Shank

 

Low on budget but high on impact, Shank is a gritty new British movie that tackles a whole lot of issues, from sexuality, coming out, and race to social status, and gang violence. Described by Edge San Francisco as “the equivalent of ‘Beautiful Thing’ on coke,” the movie is written by Darren Flaxstone & Christian Martin, and directed by Simon Pearce.

 

 

I came upon the movie while I was looking for new titles to add to our GLBT Movies store, and the more I found out about it the more I wanted to see this movie. Coming out on DVD in an Unrated Director Cut on December 8, the movie is inspired by real events of young gay guys targeted at cruising areas and filmed on mobile phones while being humiliated and assaulted. 

 

 

The producers of Shank have kindly shared with Homotography some of the movie production images, which we present to you in this post. The movie stars Wayne Virgo, Marc Laurent and Alice Payne. You can watch Shank’s official trailer below.

 

 

Given the graphic gay nature of the movie, I found it really interesting that the 21 year-old director, along with most of the cast and crew, are straight. It’s so refreshing that they made their film choice without worrying about sexuality, an issue that still plagues both Hollywood and the modeling industry (believe me, some models/agents are still scared of being featured in a gay blog like this one, as if being featured in film/magazine/blog affects the actor/model’s sexuality in any way at the end of 2009).

 

 

 

Also, check out this playful introduction by the movie team for the Montreal audience last month. I like the director’s approach to promoting the DVD towards the end!

 

 

+ Buy Shank (Unrated Director Cut) | see our GLBT Movie section