Editor’s Pitch

If you live in a big multi-culturally mixed city, it’s hard to forget that outside the bubble you live in there is another world, another mindset. London is not the UK, New York is not the United States and Hong Kong is certainly not China (though it’s trying to be.) Narrow minds and narrow attitudes are a global norm and it’s all too easy to think fairness and understanding has broken our across the globe, just because of the values supported by many governments and media organisations. Watch and be horrified at how little we’ve come.


Even after the fall of Communism, homophobia remains entrenched as an institutional practice in Eastern Europe. The LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) movement is the subject of Beyond the Pink Curtain, a brave documentary that investigates the organisation’s campaign for social equality and serves as a timely reminder to EU institutions of their responsibility to protect gay communities.

Director Mathew Charles travels across Europe to chart the evolution of the LGBT rights movement as it pushes towards internationalism. He interviews passionate LGBT activists from communities in Serbia, Lithuania, Poland, the UK and pan-European non-governmental organisations. He even meets members of the Serbian far Right in an attempt to further explore the eastern European psyche.

What follows is a thoughtful discussion about the relationships between gender, nation and sexuality.

Charles documents the persecution of the LGBT community by using the Belgrade-hosted 2008 Eurovision Song Contest as an example, an event the Serbian authorities warn is a place which openly gay people should be wary. “The Serbian community is not an environment that gladly accepts and encourages love between members of the same sex.”

In a country where media reports about gay people are mostly inflammatory, and textbooks have claimed that homosexuality is a psychological disorder, it’s not surprising to learn that xenophobia is alive and well in Serbia’s current social climate. Disturbing scenes from clashes at a Gay Pride march where policemen are seen to allow casual brutality towards those supporting LGBT rights just confirms this 21st century reality.

The relationship between nationalism and religion is also part of Beyond the Pink Curtain’s mix. During Communism, religion was the only collective force to oppose oppression from the national state. But ironically, with the fall of Communism, religion became similar or equal to national cultural values. “Being religious became being national,” comments a Serbian activist, “they are afraid of others and the unknown, and it is up to us to work harder to put an end to those prejudice, fears and stereotypes.”

Many Western states would like to think that homophobia has been banished with the introduction of civil partnerships and equal adoption rights, but Charles argues that social acceptance of the LGBT community may only be a thin veneer many of us would rather not dig beneath.