Reel Affirmations: The Nation's LGBT Film Festival 2009

Would you creep under razor wire, scale cement walls, and dodge bullets to get to a gay bar? In the heart of Jerusalem lies a surprising sanctuary: a bar called Shushan. Here, gay Jews and Palestinians come together to find companionship, release, and even love, united by their common struggle for acceptance and dignity. Set against the struggle for a gay pride parade in Jerusalem, City of Borders explores this resilient community’s daily fight for dignity and their right to existence. "Everyone comes from their own ghetto and meets at Shushan," says the bar owner Sa’ar Netanel, a secular Israeli and Jerusalem’s first openly gay city council member. For devout Muslim Palestinian, Boody going to Shushan means endangering his life in an illegal nighttime border crossing from the West Bank to Jerusalem. Former Israeli soldier and "club kid" Adam Russo, dances shirtless on stage, displaying visible scars on his chest and arms. Being a victim of a hate crime has ignited his political purpose — to fight for equal rights. On the dance floor, a Palestinian Israeli, Samira Saraya, kisses her Jewish Israeli lesbian lover, Ravit Geva. Their union breaks two of Middle Eastern society’s biggest taboos: same-sex relations and intimacy between Jews and Arabs. Ironically, these barriers have drawn them closer together, but isolated them from their families. Their stories, and many others, play out amidst the disco lights and pulsing music, impacting everyone — regardless of gender, nationality or religion — with their resilience and belief in the redeeming power of love.