Check out the interview piece I wrote for Filmmaker Magazine
Here’s the opening:
“San Francisco-based gay filmmaker Travis Mathews built his reputation as one of the leading figures in the latest new wave of gay independent cinema on the back of a series of award-winning intimate, confessional documentary films about young homosexual men: In Their Room. His first narrative feature, I Want Your Love, explored gay friends negotiating their way towards and through sexual relationships and featured unsimulated sex. His new film, Interior. Leather Bar., co-directed with the actor James Franco, is just as honest in its depictions. This film within a film begins with a re-imagining of the lost forty minutes of William Friedkin’s controversial 1980 thriller Cruising and expands to engage with wider issues of creative freedom explored in frank “behind the scenes” sequences with cast and crew.
Filmmaker spoke to Travis while he was packing for an early morning trip to the Sundance Film Festival…”
Follow the link to Filmmaker for more:
Wonderland covers “I Want Your Love”
A nice article in Wonderland magazine about Travis‘ feature I Want Your Love (with Hoxter as story consultant). The film gets its London screening at Fringe! Gay Film Fest on April 12th.
‘I Want Your Love’ to open Fringe! Gay Film Fest in London
Exciting news from across the pond today, Travis Matthews‘ feature, I Want Your Love will open the very Fringe! festival in London on Thursday April 12th. I had the privilege to work on the project as a script consultant and I can tell you that the film will be a real splash. It’s honest, frank, sexy, well acted and a brave experiment in independent filmmaking. Matthews is rightly spoken of in the same breath as Andrew Haigh and John Cameron Mitchell as an important member of the newest new wave of gay filmmakers.
Here’s the blurb from Fringe!
THURSDAY 12th APRIL 9pm
Hackney Picturehouse, 270 Mare Street, London E8 1HE
Tickets: Hackney Picturehouse. £8
‘I Want Your Love’ is an unapologetically voyeuristic insight into the sexual and emotional interactions of a young man, Jesse, and his extended group of friends, as he struggles to take responsibility for himself after years of treading water in freewheeling San Francisco.
In his first feature length film, Travis Mathews builds on the experience of making his ground breaking ‘in Their Room’ series of shorts, which laid bare the intimate and erotic lives and obsessions of young gay men in Berlin and San Francisco.
Funded by porn company, Naked Sword, ‘I Want Your Love’ contains explicit sex scenes, but it’s so much more, it deals with the complexities of contemporary gay identity with candor and empathy. The sex is real but so are the actors’ emotions. Mathews effortlessly mixes the erotic with believability, no easy task. But its Mathews’s solid yet informal script and screenplay and sensitive direction that marks ‘I Want Your Love’ out as an important moment in queer cinema. Opening the door for a new wave of gay filmmaking, sharing small yet poignant personal stories.
Much like Andrew Haigh’s ’Weekend’ Mathews’s ‘I Want Your Love’ explores the possibilities for queer cinema to deal with the subtleties of gay life. His bold unapologetically realistic portrayals of gay sex are a refreshingly honest reflection of the contemporary gay experience. Coupled with beautiful but low key cinematography and a rocking soundtrack.
Out There magazine is all about bring you the best of global queer culture we are therefore very proud to present Travis Mathews. A ‘one-to-watch’ film maker that we feel represents a very welcome breath of fresh air, and will continue to grow and tell our stories with honesty and wit.
‘I Want Your Love is an intense, intimate film with a fantastic soundtrack and stunning visual beauty that will haunt you long after the final scene.’ -Scott Heim author of “Mysterious Skin”
‘Intimate, sexy and unflinchingly honest, I Want Your Love is a bold film with rare insight into the uncensored lives of a generation of gay men’ – Andrew Haigh, Director of Weekend
I Want Your Love teaser
Here’s the teaser trailer for I Want Your Love, a feature film I story consulted on. Written and directed by the very talented Travis Matthews (In Their Room). Enjoy (NSFW).
