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“I don't think it can be lost on anyone that in recent years we've been fed a generous diet of films with homosexual themes and characters,” commented director Albaladejo, who co-wrote and directed Bear Cub. He furthered that today’s abundance of gay-themed cinema is probably “a first step” towards a much desired normalization of gays in mainstream society.

“Some of those films have managed to really touch us, thanks to the strength of emotions, the sincerity, daring and originality with which the stories were put together and with which the characters were depicted,” Albaladejo continued. “But the mainstream of this so-called ‘gay cinema’ is limited.”

Albaladejo contends that “mainstream” gay cinema is saturated with “pre-approved” socially acceptable gay content. All gays must be suave and physically good looking. AIDS is the only health problem that affects the population, and all GLBT persons must live in an “above average” socio economic range.

“I think it behooves us to think of new stories, of characters that depart from those robot-like portraits, of more complex conflicts and issues,” Albaladejo said.

Director Agustin Villaronga’s Catalan-language film, El Mar, might be a good example of Albaladejo’s desire to expand the gay genre. Winner of the Berlin Film Festival’s Manfred Salzgeber Award, El Mar is set in Mallorca Spain during the Spanish Civil War. It tells the story of three young friends who witness a brutal killing when a classmate avenges his father’s assassination and then commits suicide. Eight years later, the friends reunite and revisit their dark childhood – a childhood tormented by death, religion and conflicting sexual desires.

Director Cesc Gay has also taken gay cinema in a totally new direction. After his coming-of-age story Nico and Dani, Gay places his homosexual characters within the greater population, refusing to draw special attention to them. Rather, he weaves their storylines within a greater, straight story.

Gay’s new film In the City tells a story about urban life and angst with a group of friends sharing their secrets and passions in modern-day Barcelona. Irene is married to an air-traffic controller who is more interested in the stock market than his marriage. Bookish Sofia has fallen for a French businessman who spices up her life whenever he is in town. Mario suspects his wife is having an affair, so he meets-up for a brief, meaningless fling with Cristina. And Tomas is having an ill-advised affair with one of his music students, 16-year-old Ana, who is Mario's niece. Despite this soap opera like story, the characters’ relationships and friendships don’t get shaken up until Irene runs into an old college friend Silvia, and finds her bisexual nature awakened.

Ironically signaling a maturity and blending of gay themes within Spanish cinema just might be Unconscious by straight director Joaquín Oristrell (to be released theatrically by Regent this fall). Set in Barcelona during 1913, just before famed psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud visited Spain for the first time, the film unfolds as a “Sherlock Holmes kind of adventure, where hypnosis, love, danger and every imaginable taboo are all intertwined.”

Oristrell described his film as an unusual love story between Alma and Salvador. With the beginnings of psychoanalysis and a visit from Freud as a background, brother and sister-in-law Salvador and Alma become involved in a search for her missing husband.

“In 1913, the brassiere, ecstasy and crossword puzzles were invented,” explained Oristrell. “The tango swept Europe and Alfonso the 13^th had just signed a law allowing women to attend the university, while a group of scientists and intellectuals probed the deepest mazes of our sexuality.”

Oristrell believes that particular time and setting draws parallels with today’s society. “Barcelona of 1913 (was) a modern, cosmopolitan city, and a dangerous spot that was completely open to all the changes (regarding human sexuality) that were just around the corner,” he stated.

Perhaps the only common theme for Spain’s new age of Spanish Cinema might be the future. In fact, Almódovar said that he considers film as a mirror of the future. And the future looks bright. With such a large and diverse library of films representing gay cinema, perhaps filmmakers, not psychoanalysts, should be considered the foremost scientists of the human condition, where our loves, desires and “every other imaginable taboo are all intertwined.”

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