Graham Kolbeins | |
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Born | Vancouver, British Columbia | October 23, 1987
Occupation(s) | Filmmaker, writer |
Known for | Rad Queers, The House of Gay Art |
Graham Kolbeins is a Canadian filmmaker, writer, and fashion designer.
Kolbeins' documentary films have focused on themes of LGBTQ art and activism, including the web series Rad Queers [1] [2] [3] and the documentary short film The House of Gay Art. [4] [5] As co-founder and creative director of the brand Massive Goods [6] [7] Kolbeins and collaborator Anne Ishii worked with Japanese artists including gay manga artist Gengoroh Tagame and feminist artist Rokudenashiko to produce English translations of their work as well as fashion collections for brands including Opening Ceremony [8] and Mishka. [9]
The Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission named Kolbeins a recipient of their Creative Artists Exchange Fellowship in 2016, [10] and he subsequently spent five months filming a feature documentary about sexuality and gender identity in Japan titled Queer Japan. [11] [12] Currently in post-production, the film features a variety of artists, activists, dancers, drag queens, and everyday persons. [13] The cast includes Gengoroh Tagame, drag queen and artist Vivienne Sato, transgender politician Aya Kamikawa, and photographer Leslie Kee. [13] Kolbeins' short-form work includes Rad Queers, a series of documentary profiles on artists and activists; as well as collaborations with artist Rafa Esparza, [14] musician Dorian Wood, [15] writer Beau Rice, [16] and the magazine New American Paintings. He also created a found footage experimental short Food Horror which explored stigma towards eating embedded with the teen television drama Pretty Little Liars . [17] [18]
Along with Chip Kidd and Anne Ishii, Kolbeins is the co-editor of two books on Japanese gay art: The Passion of Gengoroh Tagame [19] [20] [21] and Fantagraphics' anthology, Massive: Gay Erotic Manga and the Men Who Make It , [22] [23] [24] which was nominated for an Eisner award in 2015. [25] The team also collaborated on Koyama Press' English-language edition of What Is Obscenity?, [26] [27] a graphic memoir by the artist Rokudenashiko chronicling her arrest on obscenity charges for making 3D printed vagina art, which was nominated for a Los Angeles Times Book Award [28]
G-men is a Japanese gay lifestyle brand, and formerly a monthly magazine.
Gengoroh Tagame is a pseudonymous Japanese manga artist. He is regarded as the most prolific and influential creator in the gay manga genre. Tagame began contributing manga and prose fiction to Japanese gay men's magazines in the 1980s, after making his debut as a manga artist in the yaoi manga magazine June while in high school. As a student he studied graphic design at Tama Art University, and worked as a commercial graphic designer and art director to support his career as a manga artist. His manga series The Toyed Man, originally serialized in the gay men's magazine Badi from 1992 to 1993, enjoyed breakout success after it was published as a book in 1994. After co-founding the gay men's magazine G-men in 1995, Tagame began working as a gay manga artist full-time.
Erotic comics are adult comics which focus substantially on nudity and sexual activity, either for their own sake or as a major story element. As such they are usually not permitted to be sold to legal minors. Like other genres of comics, they can consist of single panels, short comic strips, comic books, or graphic novels/albums. Although never a mainstream genre, they have existed as a niche alongside – but usually separate from – other genres of comics.
Sadao Hasegawa was a Japanese graphic artist known for creating homoerotic fetish art. His works are noted for their extensive detail, elaborate fantasy settings, and for their juxtaposition of elements from Japanese, Balinese, Thai, Tibetan Buddhist, African, and Indian art. While Hasegawa focused primarily on depictions of muscular male physique, he often incorporated extreme sexual themes in his works, including bondage and sadomasochism. His art is noted for strong mystical and spiritual overtones.
Bara is a colloquialism for a genre of Japanese art and media known within Japan as gay manga (ゲイ漫画) or gei komi. The genre focuses on male same-sex love, as created primarily by gay men for a gay male audience. Bara can vary in visual style and plot, but typically features masculine men with varying degrees of muscle, body fat, and body hair, akin to bear or bodybuilding culture. While bara is typically pornographic, the genre has also depicted romantic and autobiographical subject material, as it acknowledges the varied reactions to homosexuality in modern Japan.
Megumi Igarashi, who uses the pseudonym Rokudenashiko, is a Japanese sculptor and manga artist who creates works that feature female genitalia and are often modeled after her own vulva. Rokudenashiko considers it her mission to reclaim female genitalia as part of women's bodies and demystify them in Japan's male dominated society, where she believes that they are "overly hidden" and marginalized as “taboo” and “obscene” in comparison to phallic imagery. As such, the artist has created a variety of different representations of manko, the Japanese slang for vagina or pussy, using representations of her own body as the raw material to emphasize as return to experience within art and manga. Rokudenashiko has been called an international symbol of “manko positivity.”
Anne Ishii is an American writer, editor, translator, and producer based in Philadelphia. Ishii is the host of WHYY's Movers & Makers, and the Executive Director of Philadelphia's Asian Arts Initiative, an arts non-profit.
My Brother's Husband is a manga series by Gengoroh Tagame. Serialized in Monthly Action from 2014 to 2017, and adapted into a live-action television drama by NHK in 2018, the series follows the relationship between single father Yaichi, his daughter Kana, and Mike Flanagan, the Canadian husband of Yaichi's estranged and recently deceased twin brother.
Massive Goods is a fashion brand and manga publisher. The company works with LGBTQ and feminist comic artists in Japan, particularly gay manga (bara) artists, to create products featuring their artwork, and English-language translations of their works.
Jiraiya is a pseudonymous Japanese gay manga artist and illustrator. He is noted for his homoerotic, hyperreal drawings of gachimuchi men, and for his use of digital illustration in his artwork.
Sanshi Funayama was a Japanese homoerotic fetish artist. Funayama, along with Go Mishima, Tatsuji Okawa, and Go Hirano, is regarded by artist and historian Gengoroh Tagame as a central figure in the first wave of contemporary gay artists in Japan.
Tatsuji Okawa was a Japanese homoerotic fetish artist. Tatsuji, along with Go Mishima, Sanshi Funayama, and Go Hirano, is regarded by artist and historian Gengoroh Tagame as a central figure in the first wave of contemporary gay artists in Japan.
Go Hirano (平野剛) was a Japanese homoerotic fetish artist. Hirano, along with Go Mishima, Sanshi Funayama, and Tatsuji Okawa, is regarded by artist and historian Gengoroh Tagame as a central figure in the first wave of contemporary gay artists in Japan.
Queer Japan is a 2019 documentary film directed, edited, and co-written by Graham Kolbeins. The documentary profiles a range of individuals in Japan who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ). Queer Japan is produced by Hiromi Iida with Anne Ishii, written by Ishii and Kolbeins, and features an original score composed by Geotic.
Ben Kimura was a Japanese gay erotic artist. Kimura, along with George Takeuchi and Sadao Hasegawa, is noted by artist and historian Gengoroh Tagame as a central figure in the second wave of contemporary gay artists that emerged in Japan in the 1970s.
Our Colors is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Gengoroh Tagame. It was serialized in Futabasha's Monthly Action magazine from March 2018 to May 2020 and collected into three tankōbon volumes. Our Colors is Tagame's second manga for general audiences, following his 2014 series My Brother's Husband. The series follows Sora Itoda, a closeted second-year high school student, who is alienated by the homophobia of his peers and the pressures of needing to pass as straight. One day, Sora meets an older man who runs a cafe, and learns that the man is also gay. The series follows the intergenerational friendship that forms between Sora and the man, and the mentorship the man provides Sora on the problems he is facing.
Massive: Gay Erotic Manga and the Men Who Make It is a 2014 manga anthology edited by Anne Ishii, Chip Kidd, and Graham Kolbeins, and published by Fantagraphics Books. Collecting works from Gengoroh Tagame, Jiraiya, and numerous other artists, it is the first English-language anthology of gay manga.
Takeshi Matsu is a Japanese gay manga artist.
Gai Mizuki, also known as Rycanthropy, is a Japanese gay manga artist and dōjin soft producer.