Dear friends,

On December 13, 2008, ComingOutCinema showed a film called A Love to Hide. This evening was dedicated to all the gays and lesbians who suffered from repressions based on their sexual orientation at the time the Article 121 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, passed in 1934, was still in existence. Up till the abolition of this article in 1993, gays and lesbians in the USSR and Russia were persecuted: men were thrown in jail, women were “treated” in psychiatric institutions.

The Russian LGBT Network (www.lgbtnet.ru) declared 2009 to be Memorial Year for the gay and lesbian victims of political repressions.

Dmitry Chizhevsky, the moderator of this Saturday’s ComingOutCinema evening, tells us his impressions of the evening.