Starting later this week at the BFI Southbank in London is the 25th London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival which showcases some of the best queer cinema from all over the world.
Over the next week, I will be taking part in the festival and covering a selection of events/screenings as a member of the BFI Future Film reporting team and posting my reviews on here.
I visited the BFI today to meet some of the others in the reporting team and it seems like we have a lot of fun in store including taking a role in a discussion about the future of queer cinema at this Sunday’s round table debate. As well as this, I will hopefully be able to get some audience reactions and speak to some of the BFI programmers and various other guests, we will have to just wait and see.
The group today entered a really interesting discussion about the future of queer film making and whether there is a place in society for this type of filmmaking to exist anymore or whether it should be considered more mainstream with the release of films like ‘Brokeback Mountain’ (2005), ‘Milk’ (2008) and ‘The Kids Are All Right’ (2010). But then, if we consider what was once known as queer filmmaking to be in the mainstream, should a festival which highlights these films exist or should we see more films like this included in more mainstream film festivals like the London Film Festival? Are representations of queer identity different between the mainstream and what is currently considered the alternative? I would be really interested to find out what you all think?
Read my article about the highlights of the festival here – or simply check back here to get reviews, photos and (hopefully) videos from the festival.
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