Gay by Nature
2025, 21’16”, FullHD
In a dystopian future, two lesbian cat people are locked up in an overgrown outdoor enclosure. As the violence inflicted on them by human guards and visitors becomes increasingly un bearable, the two decide to break out. Carried by playful improvisation, Gay by Nature transforms the idyll of Heimatfilms into a queer, antifascist fantasy of freedom and subversive nature.
Director: Isa Schieche and Helen Weber
Concept: Isa Schieche
Editing: Isa Schieche
Production: Isa Schieche and Helen Weber
Camera: Isa Schieche and Helen Weber
Sound Recording: Helen Weber
Sound Design: Katharina Pichler
Color Grading: Michael Seidl
Music: VOILER, The Boiler, Kristina Pia Hofer
Graphics: Hammer, Jana Hofmann
Subtitles: Helen Weber, Julia S. Goodman
Costumes: Isa Schieche
commissioned by Publiek Park 2025, supported by BMKÖES
Installation view: Publiek Park 2025, Plantentuin Meise, Friendship Temple
At the Friendship Temple, a pavilion tucked away in the greenery of the botanic garden, Isa Schieche and Helen Weber present a film installation, Gay by Nature, parts of which were filmed in Raketenstation Hombroich, Vienna, Plantentuin Meise and Jardin Botanique de Bruxelles.
Set in the near future, the film imagines a world where the rise of right-wing and nationalist forces has led to a fascist regime. Echoing the Nazi regime a century earlier, this new authority conducts secret experiments on humans. In an attempt to create a superhuman, they combine the DNA of big cats and humans. The experiments, however, result in an unexpected failure for the fascist elite – all test subjects turn out to be large, peace-loving lesbians. While the programme is halted on moral grounds, citing the need to protect traditional family values, the remaining subjects are confined to a free-roaming enclosure, living their lives for the amusement of visitors.
Incorporating musical elements, Gay by Nature is a contemporary interpretation of the Heimatfilm – a genre of German-language cinema popular from the late 1940s to the 1960s, known for its sentimental stories set in idyllic rural landscapes, and its focus on themes such as home, tradition, and moral values.
For some, the Friendship Temple may recall the salon of the same name hosted by Natalie Clifford Barney in early twentieth-century Paris, frequented by leading figures of the Parisian modernist literary scene. Echoing the storyline of Schieche and Weber’s film, Barney, who often published under the nickname l’Amazone, lived openly as a lesbian and wrote extensively about feminism and pacifism. (Anna Laganovska)
