What a difference a border makes, especially in South East Asia. On the one hand you’ve got The Philippines, which is becoming a centre of gay movie making in the region. On the other hand there is Malaysia, a county about to tentatively release its first ever mainstream, gay themed movie into local cinemas.

And further North it’s a very different story for gay movies again. Thailand probably has the most liberal attitude to gays on film of any country in the locale – in fact, racy gay sex scenes aren’t likely to get your movie banned, but throwing in some real-time politics might. Just ask director Thunska Pansittivorakul, whose movie, This Area Is Under Quarantine, fell foul of Thai censors last year.

The country’s Culture Ministry didn’t have a problem with the naked hotel romping in Pansittivorakul’s part-docu-part-fiction gay movie – see the trailer above – but did have a problem with real footage from a recent military crackdown that exposes the religious and ethnic tensions in a country experiencing violent and bloody clashes.

Over in Malaysia – who’s national censors wouldn’t allow Brokeback Mountain or even Borat into the country – producer Raja Azmi Raja Sulaiman might have shot some “hot scenes” for new gay movie Dalam Botol, but these are for international audiences and won’t be seen by moviegoers in the conservative country.

Raja Azmi told Asiaone.com that after advice from Malaysia’s National Censorship Board “30 per cent of the original screenplay was changed … (and) we toned down the intimate scenes to meet the board’s guidelines.”

It’ll be a real test of Malaysian audiences when the movie gets shown later this year and, if a local hit, could pave the way for more gay stories and characters on screen – might be a little while before the country allows the kind of ‘tighty whitey’ action you can see in This Area Is Under Quarantine, though.