It was entirely by coincidence that yesterday evening, of the two movies I rented for my weekend film festival, one was The Bubble (Israel, 2006). When I was watching the movie I was unaware that on Tuesday, 27th May 2008, in Berlin would be opened a memorial dedicated to all the homosexuals who perished in Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War. So what does a film made in 21st century Israel have to do with the Berlin memorial? Just this: in the film the two lovers (one Israeli, the other a Palestinian Arab) go to watch a play in Tel Aviv one evening. The play? Martin Sherman's play Bent (1979). As you may well know the play deals with the persecution of homosexuals in concentration camps. From the play Ashraf learns the gesture of tracing a line along the left eyebrow with one's index finger to express love. In The Bubble we see him do it twice, both times out of the sight of Noam, the man he loves. The film belongs not only in an intertexual web with Martin Sherman's play but also with the French made-for-TV movie Un Amour a Taire (A Love to Hide) which also deals with the Nazi persecution of homosexuals. When the Berlin memorial is opened on Tuesday it won't be the first such memorial. There is one in Amsterdam which was inaugurated on 5 September 1987 and there's another one in Sydney, Australia. But this most recent memorial's location in Berlin is especially significant because it is the first one on German soil.
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