HBO’s LGBT History: Hunted: The War Against Gays in Russia (2014)
Wednesday, March 23, 2016 at 2:13PM Manuel is working his way through all the LGBT-themed HBO productions.
Last week we looked at Andrew Rannells’s Elijah (Girls). Ogling his latest sexcapade with Corey Stoll, who plays a famous actor on the show, we talked about the way the Broadway actor has made himself an essential part of Lena Dunham’s show, giving the vapid narcissism of his character the necessary depth to avoid falling into cliché. This week, we revisit a 2014 HBO documentary about the dangerous anti-gay vigilante groups that have recently proliferated in Russia. The title comes directly from one gay man featured in the film. A victim of a raid on an LGBT gathering that left him blind in one eye, he puts it all too bluntly:
“Hunting season is open…and we are the hunted.”
Released the same year as the Sochi Olympics—which in themselves brought closer scrutiny to what many around the world saw as a state-sanctioned anti-gay stance—Hunted: The War Against Gays In Russia paints a portrait of the homophobic culture that has spurred civilian vigilante groups to actively “hunt” gay men. Groups like Parents of Russia boycott and disrupt pro-gay propaganda (like film festivals and demonstrations), which the government has all but made illegal. [More...]
HBO, HBO LGBT, Hunted, Russia, documentaries 
