QueerScreen Film Festival
Image: Portrait Of A Lady On Fire
This year 29 LGBTIQ feature films, documentaries and shorts screen at the QueerScreen Film Festival and the theme is ‘light your fire’ since more than half of the films are about romance.
Lisa Rose, the Festival Director, is adamant that there is a film for everyone regardless of sexual persuasion and most of the program is suitable for heterosexual audiences. “Love is universal and many of the films are about love. Same But Different is a funny romantic rom-com from New Zealand which should appeal to all audiences as should Seahorse, an insightful documentary about a trans guy who wants to start a family and decides to go off his hormones so he can father his own child.”
Audiences who expect a bit of spice in their viewing can come along to the sexually explicit short gay films session. Renovation is a Brazilian short which examines a man’s self-body image as he moves from one sexual engagement to the next.
Festival attendees who enjoy talks with overseas guests should attend the screening of Same But Different as a Q&A will follow with producer Rachel Aneta Wills and writer/director Nikki Si’ulepa.
And will heterosexual audiences learn anything about queer culture from films screening at this festival? “Absolutely! They will learn that queer people are just like them. That’s part of the thing about ‘lighting people’s fire’ – the passion and love. I think if people come and watch a film, they will be caught up in the emotion of it.” (MMo).
Sep 18-22. Event Cinema, 505/525 George St, Sydney. $17-$90+b.f. Tickets & Info: www.queerscreen.org.au
LISA’S HOT PICKS
PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE: Winner of the Queer Palm at Cannes, this is a beautiful film which surrounds an 18th Century lesbian romance. Opening night film.
END OF THE CENTURY: Two men meet and realise they knew one another 20 years earlier. Mysterious, intriguing and very sexy.
KILLING PATIENT ZERO: A documentary about the man who was post-death falsely blamed and demonised by the media for having brought the aids virus to North America. A very important and moving film.
