instead of choosing to self-harm, Paul met Latrice Royale, a fourth-season contestant on “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” who was awarded the title of Miss Congeniality while on the show. Paul said that meeting brought meaning when there was barely any left.
“It was like I met them at a time where I really, truly, not only needed to see them, but I needed to be able to actively know ‘girl’ you can live and you can have a really a good life, right? And Latrice was that for me,” Paul said.
Though Trump is representative of a lot of movements that are clashing with society, the Democratic Party is actively pushing back against anti-transgender movements and says there is “still much work to be done.”
Not only did Royale model success for Paul, but they also share the same appearance. Paul proudly identifies as “fat” and uses this descriptor as a political vehicle to empower others in the book “Black Fat Femme, Revealing the Power of Visibly Queer Voices in the Media and Learning to Love Yourself.”
“My book, my work as a Black, fat femme, is inherently political. I say this at the very front of my book,” Paul said. “All three of those monikers are all three things in this world that the world hates and is working overtime to get rid of.”
“They’re trying to kill me as a Black person; they’re trying to get rid of me as a fat person. They are trying to get rid of me as a queer person,” Paul added.
Besides Paul’s political statements, the book’s mission is to give those without resources a blueprint to make it across the finish line.
“I want them to look at all the stories that I share in this and be able to say, ‘wow,’ not only do I see myself, but now I have a roadmap and how I can navigate all of these things that life throws at me that I never had, and I think that’s why I was so passionate about selling and writing the book,” Paul said.
The Blade may receive commissions from qualifying purchases made via this post.
a&e features
Jussie Smollett asserts innocence while promoting new film
‘I know what happened and soon you all will too’
Jussie Smollett, the actor and musician who was convicted of lying to the police about being the victim of a homophobic and racist hate crime that he staged in 2019, attended a screening of his latest film “The Lost Holliday” in a packed auditorium of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library on Aug. 28.
In an interview with the Washington Blade that took place before the screening, he continued to assert his innocence and responded to concerns within the LGBTQ community that his case has discouraged real victims from reporting hate crimes.
The former “Empire” star wrote, produced, and directed “The Lost Holliday,” his second feature film to direct following 2021’s “B-Boy Blues.” Produced through Smollett’s company, SuperMassive Movies, he stars in the film alongside Vivica A. Fox, who also served as a producer and attended the library screening with other cast members.
In the film, Smollett plays Jason Holliday, a man grappling with the sudden death of his husband Damien (Jabari Redd). Things are complicated when Damien’s estranged mother, Cassandra Marshall (Fox), arrives in Los Angeles from Detroit for the funeral, unaware of Damien’s marriage to Jason or of their adopted daughter. Initially, Jason and Cassandra clash — Cassandra’s subtle homophobia and Jason’s lingering resentment over her treatment of Damien fuel their tension –– but they begin to bond as they navigate their grief together.
Smollett, Fox, Redd, and Brittany S. Hall, who plays Jason’s sister Cheyenne, discussed the film in an interview with the Washington Blade. Highlighting the wide representation of queer identities in the film and among the cast, they stressed that the story is fundamentally about family and love.
“What we really want people to get from this movie is love,” Smollett said. “It’s beneficial for people to see other people that are not like themselves, living the life that they can identify with. Because somehow, what it does is that it opens up the world a little bit.”
Smollett drew from personal experiences with familial estrangement and grief during the making of the film, which delves into themes of parenthood, reconciliation, and the complexities of family relationships.
“I grew up with a father who was not necessarily the most accepting of gay people, and I grew up with a mother who was rather the opposite. I had a safe space in my home to go to, but I also had a not-so-safe space in my home, which was my father,” he said.
“The moment that he actually heard the words that his son was gay, as disconnected and estranged as we were, he instantly changed. He called me, after not speaking to him for years, and apologized for how difficult it must have been all of those years of me growing up. And then a couple years later, he passed away.”
Smollett began working on “The Lost Holliday” eight years ago, with Fox in mind for the role of Cassandra from the outset. He said that he had started collaborating on the project with one of the biggest producers in Hollywood when “‘2019’ happened.”
In January 2019, Smollett told Chicago police that he had been physically attacked in a homophobic and racist hate crime. He initially received an outpouring of support, in particular from the LGBTQ and Black communities. However, police soon charged him with filing a false police report, alleging that he had staged the attack.
After prosecutors controversially dismissed the initial charges in exchange for community service and the forfeiture of his $10,000 bond, Smollett was recharged with the same offenses in 2020. Meanwhile, his character in “Empire” was written out of the show.
In 2021, a Cook County jury found him guilty on five of the six charges of disorderly conduct for lying to police, and he was sentenced to 150 days in jail and 30 months of probation, along with a $120,000 restitution payment to the city of Chicago for the overtime costs incurred by police investigating his initial hate crime claim.
LGBTQ people are nine times more likely than non-LGBTQ people to be victims of violent hate crimes, according to a study by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law. Upon Smollett’s conviction, some in the LGBTQ community felt that the case would discredit victims of hate crimes and make it more difficult to report future such crimes.
Smollett seemed to acknowledge these concerns, but denied that he staged the attack.
“I know what happened and soon you all will too,” he told the Blade. “If someone reported a crime and it wasn’t the truth, that would actually make it more difficult [to report future crimes], but I didn’t. Any belief that they have about the person that I’ve been played out to be, sure, but that person is not me, never has been,” he said. “So I stand with my community. I love my community and I protect and defend my community until I’m bloody in my fist.”
“And for all the people who, in fact, have been assaulted or attacked and then have been lied upon and made it to seem like they made it up, I’m sorry that you have to constantly prove your trauma, and I wish that it wasn’t that way, and I completely identify with you,” he added.
An Illinois Appellate Court upheld his guilty verdict last year, but Smollett has since appealed to the Illinois Supreme Court, which in March agreed to hear the case. He has served six days in jail so far, as his sentence has been put on hold pending the results of his appeals.
The screening at the MLK Jr. Library concluded with a conversation between Smollett, Fox, and David J. Johns, CEO and executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition. Smollett discussed his current mindset and his plans for the future, revealing he is working on a third movie and will be releasing new music soon.
“I’m in a space where life is being kind,” he said.
“The Lost Holliday” recently secured a distribution deal for a limited release with AMC Theatres and will be out in theaters on Sept. 27.
a&e features
DIK Bar cements its status as LGBTQ institution, prepares to expand
Dupont Cantina coming soon to the former Malbec space
Two immigrant brothers who could not return home, Michael and Tony Askarinam, turned instead to making a community space of their own. Nearly 40 years after debuting their casual, gay-friendly restaurant, the (straight) owners of Dupont Italian Kitchen are expanding, reinforcing their status as a center of gay life on 17th Street. By early fall, they plan to debut a casual Mexican restaurant, complete with a spacious patio, tons of tacos, and big margarita energy that will please outdoor diners and karaoke singers upstairs alike.
DIK Bar, as it is affectionately known, still serves fan-favorite lasagna and eggplant parmesan, though no longer for a cool $4.25 from its opening menu. Michael, who moved to the U.S. from Iran to study in 1974, graduated in 1980 – less than a year after the Iranian revolution. Part of a Jewish family, he felt unsafe going back to his homeland with the new regime, and has never returned. Instead, he and his brother, who also fled, opened a restaurant that still sits on the same corner as the day it opened. Though he is not Italian, Michael had plenty of relevant experience: He had worked in Italian restaurants during summers while studying, and another brother owned the now-closed restaurant Spaghetti Garden (where Pitchers stands today). The menu, he admits, pulled heavily from his family influence.
Opening on 17th Street in the mid-‘80s, the brothers knew the community vibe. Annie’s, just a block away, was already well known as an LGBTQ-friendly institution. At the time, he says, the street was a bit grittier — not the well-manicured lane it is today. Still, they decided to open a restaurant and Italian Kitchen was born. His brother at Spaghetti Garden suggested adding “Dupont” in front to help ground the location, and DIK came into being. “At the beginning I admit I was a little uncomfortable with the name, having young kids. But it grew on me,” he says. Leaning in, he’s embraced the name.
A few years later, the restaurant expanded vertically: taking over the apartments upstairs to turn it into a bar; a new chef came in who introduced DIK Bar’s popular brunch. But he and his brother never really relinquished the cozy space that he had envisioned. Each pushing 80 years old, they come in nearly daily: cooking, bartending, even washing dishes.
DIK has evolved, but only slightly. Eggplant and chicken parm, lasagna, pizza, pasta, and a $1 garden salad: the opening menu from the ‘80s reads like a genuine old-school Italian joint. Today, you will still find classic gems, though now they are nestled alongside Brussels sprouts and arugula salads.
As longtime patrons know, the restaurant is more than the sum of its pasta parts. “It’s an atmosphere where everybody is welcome. I got that from my mother,” he added, noting that she had experienced discrimination as part of the Jewish minority in Iran. Given this background, it was logical for them to build a space where “you have a place to be who you are and feel comfortable.”
In 2020, as the restaurant’s lease was expiring, he had the opportunity to buy the building, which included adjacent Argentine restaurant Malbec. “The landlord let us know that they felt we deserve to own the building after being here for so long,” says Michael.
It was a blessing; to him, it meant the sustainability of Dupont Italian Kitchen. Earlier this year, when Malbec’s lease expired, they decided against finding another tenant and instead they would make it their own. The two eateries already shared one storage basement, where the Malbec kitchen was located. Saving costs by sharing procurement, staff, and utilities (as well as liquor), they took the leap. “Plus, we can be our own great tenant,” he said with a smile.
The refurbishment thus far has included a new HVAC system and a new bar. The new restaurant allows them access to a more spacious kitchen that can cook up sizzling Mexican favorites with speed and in volume. Customers at upstairs DIK Bar have always requested more bar-style finger food, he says, and tacos are better suited to a drinking atmosphere than fettuccine alfredo or creamy Cajun sausage pasta. Mexican food is also well suited to the patio. He also has a family tie to Mexico: relatives own Johnny Pistolas in Adams Morgan. The rest of the menu is being developed, including shareable small plates and “Mexican pizza.” Drinks will feature tequila, mezcal, and margaritas; and there is a happy hour in the works. “I’m hoping this expansion can help cement our future,” he says.
The opening timeline is early fall.
Looking back on almost 40 years and looking forward with the expansion, he mused that the restaurant still maintains its authenticity and its central role in LGBTQ life in D.C. “I’m really proud of the fact that it caters to this community. We are an institution, we want to continue to be part of this place.”
GOP candidate in Del. House race expresses LGBTQ support
Is the Washington Post editorial board asleep?
Calendar: October 4-10
Lesbian software developer seeks to preserve lost LGBTQ history
It’s time we talk about trauma
Trans employee awarded $930,000 in lawsuit against D.C. McDonald’s
Harris campaign ramps up LGBTQ engagement as Election Day nears
New Virginia license plate celebrates LGBTQ diversity
Uganda Human Rights Commission asks government to decriminalize homosexuality
New Indian medical curriculum excludes guidelines for transgender patients
-
District of Columbia5 days agoTrans employee awarded $930,000 in lawsuit against D.C. McDonald’s
-
Politics3 days agoHarris campaign ramps up LGBTQ engagement as Election Day nears
-
Virginia3 days agoNew Virginia license plate celebrates LGBTQ diversity
-
Uganda5 days agoUganda Human Rights Commission asks government to decriminalize homosexuality