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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I think those three examples in the article are isolated, and all more ‘art’-fare than gay (look at the directors of all three films). It’s a mode of filmmaking I prefer to conventional queer cinema as they try to dispel a myth that homosexuality is an ‘alternative,’ (hence the masculine/feminine portrayals) rather than all the other ostentatiously gay films which have the irritating ‘I must find a man to help me come out and deal with my sexuality’ structure… I dunno about gay festivals, I think a lot of people would be put off by the name, whereas lots of films now are about homosexuals rather than being queer films, hence they should be included in more general film festivals…
I think the desired outcome is that all these lesbian/gay films have the opportunity to be found as part of the mainstream so as to suggest these films be treated like any other film around today because we are looking for equality, not simply an alternative from the “norm”. However, I feel these specific festivals should remain as well because it is these festivals which give publicity to these films which can then be transferred to the mainstream if they become popular.